I can’t wait to see the up.
Here at Capitalstool’s world renowned Academy for Scientific Study of Cyclical Recurrning Atypical Phenomena in Managed Financial Markets, better known as ASSCRAP-MF, we focus on the market’s intraday movements, using tools geared to measure the putative 2-3 day and 5 day market cycles.
One of the key precepts of our founder, Dr. Stepan N. Stool, is that if the market is in a down phase and doesn’t go down much, a long and strong up phase often follows. One of his aphorisms is “If this is the down phase, I can’t wait to see the up.”
I wrote this because I always wanted to use the word “aphorism” in a sentence. I don’t know what it means, but it sounds cool.
Anyway, the aphorism applies to this morning’s pre market action. A 5 day cycle projection of 3670 is still out there, but if 3675 holds, the likelihood is that when this cycle turns up today or tomorrow, new highs are likely. The 4 day uptrend was threatened, but so far this morning it hasn’t broken. An hourly bar above 3685, meanwhile, would break a two day downtrend, and signal the likelihood of yet another move up.
Oops, Houston, we may have a trend break as I write.
lick to engorge.
In my personal trading account I’m moving away from day trading, where I’ve proven unequivocally that I suck, by essentially breaking even despite devoting hundreds of hours devoted to it in the past couple of months. I have moved to something that moves along similarly to my chart picks in the Technical Trader reports which have been doing quite well. Confuse Us Say: When River Flow Uphill, Bear Must Float
Instead of running them weekly as I do for the reports, for my own account I run them every morning here in Europe and pick a couple to add to my list each day, culling those that are played out as I go.
I let 8 positions ride in that account last night. 6 were longs. 2 were shorts. 3 were entered in the last 3-4 days and the rest, including the 2 shorts, I added yesterday from a hotlist compiled from picks from the last 4 days. I culled several older picks.
At the end of the day 7 of the open picks were profitable. One has a loss. I took a couple of losses on trades that I entered horribly yesterday, but was up about 0.7% on the day, which I think isn’t bad considering how lousy a few of my entries were and that the market hardly moved.
The key is to apply the lessons of those bad entries. One is that using 2 minute bar charts warps my perspective on the swing trade term that I’m looking for. I do much better with 30 minute bars because I can see the bigger picture trends and cycles that are really where the profits are. After all, I’m selecting trades based on daily chart patterns, and 2 minute bars take too small a snapshot to see the big picture. And the shorter the time frame, the noisier the patterns.
Lesson Two is that I have a really bad habit of getting excited and chasing picks that I like from the daily chart screens, after they have already moved. I need to let them come back to me, or let them go.
You know, if you love someone, set them free. If they come back to you, you know that they really love you.
Or they’re just scammers who want your money.
