The claim is being made that JP Morgan’s $2 billion trading loss was in a trade that was a “a hedge.” It doesn’t take much…
Disappointing, but not shocking. The government’s report Friday that the economy created fewer jobs than expected in April—115,000—showed an unwelcome deceleration of America’s job-creating machine.…
Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that the short term structure is an absolute mess. The good news is: I think I’ve found the key to figuring it all out over the next few days.
“How?” I can hear you ask incredulously, …
There’s been lots of conomic data over the past couple of days. I covered the NAHB builder survey yesterday. Regardless of the fact that the…
Yesterday’s action removed some short term options from the table, but has still left the pattern open to interpretation. It appears that I had Friday’s decline labeled properly as an impulse wave, but that doesn’t tell us with certainty whether …
Most people seem to have a hard time understanding why the markets do what they do.
The only reason I don’t is that I’ve been trading professionally for 30 years.
Not that I “got it” when I started out. I didn’t. I had to learn. And I learned much of what I know the hard way. I made a lot of mistakes. I studied my mistakes, I still do, just as much as I study what moves markets and what I get right.
I’m always learning. That’s because everything changes. You have to always take in new data, mesh it with recent data, layer it over the past, and not ever think you know for sure what’s going to happen.
So, how do you do it? How do you understand what’s going on with different markets?
Here’s how I do it (and get it right a lot)…
It’s First and Foremost About the “Big Picture”
I synthesize all the big goings-on, all the headline market-moving news and data points, and I watch and “listen” to how the markets react.
Money moves markets, but psychology moves money.
Markets are living things. They have feelings; their reactions are a direct reflection of the psychological impact reflected in the buying and selling of traders (first) and investors (distantly second) to the goings-on that participants believe will affect the decision-making of other market participants.
Over the past week you have heard, read, and seen all kinds of noise about the government’s employment report. I even supplied some of that…
On Sunday, we played devil’s advocate a bit and tried to tear down the preferred count. We’ll continue watching the alternate possibility presented there, but we’re going to focus on the preferred count until the market suggests we shouldn’t.
Th…
Early last week, the structure of the waves suddenly looked quite bullish — however the market has, so far, failed to follow through, which is causing me to re-examine this outlook.
Normally, one can determine the next higher degree …
Durable goods orders rose 8.7% In February versus January on a nominal, not seasonally adjusted basis. The mainstream media reported only the 2.2% seasonally massaged…
