cowpip

So could we call that "semi-retirement" or are you just taking entries that meet a narrow criteria?

As always, there's room to improve the trading. Theres winners and losers. Just have to stay ahead of the game. Took a little over 220 pips yesterday on a well-behaved cable trade. Planted my stop a little too close and so I've missed the rest of this ride down. But profit is profit. Had a good Christmas. We've seen more snow this year than since I was a teenager AGES ago. Weird, but fun. I hope you're able to resolve your family issues. They can really throw things off kilter. What do you mean, you're usually done by Monday? You trade Sunday and you're done on Monday? Don't mean to pry, but those are pretty narrow hours.

I'm working the Asian and European currency sessions, so I'm up all night and in bed by 5 am... and wake up in time to catch the last two hours of the US session. Just a wee bit too early and way too late to contribute.

That's too bad. It's a pain in the neck to read those logs. Hey, did Wasp ever show up at your doorstep, Firewalker? I was half-expecting (well, actually not really expecting, but it would have been cool nonetheless) a visit this December while he was on holidays. But then, the worlds a might big place, and there are a ton more attractive things to see out there than my ugly face. I hope he's having a good holiday.

Here's an interesting factoid: http://www.ny.frb.org/aboutthefed/orgchart/geithner.html He was put in place at the New York Fed in 2003. From 2003 until now, he has been about as close to the bad-behavior that got us all in this current financial crisis mess as you could get. And yet they want HIM to fix it???? Would someone kindly tell me... WHY????

There are those who are hailing Geithner as a good choice (mostly the media, who can't be trusted to give an unbiased opinion). He is, unquestionably, a very smart cookie. But he has been born from so deep inside the bowels of the Fed that I simply can't trust that what he will do will be for the benefit of the people as much as it will be for the benefit of the Fed and the banks that control the Fed. He is not only currently the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but he is also the VICE CHAIRMAN of the Federal Open Market Committee (Bernanke is the Chairman) where they set interest rates for the nation. He's so deeply imbedded in the Fed's thinking that you couldn't extract him from their bowels even with an elephant-sized enema. If the Fed wants unrestricted access to the nations purse, Timothy is absolutely the best man for the job. I guess they've already had it with Paulson, so Timothy will just maintain the status quo.

There are those who are hailing Geithner as a good choice (mostly the media, who can't be trusted to give an unbiased opinion). He is, unquestionably, a very smart cookie. But he has been born from so deep inside the bowels of the Fed that I simply can't trust that what he will do will be for the benefit of the people as much as it will be for the benefit of the Fed and the banks that control the Fed. He is not only currently the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but he is also the VICE CHAIRMAN of the Federal Open Market Committee (Bernanke is the Chairman) where they set interest rates for the nation. He's so deeply imbedded in the Fed's thinking that you couldn't extract him from their bowels even with an elephant-sized enema. If the Fed wants unrestricted access to the nations purse, Timothy is absolutely the best man for the job. I guess they've already had it with Paulson, so Timothy will just maintain the status quo.

Gangbanked!! LOL! THAT's a good word for it! I'll have to remember that one. So true. Chains and shackles are already being placed on the witless public, and no one seems to mind. Lack of a good liber education will do that. Geithner has been raised by the Fed. I even heard someone from the Fed say (I can't remember who) that they have "taken him under their wing as a rising star." They've been raising him specifically for this purpose. Geithner will be in control of the Treasury (he will hold the wallet of the Nation now). Bernanke is trying to spend his way out of this hell hole that Greenspan and the Fed put us in. The Fed's balance sheet has exploded from somewhere around 800 billion before this crisis kicked in, to (as of yesterday) over 2 TRILLION. And we're still sinking. So what will Bernanke do? The answer is clear: INCREASE THE BALANCE SHEET SOME MORE. But to do that will require close coordination with the Treasury. They needed a point-man inside the Treasury so that cash can be unleashed to the Fed with impunity. What better man for the job than Timothy Geithner. I have no doubt he will do anything to help the Fed. Anything at all. Absolutely anything. And without scruples. If you thought Paulson was tricky and manipulative, you just wait and see. Geithner is the king-master of manipulation. He'll do exceedingly well as a Paulson look-a-like. So it looks like the Fed has essentially accomplished their goal: Create a crisis so severe that fixing it would require taking ownership of every major financial and mortgage institution and in the United States and the major manufacturing base as well. Since the Fed is a PRIVATE institution, independent of the government, they would obtain sufficient power to control the agenda of the nation and would even have leverage over the individuals in the country through their ownership in the mortgage markets, making the President of the United States nothing more than a puppet to the Fed President and their controlling board. Think about it. Who is paying for everyone's pay-checks now? Since the Fed entered the commercial-backed paper market, THE FED IS. They're now YOUR boss. Without them, corporate institutions would not be able to payout salaries because they couldn't obtain the short-term loans to do so. Has the problem eased? No. If the Fed left the market now, what would happen? You'd lose your job. So who controls whether you can pay your bills and eat tommorrow? The FED does! Unfortunately, we're all led to believe that they're "saving us." Well, they are - through ownership. Anyone who does not think the Fed has succeeded in a coup d'etat is really living in a dream world. They've accomplished it without an assassination, without military action, and without even announcing it. But they have accomplished it. The fact that Geithner has now been chosen for the position of the Treasury suggests to me that the Fed is now officially and 100% in control of EVERYTHING, and the role of the President is nothing more than a figure-head. A nice quiet (tall) island ruled by bartenders sounds pretty good to me right about now. Does emigration sound attractive to anyone yet? Good luck. Getting out of the country is now almost as difficult as getting into the country now. It's frightening how quickly a dream can turn into a nightmare... speaking of the American Dream, that is.

We aren't living in a democracy anymore. It's some sort of bastardized version of democracy - socialized democracy - something. It's sick, whatever it has become. And the media is just loving it. Of course, they're also muppets. And now we have Geithner named to be Treasury secretary. The devil himself. Couldn't Obama find someone in the population who has not been formed in the likeness of the Fed and Treasury? I swear, he must have been pulled from the same mud. The markets are responding positively to this, but my gut says he's just another cog in the socialistic wheel that the powers-that-be are secretly putting together. Man, I hate sounding conspiratorial, but this environment is so surreal that I just wish I'd wake up from this bad dream.

You can find it in numerous places, but here is where I specifically found it: http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUSTRE48P8UK20080926?sp=true ... about the third paragraph down.

It's turning into an ugly open for the stocks... but not just the stock markets. If you look at a lot of the currencies, and in particular the less-common currencies and emerging market currencies, you'll see a HUGE ramp up in volatility during the last 3 days. Incredible moves today in GJ. Too bad there wasn't any historic data to use. But one good thing about these moves is that it's showing us where the hourly S/R lines exist. That's good. It should make it more tradeable when it starts going back up.

Amen to that.

Dude... someone whose hoping for an 8-figure Christmas present SHOULD be on the Times rich list! I'm afraid I'll have to be happy with a lump of coal. Santa's not going to like me very much after I get through with Merv-the-perv. :security:

ROFL!... You torch it, and I'll kick the snot out him as he rolls out of the place. Anyone with a silly name like that deserves a riot.

That's for sure. It took me out, and ever since then, I haven't been able to re-enter - specifically because of my failure to SAR properly. I really do need to work on that.

That's one of the most frustrating aspects of Sod's law. Can you explain in a wee bit more detail what you mean by "Confirmation = Too late" in your annotation? Confirmation as in... you're expecting a pull-back to confirm the long, but that move failed entirely, so the need to short? And one last question... on those pull-backs that you have noted that are valid for shorts, you would typically not enter short until the open of the new hourly candle? If price happened to run all the way up to that resistance line about 20 minutes into the new hour, would you take the short then, or would you only take it at the open of the new hour? I've heard you say that you take trades within a minute or two of the open of a new candle - but I'm uncertain how rigid you are about that. It makes sense to me to take an entry anytime during the hour if it reaches a good buying level. But you're the master here... if you only take entries at the open, there must be a good reason. This much I do know - the momentum can switch on a dime at the open of a new hour. What was bullish momentum during one hour can quickly (and oddly) become bearish momentum during the next hour. From what I understand, I think this is what you're relying on. One hour may be a pull-back - and that entire hour will be nothing but a pull-back. The following hour will test the resolve of that pull-back. It's true from the large to the small time-frames. It's freaky odd, but it's true. I suspect this is why you typically only trade at the open?

Right. So you don't SAR when your stop-loss is hit. You are PATIENT (my arch-nemesis!!!) and wait until price pulls back on a future hourly candle where it touches the trend-line and is as close as reasonable to resistance. That makes so much bloody sense!!! I have such a thick head, sometimes. Much appreciate your help, Wasp. Very much.

Right! I'm hunting for new hourly data from other sources. If I find anything, you'll be the first to know. Until then, if we intend to play this, we'll have to stick to the daily frame, I guess, huh? Yuck. It could take weeks for something there to set up the way this is starting to trend.

The short-term S/R data is plotted on the chart. The horizontal red lines?

Alright, here's a question for you Wasp... it's a problem I regularly encounter, and I think it may be part of the reason why I am taking unnecessary losses at times. Let me know your thoughts, if you would? Look at the image below... it contains two screen-captures. The left-side is the 1-hour frame and the right side is the 30-min frame. If I were only looking at the 1-hour chart, I might have taken a long as the open of the hourly candle broke (or seemed to come very close) the trend-line down. But if you look at the 30-min (or lower time-frame) chart, it's clear that the trend line hasn't broken. So, in this case, do you take the 1-hour break, or do you zoom in to confirm that the TL has actually broken on the lower time-frames as well? I would imagine that you would confirm with the lower time-frames as well... but if true, is the 30-min low enough, or should the 15-min be consulted if necessary? The "how low can you go" question pops up into my head... EDIT: I should note that on the hourly chart, the open of the last candle represents the point at which I might have taken a long. The screen-capture shows the candle after it formed a bit following the open of the candle. But on the 30-min, I wouldn't have given that it never broke there. So a minor conflict...

Quick question for you Wasp... At the start of each new week, do you reset your trend-lines, or do you carry them forward from the previous week if there are obvious touches/bounces from them?

Ahhhh... gotcha...

Nicely done, Bobby! I missed the entire move up. I was whipped last night and couldn't stay up long enough to get an entry. When I woke up, it had already moved almost 600 pips, so I'll wait for the next bus. But that was a nice clean move. Frustrating I couldn't hitch a ride on that one!

What a bore today... Missed the ride back up last night. Had to sleep sometime. It's getting closer now to an entry, but so far, no luck. It'll be most interesting now to see how the U.S. system reacts to all the European news. They were the only ones not to spell out specifics at their G7 meeting. They may regret that now, if they don't back-step first. ADDED: There's news out now that the UK, Swiss and European central banks have set no upper limit to their U.S. dollar swap operations. Sigh... how thick are they, anyway? Throwing unlimited cash at the situation isn't going to improve interbank trust. But it WILL improve dependence upon the central banks - which could have the side-effect of degrading interbank trust further.

You sure you're only in year 11??? You've been hangin' out with Mark and the gang too much, haven't you? Tsk tsk.... they'll rot your brain with wealth faster than an apple in a hot sun. We've heard good things about you (through them). Keep it up, mate!