cowpip

As you should be! Nicely done. As for that drop to 168... look closely and you'll see that it only appeared on the Oanda platform. Alpari didn't show it. They were playing some sort of very nasty game - dropping it 100 pips and then bringing it right back up. Glad I wasn't in on that. I haven't seen Oanda do that in well over a year. That's strike two against them now -- and all in one day.

Still waiting for a setup here... Zzzzz....

I'm holding fire until the end of this hourly candle. Entries for me will only be on the hour, every hour and at no other time. I've decided I have to be absolutely rigid about that.

I'm going to hold off and see if I can't snag an entry a little closer to that daily support line. Seems to me price should be able to muster a pull-back to that level before a more concerted effort higher occurs.

They're typically pretty good - but they do go up over the weekend and for the first 6 hours or so of trading on Sunday. Then the spreads shrink back down to around 6 pips, which I can tolerate. But they haven't pumped the spreads up to 30 like this since... hmm... every major crisis period we've had since that first August 2007. If they keep it elevated too long now, I'll have to re-evaluate who I do business with.

Look out for that big-bad daily trend, Wasp... Price might not slice through that zone like a hot knife through butter. But it would be nice if it would... add a little weight to the move.

It does... but what really gets my goat is this ridiculous 30 pip spread on GJ!!! That's double what it was last week. It's insane. If the bailout works, the yen will get squeezed hard, I imagine. But there's an awful lot of confusion right now. No one even seems to know if the stock markets are open in the US on Monday, given that it's Columbus day. Why wouldn't they know??? It's no different than it was last year, and the year before, is it? Anyway, I suppose you've already gone long on GJ, haven't you Wasp?

On a fundamental vein... I don't know why I never thought of this before, but is it really possible that the central banks around the world have made matters far worse by being so free with their money? Big Ben and his helicopter are dumping everything they have on the problem. Practically any bank that wants to borrow from them can. AND THAT IS THE CRUX OF A MAJOR PROBLEM. Why on Earth would any bank want to lend to any other bank if they can get what they need from the central bank? Why would they risk lending to another bank that may or may not be solvent if they can get their money just about as easily from a central bank??? THAT is why Libor is increasing so much. And that is also why banks will continue to be unwilling to lend to other banks. Throwing tax payer money at the problem won't help. Recapitalizing banks with taxpayer money probably would help, but it won't help fix the interbank trust issue - not until banks are so fully capitalized that they can see there will be no solvency issues. That could take a long time. So that brings up another issue. How on Earth is the Fed going to be able to wean themselves away from the banks, now that they've got breasts the size of Manhatten? The situation we're in now can't possibly get better anytime soon. At least, I can't imagine how it could. For more about this - a really good read... try this: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/10/are-central-banks-making-libor-worse.html

Anyone can be Buffet. You just have to pickle your body with cherry coke and burgers. That guy should never die. Or maybe he will, and we won't be able to tell? Nice analysis. Yeah, I too hope that price doesn't go much lower from here. It'll be a royal pain.

Not a half-bad analysis there, Bobby. Good job. I don't know if anyone recalls the post I made a week ago or so (was it only a week ago???). I'll repost the image here to emphasize another technical reason why price action has resisted further moves lower. I had no idea that the move down on the monthly chart would happen 5 days after I posted. Wow. What a week. There are basically two scenarios, depending on how you like to measure fibs. The first, which I used last week, would place the target where profit-taking would commence in earnest at current levels (we've now bounced off of that target level). But the second scenario, and the one which I am more inclined to favor, suggests that price action will actually drop down to the target level I note in the second image (the "Corrected Target Level") area. That, to me, seems like a better area, and fits more conveniently with retraces back up to the various 23%, 38% fib levels. Thus, I believe (from a purely technical perspective) that we will punch down to that lower target level either this month or next month. Worse yet, if you're an Elliot enthusiast is the thought that this is only the second wave down. We're due for one more wave lower on this pair sometime perhaps next year. That's gonna hurt, but somehow, it seems to fit with how bad the UK housing situation is and how badly it may hurt the economy. Looks like the yen may end up shining through on this pair. Of course, I don't play the monthly frame. But it's fun to look at. I should also note that as far as my trading goes, I hold about zero percent weight on this analysis. It's fun to predict, but has no bearing on how I trade. I'll follow the ups and downs no matter where it goes. This analysis could be completely wrong. I don't care, since I won't trade it. BUT, it is important to understand your playing field from the long time frames all the way down. And on the long frames, the trend is down.

Alright Wasp... here's how I saw the same page you and I played. It's not as neat as yours... haven't figured out how to annotate very well in Metatrader yet. Total pippage wasn't the "perfect" picture because this is a realistic look at how I would have/should have played it if I had stayed with the 1-hour time frame and played it accordingly. I'm really upset I got side-tracked on the 5-min strat. Bugger! I should have known better. I have a multi-3-digit loss this week. You did exceptionally well compared to me. Next week, I'm going to nail this sucker to the wall!!!!!

Wasp, you should have daily data back to 1978 on Alpari. I do.

Uh-oh... I'm in trouble now... Alpari won't show me any 4-hour candles back far enough now to plot S/R lines lower than the one I have at 169.88. Hmmm... anyone have suggestions on getting older 4-hour data from somewhere? Metatrader only goes back to 6 sep 2001, on my platform.

You got that right!

Dude, I can empathize completely. We all have those kinds of days and weeks. They suck big-time. But hey - you can look on the bright-side and be thankful you don't (I hope) own stocks of GM, which dropped 30% today alone. I heard that if you inherited shares of GM from your father (which he bought in the 50's), right now they would be worth the same as when your father bought them. Yikes!

Sorry to hear that Wasp. You wouldn't have been proud of my performance overnight. I can't do that anymore. I totally crapped all over my wallet with that stunt. Wasn't thinking clearly and was just shootin into the breeze. Anyway, I'm recovering now.

Here's the same chart, annotated (forgot to do that).

Wow... what a day! When I have my head screwed on right, this 5-min strat is very VERY slick with this volatility! It's a pain you have to constantly be monitoring it, but it's sure raking in some nice pippage!

It's still working, guys... Very nice... very clean signals... EDIT: Now, if they could just reign in the bloody 15 pip spread, that would be sweet. Bloody robbers.

Lol... the brain can be an awful thing. That's my concern as well. But so far, it seems to be handling the new conditions ok.

It seems to work fairly well (for now). I started using the 5-min TL's and took most of the 150 up and about half of the move down (I screwed up and gave back half of the way down). But still... that ain't bad for a few hours of work.

Welcome! Some new blood! Slurp.... (kidding ). It's good to have a new opinion here. For the most part, I would agree with your assessment. Everyone has a different risk tolerance. I haven't been able to sit through an entire day without mucking with something, so I'm imprisoned to the intraday crowd. My risk tolerance requires smaller stops than what would be required on the daily frames, but there are definite advantages to the daily frames. No question there. Interesting analysis.

I too am getting soundly toasted in this environment. Wasp, I've been watching very closely the 5-min candles in accordance with your TL strat, and I think it's becoming more successful in these big wide moves than the 1-hour time-frame. Yes, I know - it's too short-term. But take a look at it. It's been remarkably good over the last 24 to 48 hours. It feels like the market has "sped up" in time. Moves we normally wouldn't see (per candle) on the hourly we're now seeing on the 5 to 15-min chart. It may make some sense that the strat's validity has increased on the smaller time-frames. Still... this is ugly and really is worth staying out of.

LOL... the perfect world!

I have noticed that the swings on the 5-minute are big enough to utilize Wasp's TL strat with modest success. But I won't do that - it encourages overtrading, which has hurt me more times than I can count. I'll just hang tight and wait for something more akin to "normal" (although I am currently short on GJ... but perhaps not for long).