07/31/2012 Live Update

[Petsamo]

HUM is getting slammed today due to bad earnings.
XLV (health care ETF) is doing well relative to IWM.
Anyone like any health care stocks ?

BIIB from 60 but she looks toppish, I think it´s little bit late for defensives stocks they are too expensive for my taste - toppish

I have also ABC you can take a look maybe at this one

I don't like overbought stuff. If HUM makes new lows tomorrow, I'll nibble. Thanks.

Break

You're welcome AL_Dente.

[KeiZai]

one minute, break or 3xtop, but consolidation here is good for bulls cobra

[Al_Dente]

PAGING TRADERGIRL and other Mademoiselles
“Stocks Perform Better if Women Are on Company Boards”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-3 ... eturn.html


Thanks buyorsell

Inverted dollar is dotted green here

[L_T]

HUM is getting slammed today due to bad earnings.
XLV (health care ETF) is doing well relative to IWM.
Anyone like any health care stocks ?

AMGN broke out to a new high recently. GILD also doing well (from the chart only I don't know their business like an expert or anything).

[BullBear52x]

one minute, break or 3xtop, but consolidation here is good for bulls cobra

time to turn already

[Petsamo]

HUM is getting slammed today due to bad earnings.
XLV (health care ETF) is doing well relative to IWM.
Anyone like any health care stocks ?

AMGN broke out to a new high recently. GILD also doing well (from the chart only I don't know their business like an expert or anything).

Thanks

Break

CLF is doing well but I only bought 60 shares

[Al_Dente]

This is day two of my XIV signaling bear [XIV]
Sometimes she leads; sometimes not
Sure…….. you’re welcome…….

SHORT TERM ONLY

[KeiZai]

one minute, break or 3xtop, but consolidation here is good for bulls cobra

time to turn already

Man I hate these choppy days


probably backtesting the triangle

[Al_Dente]

one minute, break or 3xtop, but consolidation here is good for bulls cobra

time to turn already

bb don’t bug me right now, I’m busy checking my 2 million different VIX ratios

[TraderGirl]

PAGING TRADERGIRL and other Mademoiselles
“Stocks Perform Better if Women Are on Company Boards”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-3 ... eturn.html


Thanks buyorsell

Inverted dollar is dotted green here

731currency.png

Very Nice!! Women know how to save their pennies
Nice chart Al!! Inverted Dollar underperforming equities....

[BullBear52x]

one minute, break or 3xtop, but consolidation here is good for bulls cobra

time to turn already

Man I hate these choppy days


probably backtesting the triangle

SP1m.png

yeap short day today for me, I rather go have some good food somewhere rather then sit here. I am planing on going out of town this weekend sooooo boring.

[BullBear52x]

one minute, break or 3xtop, but consolidation here is good for bulls cobra

time to turn already

bb don’t bug me right now, I’m busy checking my 2 million different VIX ratios

there is activities on my TVIX chart also. see summation indexes, weakening especially Qs.

[KeiZai]

Okey so as I pointed out yesterday EUphoria is starting to fade, so if I am right we are very close to some kind of party in short-term

[buyorsell]

HUM is getting slammed today due to bad earnings.
XLV (health care ETF) is doing well relative to IWM.
Anyone like any health care stocks ?

AMGN broke out to a new high recently. GILD also doing well (from the chart only I don't know their business like an expert or anything).

My wife did all the research on biotech companies for me. I'm not expert, either.
While all the big pharm have their patents expire soon, biotech is the future.
I do hold IBB for a while now.

[Petsamo]

We have a bear attack

[taggard]

For newbies

one really key idea is to think about "what they have to do". They are everyone else in the market. and this idea that they "have to do something" is why a lot of ideas actually work or not. The simple way to understand this is if everyone is short or everyone is long--the situation will invert. the more the skew is one way or the other--the more a tiny move (i like the idea of some Japanese house wife moving the whole futures market because "i have to go shopping so i am selling my short position because only an idiot holds risky stuff when they cannot see it" so she sells and because of a huge skew it starts the unwind).

once you have that idea try moving it to a 5 min chart. if you are playing futures or leveraged stuff--you get killed on a very small move. so when you see a move down and that starts to flatten out and go sideways it takes very little to get a spike up. this is because "they have to cover their shorts". you can often find the exact bar where it got impossible to hold--and the next move started.

being able to read charts is great--but if you think of charts as 3d clues it's even better. tricks such as thinking about "what they have to do" and "emotion" and a tendency towards disorder--as opposed to a flawless patterned event will really improve your work. Keep in mind that everyone knows basic technical charting--so just using that alone will have flaws.

the classic problem is stops. everyone is told to use stops--and they place them at "logical areas" which means "areas where pros run stops". for example it's amusing how shorts often place stops right at old highs. often the market sells the first hit of the old high (esp major old highs) so the stop is positioned almost exactly wrong a vast part of the time. one way to improve your trading and slowly get a sense of "what those dudes are up to" is to look for logical stop points--and watch how things work.

you then want to transfer this idea to all chart work. and slowly look for a sense of emotion or feeling behind the charts. another example--take one of cobra's measured moves. if the actual move is over or under that--often that is more useful than a accurate measured move. so when a thing fails it tells you something about the market. you might think "not as strong" or "seriously strong". this should eventually have more influence on your thinking than typical chart patterns.

esp be careful of stats. statistics are not reality--they are a conceptual overlay on reality. Esp in modern western culture we are in love with stats (most of us actually have no education in them sadly so we are in love with the unknown). It's very tricky to discuss this as you can build stat models that sort of work--they fail badly in different situations which are frequent enough in human affairs. But at the very least try to treat them as "measured moves". And above all avoid the mechanical feel so typical of many technical traders.

the mechanical feel is inverse to the idea of "feeling behind the charts". the concept behind stat trading is that you can blow off any thinking feeling or whatever and just act. so any attempt to feel the action will put you in a situation where you second guess stats. likewise stats will cause you to second guess "the feeling behind the charts". conflict in trading will mess with your ability to act. bummer right?

well sort of--one model of thinking is to find a trade and then find an inverse trade--and let this balance produce a sort of meta trade. one paper i read sometime back (lost it) argued this was the only proven method of improving trades. my take was the balance forced by the exercise as opposed to the conflict was the issue--and that the balance could be obtained in other ways.

the main way is not assuming an outcome. in douglas's trading in the zone (i am not crazy about the book but if you have never cracked a psych trading book and have no experience in psych etc--this is a starting point) the idea is "anything can happen".

most of the time when putting on a trade beginners value confidence or commitment. this sort of thing makes you heavy on your feet and will tend to make you slow to admit a mistake. if you are getting 6 wins to 4 losses one good loss and you are wiped--hence the idea of being light on your feet once the trade starts. what pros look for often is that "the move has to happen unless it doesn't". on a 5 min chart you have a serious decline and a 4 bar range then a bar prints (and closes) over that range--boom there is an entry. you don't think "yo dude this sucker like has to work" you think--"yo them dudes gots to cover unless they don't". often they do.

with some effort you can start to read 5 min bars as they form the range and often know prior to the pivot bar the move "has to happen unless it doesn't" . at this point you are passed a rule based system--and are feeling things. it's very very very unlikely (this means it's not going to happen) that you acquire this ability for some time (as in 3-10 years). but the point here was to show the evolution of skill sets. you start by acting using rules--you modify these rules to incorporate "what they have to do". you then slowly soften your reliance on "the rules" and strengthen your reliance on "being the ball" (ty in caddyshack) or feeling out each price bar as it forms--not only understanding it's technical importance--but seeing the emotional tone behind the print of the bar.

all this takes time and practice--also it takes a mind that is not all over the place--one way to check that is to keep records of your trades both during and before and after by using annotated charts that you save and examine once a week and maybe once every 6 months. this will show patterns. the other is notes taken about your state before after and if time during the trade.

you will get some odd stuff out of this--i found that knowing what was going on did not help my trading--and actually being totally confused produced better runs of trades. (so i entered using rules/feelings but with no sense of outcome or measured moves)

as a buddy of mine says (herbie) "anything can happen--and most likely will".

good luck with your trades.

[Cobra]

volume surge, wait.

[KeiZai]

Looks like metals knows something that we already know

[buyorsell]

HUM is getting slammed today due to bad earnings.
XLV (health care ETF) is doing well relative to IWM.
Anyone like any health care stocks ?

AMGN broke out to a new high recently. GILD also doing well (from the chart only I don't know their business like an expert or anything).

My wife did all the research on biotech companies for me. I'm not expert, either.
While all the big pharm have their patents expire soon, biotech is the future.
I do hold IBB for a while now.

Sorry, my sell order of IBB triggered this morning.

[TraderGirl]

DUST bounced off support.....