711 replies to this topic

[lawdog]

i suspect there is a lot of hedging going on, something i have never had an appreciation for. the market goes down, you don't lose money; the market goes up, you don't make money. brilliant. spx getting back near lod. not buying back yet.

[lawdog]

wish i could get a legitimate sell signal. it will come. can't wait to be short when the whole world says otherwise. but right now it seems there needs to be more pain inflicted on the bears before we can call for some kind of drop.

[lawdog]

I guess we're waiting for the Fed minutes. My guess is it will be a little more hawkish, could prompt a quick drop. Going to sell some of my remaining 40% longs to rebuy on the dip. I could totally get this wrong.

[lawdog]

down to 20% long at 2364.

[lawdog]

drop wasn't much. bot back to 40%; saved a few bucks on the out and in trade. that the market is hanging in there gives me a little more confidence for a couple more days of rally. Today so far is a nice consolidation which may be refreshing the market for an assault on 2380 to 2400 now.

[lawdog]

well that day worked out. I was quite worried about it but actually made a few dollars even though the spx was down. will post more later.

[lawdog]

if i were to pose the question, "why are stocks going up?", in the end there must be a technical reason. some would say 'more buyers than sellers," which isn't true because all trades have equal numbers buying and selling. maybe it has something to do with urgency, i.e, higher prices must be offered to coax out more shares to meet the demand. regardless of the reason, all we need is to look at a chart to see the end result. in most cases, the averages work higher in steps forward and bacward. if the stocks end higher, this means the steps up were larger than the steps down. putting elliott waves aside (and i'm sure i over-simplify by saying the primary direction has five waves and the reactive, counter wave has three waves)it doesn't matter to the trader the end result, i.e. whether the market is found to be higher or lower, as long as the trader is catching every wave up and every wave down. of course, no trader is that good. but here's my point: following the brexit decline and then rally, and up to the trump rally, the up and down waves cancelled each other out and the market went nowhere. but now we see that since the first of Nov., the market seems to advance, or at least decline very little during which times the indicators consolidate, reset, and then markets resume the advance. so i observe that as long as the market can hold its own and even advance during these consolidations, you may think the market is losing momentum and that the new highs are not confirmed, but what really is happening is, the markets are so strong, they continue upward, consolidating all the way. so perhaps we will be able to identify a turn when the consolidations are accompanied by lower prices. it really seems quite simple. so i am looking for that time when, based on recent action, the market should advance, because recently similar conditions led to an advance, but the market continues lower. this is why the best advances are in times when the market appears overbought, and the sharpest declines come when the market appears already oversold. the difficulty is in figuring out if the market will bounce again from oversold conditions, or if it will go from oversold to more oversold. and this is why we so often lose because we don't know how much it needs to be overbought or oversold to lead to a change in trend. so this is why it is not simple.

[lawdog]

back to 55% long. cost me .20/share from closing the position yesterday.

[lawdog]

sold back down to 40%. mkt was not supposed to do this today. will be on close watch for the next 2 hours.

[lawdog]

have concerns here. do not like weakness in naz and dow strength. adv/dec in naz is terrible; sold down to 20%