STILL GRINDING

As I watched my only current futures trade go south on me yesterday, I realized that this presents a unique opportunity. I am currently in the worst losing streak of my 20+ year career in terms of just raw wins and losses. However, many of these trades are very small losses. This is so important, keep your losses small. This is likely to be the worst losing streak I will ever have as a trader, so I am actually excited that I have not lost a devastating amount. I typically trade at about a 65% level of accuracy. This has been consistent for awhile now. At this point when I exit this trade on Monday for a small loss I will have 9 consecutive losses, a statistical anomaly with a winning percentage that high.These are the types of streaks that wipe out ultra aggressive traders who do not have tight risk control. This is a case study on how you HAVE to manage your money.

The unique opportunity is sharing this openly in a blog and how I am handling it. In addition, what I am doing to try and break out of this streak.

First, you have to remain confident in your approach. It is so easy to be confident when things are going great, it is entirely another to be so during a stretch like this.

Second, review every trade you do. I print them all out and keep them in folders, so I can always go back and review them post mortem. At times this is very helpful. I have found a few things I could have and should have done differently here, so that would have saved me some anguish here.

Third, make sure your method is sound. This obviously ties into point #1. It is one thing to be confident, but your techniques must be sound. Review what you are doing to make sure how you are approaching things is sound. If your approach is flawed, no amount of confidence will make it successful.

Four, the glass is half full. Assuming you have had good stretches, look back on them and feel good about what you have accomplished. Drawdowns are part of this, so that is something that must be accepted. In spite of this 9 loss streak, the drawdown is still under 8% which is fantastic.

With all that being said, lets look at what caused this on my part. I mentioned I am trying to change to hold things longer. Many of these trades during this streak were wins had I exited them in 2 or 3 days. The wins would have been small, and that is why I have chosen to use trailing stops with them in an attempt to capture larger gains.

If we look at that Cattle trade above, you can see there were 3 straight up closes after I entered. I typically exited trades after 3 wins when against the trend in the past. This would have been a 5k profit in this case. I have chosen to use a 3 bar trailing stop, which is why this trade will be a small loss. I was trying for a target of more than double where we went to, so it was not even close to getting there. We are setting up another buy opp, so it is possible I will get stopped and re-enter this the very next day. This does not mean I should move my current stop down. That is again a mistake people often make, hanging on to something too long. This is how losses get out of hand. You establish your parameters for how you will manage a trade prior to going into it. Then you follow those rules period. My parameters were to go for a particular target, and use a 3 bar trailing stop, so that is what I will do.

I am sure some readers who just happen by here will leave now that they see I have admitted to having this bad streak. Good riddance. So many are just looking for the short cut, the holy grail. They think they can make millions off 5k. This has been done, but rarely, and you will not learn how to do that here. The whole purpose of this blog is educational, an attempt to help others from what I go through day in day out trading. This current losing streak is a reality of what can happen, people need to be aware of this aspect of the business.

Sorry for the lack of market analysis, it is my blog so I get to determine what I talk about. I do not see anything setup so strongly that I am looking for any reversals of this weeks action. I think we will continue upward in most of these markets this coming week.

Have a great weekend

THEY ARE LUCKY I WAS NOT THE HEAD OF BP YESTERDAY

Listening to these punks in Congress at times makes me feel embarassed to be an American

The grandstanding talk after the fact is so hollow you really have to be a moron not to see through it. I am fairly sure these people do not fool the American public for a second. Look at how tough I was on BP, don't I command your respect now and hence your vote for re-election? I suppose that must be the mindset of these guys. If I was the BP guy I would have asked these chumps to relate similar situations and decisions they made when they were running fortune 500 companies. Of course it would be crickets because none of them have so silence would abound. I do not defend BP, but this circus accomplishes nothing at all. Nobody intentionally did this, it was an accident.

These are the people running this country, is it any wonder we have problems?

Looking at the stock chart of BP I find there is actually a buying opportunity here. You can see the trend oscillators have now crossed into uptrend modes, so I am looking for an entry down here. Why not make money of this disaster if you can? When things get pushed to extremes like this, you often get opportunities for the reversions when they happen. This is one to keep an eye on.

Here we have the SP 500 chart and you can see how we are moving up nicely, with the trend indicators confirming the upward move. I do still feel we are in pullback mode on a weekly basis, so I will be looking for short entries in another week or so most likely. For now it is hold your longs, move your stops up to protect your gains, and let it ride.

Nothing else much to discuss today, other than there was a continuation long entry in Soybean Meal today that I passed on even though the Grains are moving higher. It is the third buy, and generally I like to do the first 2 in a trend change and not the third. Below is a snapshot of that market.

DEJA VU

One of the main points that I hope comes across in this blog is the following: I am a real trader, I trade real money, and I give you real results. There is so much BS on the web you would think noboby ever takes any losses. The title of today's post is based on what is happening in my trading this month. Last year during the month of July I was in the midst of changing my trading style a bit, and my results showed it. I got my ass kicked during that month. It was the single worst trading month of my career. It wound up being worth it because from that point forward, the changes took, and I had a very good run to finish out the year.

This month, I have undertaken another change to hold things a bit longer for larger gains. Also, this month I am getting my ass kicked during the transition. I knew this would happen, so surprisingly it does not bother me at all. I know the reality of trading is that at times you lose money. I never want to lose, but you have to accept that drawdowns are part of the business. The key is keeping them in check. I personally don't like to go beyond 8% in any one month. There are times that no matter what you do you just can't buy a win. Often there is not real logic to explain why, but I have had this happen enough times over the years to just accept it. I am right about at that 8% now, so I probably will not trade much the rest of the month unless I see something that is so "perfect" that it can't be passed up. I know I can handle 8% in a month, but can't handle 16% for example, or even 20% etc..

The most important thing for me to stress to people just getting started is this. When you take a loss or series of losses, do not get that mindset that "I have to get this back fast." This has caused more people to get blown out than anything I know of. I have the utmost respect for the markets, so I tend to go the other way after losing. I like to walk away for a few days or even a week or two. The markets will be there tommorrow. If I am losing it is my fault and I am out of sync with what is happening. My dad loves to blame the referees for every loss the teams he roots for have. I do not share that blame someone else mentality. I just have to look in the mirror for who is to blame. I am out of sync right now and until I can get back in sync, I am going to be very careful.

Below is an example of a trade I just got stopped out in today trying for a larger gain, BONDS. You can see the arrow where I entered, and the one where I got stopped out today.

Since I am bearish on Bonds I was trying to hold this for a much larger gain, even though it moved down for me just like I wanted initially. Previously I would have taken out a $7,000 or $8,000 gain on this move and gone to the sidelines. However, I thought there was much more and in reality this is setting up another short entry now. I will likely be going back into this trade in the next day or two. I have just seen far too many large moves come around in the last 2 years, that I have gotten less than I should have out of them. As a result, I am going to stick to larger targets and live with what happens. I know alot of trades like this will occur. You have to accept the limitations with your approach. In going for larger gains, alot of marginal trades are going to play out like this, so I know that going in.

Gold is taking off today along with Silver. I guess I wish I was long, I was long Silver earlier in the week. However, when I look at what everything is telling me here, GOLD is setup to be a short entry. As a result I am waiting to see if this trade sets up. It appears that if we close today where we are now, I will likely try to short this tommorrow where indicated. This is pretty close to a "perfect" setup in my world, so it will qualify as something too good to pass on despite my drawdown.

I hope this post adds credibility. At times this year I have had such great runs where I have had virtually no losses that I am sure some readers might have thought I was not telling the whole story. I was then and I am now. This is how trading goes in the real world. I wish I could just click the mouse and have every trade be a win. There is nobody who does that in spite of what some people represent.

LONGSHOT

Here is a trade I am trying to get into today, a short in GOLD. We have a long ways to travel to reach my entry point, but you just never know. Since the majority of the action happens overnight nowadays it is doubtful this will move enough during the day for the order to be executed. We have quite a bit of divergence here on the trend oscillator, a 3 point divergence. When we couple that with the daily picture, which is a market setup for a decline, it is a trade I have to take a swing at.

I have mentioned in recent weeks that we have had commercial selling and more importantly, Small Speculator buying again reaching close to the levels we had prior to the last top. As a result, I am not running out looking to sell, but I am on the lookout for sell patterns. This is one. If we go sideways to up without breaking here for a few more days, this setup on a short term basis may be invalidated.

EQUITIES

We have certainly had a nice run upward in stocks, and even though we have pre-opening weakness today, I do not expect to see any major declines.

You can see very strong upward momentum in both the accumulation/distribution indicators, as well as the trend oscillator. This should mean that pullbacks are buys in the indexes and individual stocks. I still think the overall trend is down, and on a weekly basis I am looking for a sell to setup on this rally, but so far there is not a signal on this chart to short this.

Next is a chart of the EURO and you can see why I was bullish on this market at the lows. We have a 3 point divergence in the trend oscillator. It occurred at a time with record commercial buying, hence for me an obvious look to the long side. I would not buy it here now, but dips should be buys here.

OLEUROPIN

This is an off topic subject, but more important than anything I have ever posted in this blog. If by chance you know anyone who is suffering from cancer, investigate this natural supplement. I am a nutrition and fitness nut, so taking products like this has been part of my daily life for a very long time. However, that is not the case for most people. I have not even had a cold in so long I cannot remember. My wife gets food poisoning, I eat the same thing and never miss a beat. Why am I mentioning this?

One of my dogs was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and "was" deteriorating so quickly that on two different occasions I had made appointments to say goodbye to him. He was limping so severely that it was becoming obvious to me that he was suffering too much. I had been on a mission to save him trying every single natural product I knew of or found, no effects. One day I went in to the office of the Nutritional company I buy my products from, ROEX in Irvine, California. I know the family well that owns this company, so I know the whole operation and the level of quality they have in making their products.

The receptionist happened to tell me that they had a client who had cured his dog of terminal cancer by giving him 4 ROEX products, all of which I have taken myself for years. They were not among the things I had tried, so I decided to take one last shot at this just to see if anything happened. A MIRACLE HAS HAPPENED. The very next day his walking was improved 50%, beyond incredible. Now about a month later he runs around like nothing is wrong, and the swelling that was in his joint where the cancer was growing is gone. I have no idea how to explain this when radiation and every other thing including maxing out pain medications had no effect at all. He has no signs whatsoever of the illness at this point. I do not know of a single case where this disease has been cured.

You can be sure that if this continues onward, I will make it my mission to get this story out so others can benefit. What has happened already is proof that this product is effective in treating cancer, with no side effects. It is a natural supplement. I have found during my studies that there have been some instances of cancer cells being completely eliminated by Oleuropin in 9 to 12 days, and I think that has happened here. There is simply no other explanation at all for this. Also, I discovered that a major Pharma company tested this against multiple forms of cancer 10 years ago, and it killed every one of them. However, since it is a natural substance it could not be patented. They tried to modify it so that it could be, and the variations were ineffective, so they WALKED AWAY FROM IT. No money no interest. They are interested in $$ not saving lives.

I don't make it a practice to give out advice on matters such as this, but I do think it is imperative to help others whenever I can. If for some reason anyone reading this can benefit from this, even if it is just one person, it was worth stating this.

OUT OF THE GATE EARLY

I have been talking about several things lately that are now coming to fruition.

First, I mentioned due to heavy commercial buying the EURO was going to rally, it has.

Second, I said last week I was looking to short the Dollar on a bounce but it might just freefall. It is freefalling today.

Third, I mentioned the Bond Market was due to decline and showed the huge commercial selling that was going on. This market is down big today.

Fourth, I showed a chart over the weekend projecting the next 5 days as up in stocks, and that is what I was looking for. We have roared out of the gate today upward.

Here we have the SP 500 and you can see we have a nice upward move developing. The 5 day forecast showed up coming into this week so this is no suprise. Nothing much left to say here except play the long side for now. Below is the Dollar Index which is crashing today. You can see the 3 point divergence at the high which often triggers large moves like what we are seeing. Now we have extended down a long ways in the indicator ahead of price, so this could be an exhaustion move.

Next we have Bonds. This move is just beginning it appears. There is something interesing developing here, a potential 2 consecutive inside bars pattern. These are good breakout patterns typically in either direction. Notice also here the 3 lower peaks in the oscillator, although the last one also has a lower price peak, so not the typical triple divergence by the textbook.

I expect these moves to continue for the rest of the week give or take a wiggle here or there.

LOOKING FORWARD

Today lets go over a few markets I am expecting to move next week

Above is a tool Genesis has that projects future price action based on matching price patterns at hand to prior occurences. This is far from a perfect forecast, and at times they are dead wrong. However, I have found that about 66% of the time these are accurate predictors of where prices will go. This shows that in the next 5 weeks the forecast is generally higher for stock prices. My short term indicators have also given buy signals this past week, so both are in line with one another. Something in my craw is telling me to question this, but I do not have anything objective yet that says otherwise. For the near term meaning next week I am expecting prices to move flat to upward.

If you look closer at the forecast above, it really shows a couple of weeks of flat to slightly down, then 3 bars up. Looking at the above chart we see that a cycle low is due in 2 weeks. We also see the Will Go Long term projecting an upmove starting in 3 weeks or so. If we put all this together, it says a tradeable low should either be here or show up in the next couple of weeks. The one contra signal is the Will Go short term above in black. However, as you can see the sell signals there have not been very good the last year or so with most of them being wrong. As a result, just ignore that.

In summary, I am looking for long side trades at the moment here. Once a bouce occurs that will shift, because the trend has changed to down in my view, and I want to sell rallies more aggressively than buy dips in down trends. Next up, BONDS.

Look at the heavy commercial selling going on here. It is the sharpest in quite some time, and it has now taken us down to the level of commercial shorts where a decent peak occured before. This is the typical flight to quality spot, so if stocks are going to stabilize, it would logically follow that this market would decline. I am looking for sell signals on daily charts due to this above situation. The ideal seasonal low here is Julyish, so maybe we will have a decline for a few weeks setting up a buy for a bigger up move. Since we are in an uptrend here pullbacks are buys.

The next market to show is a daily chart of Silver, where I am looking to get long this coming week.

Look at the recent bullish divergences at the low, now we have a higher short term low that has formed here, so a break out upward here should be bought in my opinion. I will put my money behind my mouth next week on this and we will see what happens.

Last but never least in water cooler conversations in corporate offices, the US DOLLAR.

Again, it would logically follow that we would have sells here, if I am looking to buy Silver. There are divergences galore here in everything I look at, so I am looking for a sell entry here. I probably need another up close, but will just have to wait and see what happens. It certainly would be correct to already be short here, so I may miss this if it just rolls over, hope not. The divergence in the trend oscillator is actually a triple divergence, so this move could be a big one.

That's it for today.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO TIP YOUR CAP

As I sat and watched the PPT's brilliant save before Thursdays opening, I could not help but just feel like sometimes you just have to give the opponent his proper due. They are incredibly good so I tip my cap to them. This market needed a save badly, they knew it, and they did it. I think most people are realizing now the spin on the recovery is just that, and the double dip scenario is happening. Of all the people who know the real numbers, the PPT is at the top of the list. It is why they do what they do. I guess arguing against it makes me a party pooper. I just don't like manipulation of prices, in either direction. I think we should have free markets, but we never will.

Speaking of manipulation, that communist Warren Buffet had some nice comments in front of Congress in his testimony. This is not an exact quote, but paraphrasing, he said he did not think individual investors should be allowed the trade SP 500 futures with small stops in a speculative fashion. I wish I had been there so I could have rushed the stage in a bull rush. He is the poster child for what is wrong with what is going on right now. We should be free to do whatever we want no matter how stupid the next person thinks it may or may not be. Who died and left him in charge? I can bet you this, there are plenty of people that probably thought alot of great ideas were bad when they were first pursued, that is how innovation happens. If everyone thought the same thing, nothing would ever change. Wanting to outlaw someone from doing whatever they want with their money is so outrageous it is incredible that more of an uproar was not created by those comments.

What these king liberals want to do is control your ability to become independent of them. It is easy for him to stop innovation, he already has his money. How exactly is someone who has 5 large to their name going to become successful if they are not allowed to pursue their dreams. If you are a liberal reader of this blog, wake up. Your trading will be severely effected by these jackoffs if you don't get them out of office ASAP. Repubs may not be the god send, but at least they believe in free markets as well as having affairs. None of these people are clean, but take the least of the evils. Dems do not want trading, and if you investigate you will see there are legislative things out there moving toward getting rid of trading. If you want to be a trader you better damn well get these people out of office.

Now that I have gotten that out there, time to get back to the markets. I have not done much trading this week. When I have a bad week like the prior one, I like to chill a bit. One of my main goals is to not let a bad run really hurt me. Bad streaks tend to extend from my experience, as do good ones. It is not really explainable other than through my account statements. I think it likely has to do with trading scared. When you are scared, you are too cautious. You need to be disciplined when trading, but not overly cautious. Most of the time, the setups I find to be just perfect, lose. I tend to nitpick entries alot after a bad streak which is a mistake. There are no guarantees in life. Once I hit a bad streak thoughts I don't like creep into my head. I wait until I feel more balanced before engaging again. This usually takes a week or so, sometimes less.

I have made a modification to one of the things I look for to make trades during this week, which will free me up to not be so darn picky. Unfortunately, a few trades I would have been in are gone and are on their way and I have missed them. One specifically is being long the SP 500. I should have gone long during the PPT move, when it traded through Wednesday's high, but one of my prior rules forbid that entry. I do not chase moves, I either get in at my price or a pass. We could have a big up move here. I am not going to get into the details of the change I made other than to state this. I used to require all time frames to match up, and now I do not.

One trade I am looking for here is a DOLLAR short position during the next week. I will post that trade when it develops. I expect most markets to rally during the next week other than the DOLLAR. I am not sure about the Metals they may be the exception.

STRANGE BREW

Here is the trade I mentioned the other day I had orders in for, the Swiss Franc. You can see this market is moving up nicely. I have to admit that I do not have a good overall read on the markets at the moment. There are not many things setup the way I require to trade. The Euro which in general trades in the same direction as this, appears to be setting up a short, so I have doubts as to how far this trade can go. I would have a stop under each days low for anyone who might be in this trade just in case we roll back over again.

Next, the SP 500. As you can see we have a mixed bag here. The one short term momentum oscillator shows a flat sideways trend, and the longer one shows up. I really like these to be in sync and they are not. When I see things like this I just don't force trades.

I do not have a good read on this as a result of this, but since the weekly trend by the way I measure it has turned down, I am looking for sell signals on bounces.

Gold is a market I have not covered much just because my setups have to been there for any trades yet. You can see on the chart below, there are some minor divergences developing but the trend is very strong up here. There is no reason to get too excited about shorting this until something more than this develops. I love to trade the metals due to the volatility in them, but there just have not been any really good setups in my world. As I stated before, I don't force trades. I know I can make a months worth of profits in a few days, so I wait ( not patiently ), for the right trades to present themselves.

Good luck trading today, sorry there is not more to talk about.

Blogger was a nice Goaltender today

I was blocked out today during my normal posting time by Blogger being down, so as a result I did not post anything this morning. This will serve as Monday and Tuesday's post. Above is a weekly chart of the SP 500 with alot of things on it that regular readers have seen before. First on the top chart you see price with cycles overlayed. These cycles also match up with the bottom pane which shows a low coming, but not for a bit. The second pane shows Larry Williams Will Go which predicts stock prices through the use of Bond and Stock yields. It is far from perfect, nothing is. However, it gives us a good idea of when fundamentally flows should go from one place to another. Today's value is not displayed, but the black line shows a nice curl down in it to about where the Red Line is. This tells us that via yields, stocks should decline here.

The middle panel which is my Commercials Hybrid is not showing any selling yet. Even though I have bashed the COT report recently, you can still see that in general, this Hybrid has been a reasonable predictor of price moves, especially with the trend. It is telling us this dip is a buy, but the other things are not lined up and we have also broken the weekly uptrend in one of the three indexes now, so I am not paying close attention to this at the moment.

My shorter term indicators had been indicating to try and buy this for a bounce until today. We have now gone down enough where things have turned down too much for a buy signal it appears. I think we are on very dicey ground right here. If we do not hold here, be prepared to tune out the Abby Joseph Cohens of the world, who today proclaimed everything is fine and not to worry. "The US is much stronger than the other countries." I guess the world is not flat in her world. She may be right, but my work tells me to be very careful right here. I would not short this here either, unless you are a day trader. We are now seeing end of the day selloffs, the trademark of a downtrend. This is in sharp contrast to the PPT end of day buy programs we have seen for so long.

Here is one market that appears to be setup to rally, and there are not many, Soybean Meal. We have a good weekly uptrend, not shown, and now the daily is appearing to be turning up. If we close down on Tuesday I will be looking to get long here Wednesday.

I do also think we are due for a dollar decline and Swiss and Euro rally. If for no other reason, than an oversold bounce. I have orders in for the Swiss tommorrow, so let's see what happens. It does not appear they will rally if stocks continue to decline but you never know.

THE MORNING AFTER

I have never been one to hide when things don't go right and I will not start now.

First I need to start with what I did right yesterday, a very short list comprised of one item. I was long the NAZ going into yesterdays NFP report. It was by far the strongest of the indexes and still is. When the bad report was released everything crashed pre us opening. However, once we opened here, the NAZ started to rally. At that point things were looking good, price was still above my entry point, a miracle. However, soon thereafter the rally started to stall. Originally my stop had been where indicated below the 3 day low. It was my judgement that from watching the across the board weakness, that the market was going to roll over, so I exited this at the market right at the same price I entered.

Always follow your rules, but know when not to follow them. This is an adage I always go by and rarely do I not follow them. However, I don't care how good of a captain I am, I am not going down with the ship no matter what the manual says. This was a good decision as we did go down to where my stop was originally sitting, so that order would have been hit had I just left it in there. As I have stated often in here, trading is a thinking persons business. You need to have discipline, but you also need to be nimble enough that you do not lose sight of the fact that you have to make decisions based on your experience. I have saved myself time and time again over the years by making judgement calls just like this.

Now lets look at where I made a bad decision.

I was short the Bond Market and things were looking very good until the report. I had my stop above the pivot high, a mistake. I should have had it just above the prior days high. We had 2 consecutive days closing below the prior days low in an uptrend. If we were going to break we should have just rolled over. I knew the report would be volatile, so I wanted the stop further away just so that I would not get whipsawed on a normal report. This was not a normal report. I was too greedy here and it cost me dearly. Learn from this as a reader of this blog. Do not be greedy it will eventually bite you.

There are a few other examples I could post, this was the worst trading week for me of the year, losing about 5%. It happens. The key is to try and contain the bad periods around this type of drawdown. If you can do that everything will be fine. Where does yesterdays selloff leave us in stocks?

For chart pattern folks, we do have a head and shoulders bottom possibly forming here right around the 200 Day Moving Average. If we get above Fridays high we are off and running by that logic. One thing that bothers me about a low being here, is the way the momenum oscillator has far out paced the price on the recent bounce. You can see the actual price got nowhere near where the prior peak was, yet the oscillator exceeded it by a wide margin. That is a short term bearish development. What could develop now though is a higher short term low on the right side of the chart.

We are at a critical juncture here in my view. If we do not hold here we could fall a long ways. This is the line in the sand. There are alot of cross currents going on now,  do not trade based on your view of the economy. There is not a direct correlation between stocks and the economy. Alot of markets look like the stock market right now, so chances are stocks will determine where alot of commodity markets go in the near term. I am still looking the get long the EURO and short the DX but those setups are on the verge of being gone. A little more dollar strength and those trades are off the table for now.

TRUE TEST

After the futures got wiped out by the Non Farm Report this morning, I guess we will see if this little rally off the lows is for real. If it is this selloff should attract some buying at some point today. If not maybe it will just roll back over again. I really have no idea, but I do have a plan of action. My stop is placed where indicated on the screen, and the plan is now to do nothing. It will be hit or it will not, pretty simple. If it is not and we hold here, there might be more upside to go here. If you step back and think about it, there should be no reason for a rally after a report like that, which was pretty negative. However, as we have seen time and time again, markets have a mind of their own, so you cannot always predict what they will do in reaction to reports.

Sometimes they swing big one way then reverse. Other times they just are a one way street. There is no way to know which will occur. All you can do is have a plan and follow it. The guesswork is just not for me any more. In my early days I constantly tried to do that, and was never able to build any consistency at all, so I do not even bother now.

The other part of my plan today was two fold. First, if we started rallying after a decline, I developed a list of stocks to buy. Second, I am going to look to short the DX if it breaks yesterdays low. The EURO long which is the inverse of that just has too big of a stop for my taste. This is a long shot, but again you just never know what will happen. If that were to happen in the DX after going up and making a new high for the year, it could signal a near term top. I cannot predict what will happen, but I can predict what I will do when certain things do happen.

Here is the DX chart displaying what could be a trap breakout if it were to reverse. It may just keep going in which case I will not short it. I do not enter at the market. I always enter on stops below current prices for shorts and above them for longs. This way I have short term momentum going in my direction upon entry. I would love to be good enough to just enter at the market, but I have yet to figure out a good way of doing that which provides consistent results.

The EURO just looks the opposite of this, having made a new low for the year today. This is also a trade for Monday if it does not trigger today. I love the quick reversals of breakouts. They do not always happen, but large moves occur when they do.

Time to sit back, watch, and execute the plan for better or worse.

DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU GOT TILL IT'S GONE

After trying to make do without my Snag it Screen Capture program for a week while traveling I realized I never knew how good I had it. All the free Online options or nested ways with my own trading programs just suck basically. It becomes way too much work to do what can be done so easily with this program. Below is a better look at the chart I tried to put up the other day showing where I was going long the NAZ.

You can see where my order I mentioned the other day was resting and where I am long from. The one concern with this trade is that the short term oscillators are racing way ahead of the price, which could mean this move is puttering out. It seems to project continuing to rise tommorrow when I try doing that with an up or down price bar, so maybe we have a bit more to go. I mentioned that the NAZ was the one that I felt was the strongest since it did not take out the Crash Day low when the others did, so that is why I went here to play.

I did also try to play the EURO long/Dollar short play last night and exited that trade for a small loss this morning when I saw I had made a mistake. Something about this trade is bugging me even though in my indicators it looks good. I cannot put my finger on it, but if we close down today and take out todays high tommorrow, I will go long again in the EURO. Tommorrow is the non-farm payrolls report, so we could see some movement in all these markets again come tommorrow. It seems as though Barry and his crew have rigged things to show a continuing improvement in the employment situation, so I do not expect an outlier number.

I mentioned that Crude Oil and the Energy complex was setting up for a BUY, here is a chart of how Crude currently looks.

We do appear to be basing here for a rally. Unleaded Gas is the strongest of the three here, so that is where I have been watching. This is the market most people follow, so I posted it. We get the electronic bars on holidays now, which mess up alot of the indicators for a few days. You can see the tiny bar the 4th bar back. These are annoying but still count as a trading session so they cannot be eliminated.

That is all for today

Last Day in Exile

Above is the NAZ 100 contract which I believe is setup to rally. This lousy Screen Capture program just will not display the text I want which would show a buy arrow above the high of 2 days ago. A friend made me aware of a way of capturing things through Genesis, but it requires so many different steps that I am just going to do it this way for this last day. Once I am home I can get back to using Snag It and be good to go.

The NAZ has held up much better than all the other indexes during this decline, so this is where I want to be buying if I get a long position going. At the same time, BONDS are setup as a short as well. The DX is still a short setup and the Grains and Energies are longs. Unfortunately, these are all very highly correlated once again, so you have to be careful about where you choose to trade and with what size. If we get a large stock market move in either direction, it will determine the outcome of most of those trades. Some will move with stocks, and the Bonds and DX the opposite.

Choose Wisely

CRASH AND BURN

Another overnight stock index crash resulted in a stop out in my Dollar short I was in. One thing that I just accept nowadays is that whenever I go on vacation or buy something expensive after a good trading run, my next trade will be a loss. This has been going on for years, so I just accept it. It must be some type of backwards punishment from somewhere. ( Hopefully not from above! )

This market along with many others are still setup for moves in the next couple of days. Of course if we just keep crashing in the stock market, many of these moves will not take place. However, I just hunt for my setups, and place the orders. I cannot control if they get filled or not, I can only control myself being ready to take action if they do. We have alot of correlated trades once again. It appears to me the Bond Market is setup for a decline, Stocks and currencies for a rally, the Dollar a decline. These are all basically the same trade unfortunately now, so size adjustments will have to be made in the event they all were to trigger.

We had for a period of time, a decoupling of all of these inter market relationships with stocks, and it now seems to be linking back up again. If you notice now all of these things seem to be moving together again, with the exception of the metals. Gold and Silver seem to be doing their own thing. Copper is also in on the game, looking very similar to a chart of the SP 500. What I am looking for here now is a down close today in most of these except the Dollar and Bonds( requires up close ). Then I will be looking to play breakouts of them in the opposite directions tommorrow.

One more short post tommorrow, then I will be back home and it will be business as usual.