Pre-Chrismas Eve Pause in $ "Decoupling" 12-23-09 Euro Lessons

I'm starting to get "addicted" to reviewing every second of my recording sessions! lots and lots to learn when environment changes from bearish to bullish:

Bullish Momentum

Intraday High

Intraday Low

Euro trade 12-22-09

I've been recording my trading sessions lately, and it's starting to bare fruit pretty quickly, but boy is it exhausting to go over the same 5 hours of trading after trading 6.5 hours. No pain no gain, I guess.

The benefits so far from recording my own trading are:

1. Ability to see mistakes a lot better when not in real time.
2. Ability to go over and spot a lot of unnoticed elements such as time and sales patterns, other trend lines/fibs/etc that weren't drawn.
3. Ability to pinpoint the right mentality, focus and approach when making successful trades.

EURO vs SPY long set up 12-9-09

Notice cum. tick turned positive right at the spot where SPY retraced while euro futures didn't... and upside from then on.

Goldman major divergence vs SPY now and during the great meltdown of '08

MA trade 11-16-09

Range Day Time and Sales

Market Makers push prices till they see big stop orders, one after the another, then reverse direction. Gotta watch for stops on the bid after a down move and on the ask after an up move that lasts a few minutes.

FSLR trade 11-11-09

FSLR was negative on the day while NDX was positive (gapped up), and formed a descending wedge that was still forming while spy already broke out of its resistance diagonal, so I bought on a new HOD tick and it broke the wedge. Took profits at yesterdays low.

Dollar Long Term Technical Analysis

another 35 points of downside or -50% till the next big rally...

...and that's only my bullish scenario... ;-)

Bernanke printed away 20% of gains since March 11-9-09

The Goldman-AIG 85$ billion collusion - The Shark Tank Version

I read this very eye opening letter forwarded to Mish by the brilliant Janet Tavakoli of Representative Issa's Letter to William Dudley Requesting AIG Bailout Disclosure. AIG lost billions in CDS'. AIG was the counter party of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Société Générale and Deutsche Bank CDS'. Hence, any losses AIG takes Goldman does as well. So instead of going through fair and square free market negotiations over who takes what damage - the federal reserve under Geithner took over their settlement like a bunch of raping pillaging pirates and made AIG take 100% of their CDS losses. The catch? nobody took the losses but the American tax payers since it was all part of the big bad "bail out" plan.

Anybody else speculating on x30 x50 x100 x1000 x10,000 times leverage and losing it all would be considered a criminal and would be sentenced for 150 years of dwelling in a cell with a pedophile with NO BAIL. Wait... that sounds way too familiar.

Then I saw the season finale of Shark Tank, the very interesting venture capital (reality) show.

Besides the amazing last deal, which ended the season with a bang, there was a very micro economic concept that could be applied to the mega deals of the world on the back of the American Taxpayer, or the peasants, as Max Keiser would say:

They started to compete for a great potential start up business, when all of a sudden they realized - why compete with each other while costing themselves more while they can collude together to gain more on the expense of the developers of the start up. This isolated concept applies to Goldman-AIG scandal:

In less than 30 seconds of mega-schmega deal making, Goldman decides that AIG would take 0% losses to its counter party, and the American tax payer will be forced to take 100% of its CDS losses. All 85$ billion.

So Goldman gains 14$ billion, American tax payers lose 85$ billion - "DONE."

FSLR scalp 11-2-09

Speculating Fibs

I noticed lately a lot of stocks retrace their fib levels - 23.6, 38.2, 61.8, 78.6 - in ranges that with highs in an uptrend or lows in a downtrend that haven't been reached yet, or don't exist, hence speculative:

Here, for example, the SPY retraced at the 78.6, 38.2 and 23.6 levels without reaching the low of 102.69, so that level would be used as a potential buy/cover level on more downside

FSLR trade 10-16-09

soybean-sugar spread flying

Messing Around with the Max (options) Pain Tool

It'll be VERY interesting following stocks with this interesting simple tool. Gives very defined risks on accurate time frames. Check out their website here.

Afterhours Action 10-1-09

TED Spread spreading the bad news

C's HFT machines accelerating the decline 9-24-09

High Frequency Trading machines keeping it 1 way streets with no chance of any kind of mean reversion.

Wheat out of the woods 9-24-09

Back to swing trading

but on a very limited exposure using a "new" strategy targeting bullish intermediate term trending stocks that have pretty straight-lined declining highs that break that dip to the upside. It's simple, and all kinds of other filters can be applied like high short interest, shallow pullback angles, etc.

Here's my latest buys as of today:

and another stock that needs to pullback a lil bit more after the recent breakout of its declining diagonal resistance line before I pull the trigger:

All of these picks assume this annoying rally continues till SPX 1100ish

Dividends highest in real estate sector 9-18-09

SPY - Falling Wedge 9-18-09

This FALLING WEDGE with a supporting POC makes it seems obvious that there's more upside at least until 109, the top of the gap fill of Oct 16th big gap down.

but of course its easy to forget how overbought we are in the midst of a very sharp exhaustion period in a very stretched bear market rally...

Afterhours action 9-17-09

That's the most AH block order action i've seen in the last few weeks

BKE - short squeezer

Time to set up another bestfreecharts.com trend line alert!

A lil weekend financial counter-propaganda

I'm sick of these shills spraying Paulson's/Goldman's propaganda all over the media, so I had to do some photoshopping.

Discretionary/Staples Ratio Divergence

More Bearish Signs

Treasuries:MBS Index ratio update 8-25-09

Taking a lil pause from trading... something I should of done weeks ago.

Selling March 2010 125 GLD Puts

Continuing the theme of the Faber gold explosion, putting this into an actual trade with an actual time frame, selling some GLD puts shouldn't be a bad idea for a long term trade into the 2nd qtr of '2010...

Marc Faber: Gold Set to EXPLODE

Spooky Afterhours Block Trades after FOMC 8-12-09

Treasuries:MBS Index ratio update 8-10-09

NG spike 8-3-09

OMTR - long term bullish

I would consider trading this long on bullish trend days.

Early Morning Advancing-Declining Issues Volume Warnings

A great new signal for scalping some early morning moves :

No More Swing Trading until Further Notice

...only day trades from now on!

Not only are shorts being squeezed to death but brokers are charging enormous amount for hard to borrow stocks (TOS charges 17.5% APR to short UA for example - outrageous!) but also there is no more mean reversion for swing trading any positive beta stocks. Every down day looks like a downday untill it gets pumped close to or over the open to close positive. It's disgusting but it's reality.

The only mean reversion left is intraday with 3 minute tick diversions and/or keltner/Boillinger Bands breaches on choppy range days - that it.

Now i'm on a quest after negative beta, high ATR short squeezer stocks like these.

Volatility is plentiful and mean reversion opportunities can be found if one looks hard.

So no more overnight positions, no more disappointments. It basically comes down to looking for weakness in the strongest market leaders: Shanghai, Tech, Emerging Markets.

Granted, Shanghai has shown a great down day today, the real test is throughout the next few days and next week:

Sugar going against the trend

HFT manipulation

Here's Joe Saluzzi's great insight into how High Frequency Trading really works:

Treasuries:MBS Index ratio non-Confirmation 7-21-09

SPX and VIX convergence

All correlations are dead again? or just walking zombies? put buying frenzy while earlier shorts are being squeezed?