The Oh Really Factor

I am being a bit mischievous.
I am poking fun at a very bright trader, all with great respect for him as a person and his skills as a trader.
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Yesterday he said “No chance the 27.5 will hold.”
Oh really?
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Today he said, I hate to be trading without knowing VPOC or whatever.
Again, I say:  ”Oh really?”
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Gotta keep [...]

Mello Yellow

We play in a Risky Business.
Yet again evidence that white men can’t dance.
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Or can they?
Some guys were dancin’ up a storm today.
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One of our goals this morning was to git ‘er done early.
Oh yeah, and outta here.
FOMC has a tendency to be volatile, and we wanted the primary trade. We assumed MATD, and had first [...]

The rub of the green

Tomorrow being St Patrick’s Day, it’s probably a good time to float the idea of The rub of the green.
Golfers who have been around the game know that it has meaning.
We can hit a great shot near the green, and have something happen outside our control. The ball could hit a sprinkler head and take [...]

The Middle is the Middle

Wild day.
That’s all I can say.
This market is not for the faint of heart; nor anyone without seat belts or stop losses.
How many ways can it trick us? More than I can tell you, that’s for sure.
Selling highs, buying lows, that’s all I know. The odds are better there.
What’s high?
What’s low?
Everything is relative.
Keep it simple, [...]

The Soloist

This is a true story.
I looked at my notes, charts and spread sheets last night before going to bed, and I made out a plan.
I drew a horizontal line at 63.25 on one my charts, as a reminder of an important pivot today. I wrote down 45 as support, and 75 in bold, with +/-and [...]

Fomc Follies

The key to this business is exits and entries.
I call it strength and honor.
Strength and courage to take the trade, and the will to Honor your stops.
On FOMC days, conservative traders should stand aside until a reasonable “area” is found.
I noticed more than a few guru’s calling for shorts all the way up.
Amazing.
In an uptrend, “Resistance” [...]

Santa sighted !

As the man in the cowboy hat used to say, look for breakouts from a long narrow sideways channel.  Today’s behavior certainly qualified.
Today we saw the FOMC announcement trigger stops and the shorts who don’t understand breakouts got beat up the rest of the day.
Seriously, even if you liked the short side, what is wrong [...]

FOMC = Fake Out Most Charlies

Wrong way charlie got stung again on FOMC day.
Now don’t get me wrong, trading the markets is certainly not easy, and I sure as heck make lots of mistakes just like everyone else.
But there is probably a difference between myself and a lot of traders: I study and take this business seriously. It’s my edge, [...]

The Market Speaks…

In yesterday’s post we discussed the possibility of a ferocious rally, and we finally got it with a punctuation mark!
Shorting rallies this past year has been quite profitable, and we said it makes sense to continue shorting until it stops working.
Today it stopped working at the 2 o’clock pivot.
Shorts who developed bad habits lately and [...]

Lemonade

The lemmings were fresh squeezed today, making lemonade out of yesterday’s late day sell-off.
The end of day plunge serves four purposes:

The market seeks to find hidden support
Profit taking from the last move
The early longs yesterday get taken out
The stubborn shorts who cannot change their bias today get taken out

Successful traders view the markets as a tug of [...]