Nothing much to say except take care of a few HOUSEKEEPING odds & ends. We could either go with the 1932 version:
Or the more modern version (I'm sure there's a lot of good stuff in there - alas, only a "fakie", but it's hard to tell the difference anymore)...
Anyway, the HOUSEKEEPING changes are as follows:
1. AMEN RA's DAILY CANDLE WRAP (starting next week) - will launch at 5:00PM EST instead of 5:30
2. I'm going to "attach" LB's BOND WRAP to the end of AMEN RA's thread so the two summaries will appear as one. (on those occasions, which happen once in awhile, that the BOND market is a "snoozer", we'll use the following as our anthem song).
3. On a daily basis, there will now be a 2nd thread that launches either around the "lunch hour" (about 1PM EST), or, when the comment thread approaches 200. I've asked I-Man if he wouldn't mind publishing some of his charts to go along with that, and he's going to be contemplating if he can arrange that on a daily basis. Otherwise, I'll go with a "PART DEUX" model.
4. ANDY T will continue to publish his "Scribd" charts (and notes) on Sunday afternoons. For those of you who tend to be away from your computers for the entire weekend, I'll mostly use Andy's charts as the lead TECHNICAL story line to the Monday Morning thread. His comments are 'standalone', CV will simple add other stories which may have transpired over the weekend.
There's no getting around me saying this right now, so I'm just going to say it and get it over with (then, hopefully never talk about it again)... The futures are pointing, um, "North"...Of course that idea helps some and hurts others (depending on how you're positioned, I suppose)...CV keeps waking up and try to find SOMETHING, ANYTHING, that would shock equity markets back to their senses, but we seem to be stuck in an endless cycle of "Lather, Rinse, Repeat" (and frankly, there ain't much RINSING going on - as the case may be).
Here we are on ANOTHER Friday. This weeks "rinsing" came at the hand of MOMO Mondays, followed by some lukewarm bill & bond auctions, all under the cloud of Greek bailouts, and central bank chairmen flapping their gums. Yet here we are poised to end the week with the 6th straight WEEKLY green candle (& the 8th out of the last 9)... Such a string of weeks (6 straight) has not been achieved since the first six weeks off the March '09 lows...What makes it difficult for BEARS (if there are any), is that for almost the entire year they've been conditioned to see "short covering" on Fridays in anticipation of "Melt-Up Monday"... I'm DEFINITELY not making the case that it will happen again here, but there are Pavlov's, & there are dogs...
If you happen to be the latter, chances are that one day you envision yourself having this conversation with your friends, but today may not be that day.
Creepy that Pavlov bears a striking resemblance to Bernanke!
If you've been reading the comment section of this blog the past week, you might recall various "psychological" and/or "technical" numbers being tossed out... DOW 11,000, SPX 1200; plus some more technically oriented numbers like the 1220 range on the S&P... Keep in mind that even the HIGHER numbers are only around 3% away from where we are right now... Markets can move 3% INTRADAY on euphoria... They can also sell off to the same degrees on panic...It seems the RomAmericans like their Gladiator Games to be more spectacular as time progresses, so it appears that TPTB seem content to drive us headlong into what will end up being an increasingly more spectacular crash...Have fun while it lasts!... And you know what I say? Don't even bother to stow your tray table in the upright position for landing... Live life on the edge!... Do you really think stowing your tray table is all that important as the "wizard" engineers his SOFT LANDING?
Or, if all this bothers you? Just go check out to see what Tiger is doing.
Look! Tiger is in contention! Let the cussing & club throwing begin!
There's no getting around me saying this right now, so I'm just going to say it and get it over with (then, hopefully never talk about it again)... The futures are pointing, um, "North"...
Of course that idea helps some and hurts others (depending on how you're positioned, I suppose)...
CV keeps waking up and try to find SOMETHING, ANYTHING, that would shock equity markets back to their senses, but we seem to be stuck in an endless cycle of "Lather, Rinse, Repeat" (and frankly, there ain't much RINSING going on - as the case may be).
Here we are on ANOTHER Friday. This weeks "rinsing" came at the hand of MOMO Mondays, followed by some lukewarm bill & bond auctions, all under the cloud of Greek bailouts, and central bank chairmen flapping their gums. Yet here we are poised to end the week with the 6th straight WEEKLY green candle (& the 8th out of the last 9)... Such a string of weeks (6 straight) has not been achieved since the first six weeks off the March '09 lows...
What makes it difficult for BEARS (if there are any), is that for almost the entire year they've been conditioned to see "short covering" on Fridays in anticipation of "Melt-Up Monday"... I'm DEFINITELY not making the case that it will happen again here, but there are Pavlov's, & there are dogs...
If you happen to be the latter, chances are that one day you envision yourself having this conversation with your friends, but today may not be that day.
Creepy that Pavlov bears a striking resemblance to Bernanke!
If you've been reading the comment section of this blog the past week, you might recall various "psychological" and/or "technical" numbers being tossed out... DOW 11,000, SPX 1200; plus some more technically oriented numbers like the 1220 range on the S&P... Keep in mind that even the HIGHER numbers are only around 3% away from where we are right now... Markets can move 3% INTRADAY on euphoria... They can also sell off to the same degrees on panic...
It seems the RomAmericans like their Gladiator Games to be more spectacular as time progresses, so it appears that TPTB seem content to drive us headlong into what will end up being an increasingly more spectacular crash...
Have fun while it lasts!... And you know what I say? Don't even bother to stow your tray table in the upright position for landing... Live life on the edge!... Do you really think stowing your tray table is all that important as the "wizard" engineers his SOFT LANDING?
Or, if all this bothers you? Just go check out to see what Tiger is doing.
Look! Tiger is in contention! Let the cussing & club throwing begin!
It seems, from my vantage point, that BLOGGER goes haywire after 200 comments are reached... I'm trying an experiment here to see if a NEW THREAD solves the problem...
Brother of ZEUS: "Brother...it is time for mortals to pay... my child wants to do your will"...
ZEUS: pauses, contemplates, turns and bellows in a raspy bass voice "RELEASE THE KRACKEN"!
OK, I'm sorry, but the EMBED function was disabled on the video, so you have to click to see it here... (take time to watch it as it will SET the rest of the storyline)...
Since 1981 (the ORIGINAL "Clash of the Titans"), this has always been one of CV's favorite lines... However, it must be used extremely judiciously... It can either be one of the most POWERFUL utterances imaginable (as it can literally release HELL ON EARTH), or, it can become a cocktail joke...
CV is trying, here, to use it (as Zeus would), to precipitate a market correction (Note: CV may have one or two KRACKENS in reserve - let's call it the "three strike" rule - last FAILED KRACKEN and you're out - you're "stripped" of your godly powers)...
But I'm feeling good, yesterday I won a cup of coffee at the carnival... So today, I'm RELEASING THE KRACKEN!... But let me PREFACE that... I'm writing this at 23:00 Wednesday evening... This thread will launch very early tomorrow AM... I'm not even checking futures before I make this call... But I think the morning may start out rather benign... I could even see a move to 1190 sometime in the AM... But if we can't make 1194 tomorrow (today)... I hereby RELEASE THE KRACKEN!
Lloyd & Jamie can only HOPE to release the KRACKEN as I do!
OK, whatever... Silliness aside... Here's what Lloyd & Jamie PROBABLY think of CV "releasing the KRACKEN"...
And LB... This version of "RELEASE THE KRACKEN" is 100% for you!
CV only desires that his "CLASH OF THE TITANS" epic doesn't get turned into "TITS OF THE CLASHONS"
About 90% of what I've been reading lately are articles and comments which try to underline, (or 'debunk') the notion that the market seems OVERBOUGHT at the moment. Half say equities are due for some kind of correction, the other half say we're 'in the clear' (as many of the REASONS for it to possibly go down - from technical barriers, to EW patterns, to OPEXpirations, to bond sales, to Greek defaults - don't seem to be having any effect on the ARMOR of the indices).
I've decided to look at the situation from a simpler view (note: there are SOME annotations on the charts, but a lot of my comments you can just read here).
VIX DAILY - Since the March '09 lows, when the DAILY VIX has pierced it's DAILY bollinger bands, it's tended to lead to 'minor' corrections (mostly UNDER 5%, and more often than not, smaller than that, generally in the 2-3% range). We've also been discussing the 16 level on the VIX (which served as the level in October '07, and in May '08), something to keep in mind as the VIX hit 16.23 yesterday.
VIX WEEKLY - More interesting to me is how the VIX has behaved when it has pierced the lower bollingers on a WEEKLY chart. This is indeed a rare occurrence. Most recently it did that in January '10. Usually this is a signal that a DEEPER correction is coming (in the 10% range). What's interesting most recently though, is that the lower bollingers have stretched all the way down to the "14" handle. So for this to occur, we'd either need some shock to the system to occur, or, as bulls may have it, we may just find ourselves at ZERO soon and the DOW would just continue to chug along to 36,000 about the rate of a half a percent per day.
SPX - I then decided to take a look at TIMESCALES (since the March '09 low). The boxes you see annotated are the number of days [trough to peak], in the rallies we've experienced. The first rally I counted from the EOQ '09 (instead of the actual low) because it actually did represent a "correction low. Note that all of the rallies have thus far been very close to the FIBONACCI number of 55. Interestingly, the duration of the all of the "corrections" from these boxes were EXACT fibonacci numbers (21, 8, & 13 respectively). I did take a little creative license in saying that the MIDDLE BOX actually finished in September of '09, then took a little dip and resumed. However, the eventual EXTENSION did finish with the same design.
The reason I point that out is that we may be in front of the same type of phenomenon here. We are 41 days into the most recent rally... 55 days, from here, seems like an "eternity" when one considers how technically overbought the markets may seem in this moment. Half the people are calling for us to "complete" a move to 1200, or the 1220's. The other half CAN'T BEAR to endure another 13 trading days of drudgery (if the case is to be made to make ANOTHER sequential 51-55 box as I've illustrated on the chart).
Anyway, you decide. But CV is always thinking of ways to keep his sanity. My ideas and 10 cents will get you a cup of coffee (assuming you don't spill the beans all over the floor).
& if you're thinking... "CV, you CANNOT get a "caramel macchiato" from Starbucks for 10 cents"... Oh contraire! Here's the "do it at home" version:
Directions
- To make a strong coffee, you can brew a ratio of 3 heaping tbsp of coffee to 6 cups water.
- Add vanillia to the coffee grinds before making the coffee, that way it will infuse while brewing.
- Once coffee is done brewing, place milk in a large cup and microwave until hot.
- In a tall glass combine the coffee, milk, and caramel syrup and stir well.
- Add sugar in small increments until desired sweetness is achieved, don't forget that the caramel will sweeten this beverage as well.
- Top with whipped cream and drizzle caramel.
If you need me to teach you how to make caramel syrup, that's the NEXT lesson
I don't really know where to start this morning... The markets? MEH... I'm about damn sick of them by now... Of course, that's what we'll mostly talk about today, but this is ROMEAMERICA dammit! And therefore we know that "work" and things like that are only to get us from holiday weekends, through to 'One Shining Moment'/Opening Day Mondays, and onto Masters Thursday. I suppose CV will have to be the entertainment in the intermission (note: this is the part of the "Gladiator Games" where they slaughter all the animals that were killed in the first act, cook it up and feed it to the Romans - In case you were wondering).
OK - Here's where we start (In our anthology of UN-SHINING MOMENTS)
So Obama tosses out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals game. This was the 2nd time he's thrown out a first pitch (1st at last years ALL STAR GAME - which he only attended because he thought he'd been voted into the lineup). First of all... Dude, you can't throw... If he were pitching a real game, the count on the batter would be 2 balls and no strikes right now. By next year, he'll have "walked" the guy (I wonder if the batter is named Jamie or Lloyd)... What's the deal with his toeing the rubber? Dude! You're not holding anyone on first base, just throw the effin' thing over the plate and get off the field... 2nd? This is a WASHINGTON NATIONALS home opener. What's the deal with the CHICAGO WHITE SOX hat? We know you're from 60606, but come on... Honor your host for God's sake! This isn't "Crips & Bloods" dude (I know the Nationals have "Blood" colors - but you don't have to silently acknowledge the CRIPS in the process)
CRIPS love "Sox" hats
You're doing it WRONG!
You're STILL doing it wrong!
Look, cut the crap and get down to basics. This is how you do it. You first honor your host (in what you wear), you walk out to the mound, waste no time, THROW A STRIKE down the middle... Obama said afterwards that he had been throwing so many strikes in practice and that on the moment ...the ball slipped out of his hand. WTF? No, seriously... WTFF?
Sort of like this...
Stop trying to please the people like this who voted you into office!
Or this guy (notice baseball hat @:09), who shares your TEAM affiliation...
And whatever you do, don't break out into song (like he did once).
If you keep going the way you are going, what was once a great thing (like the 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament), is going to end up as a crappy music video that you couldn't even "lip synch" properly...
CV is pining for "simpler" days (like this - which is "Hinkle Hall" - the site of the Indiana State Championship game in the movie "HOOSIERS" where tiny Hickory High knocks off powerhouse South Bend - "Hinkle Hall" is actually where BUTLER plays its home games on campus - Truth is stranger than fiction).
No you're not seeing double (nor did any comments get deleted)...
If you're just getting here after being away for the weekend, I decided, here, to REPLAY Andy's T's chart post from last evening as the MONDAY THREAD.
Andy, given time, will produce some weekly thoughts which will launch on Sundays at 5:30 PM... Since this was a holiday weekend, I wanted to make sure nobody would miss it (which I'd risk to do if I jumped on top of it with a new thread. (Note: there are a few comments in the 'Sunday' version of this - they have not been deleted - they're just on the other thread)...
--- From Andy T - (Sunday, April 4, 2010)
Good Evening Survivor Capitalists.
Attached here are some latest thoughts on the S&P 500. The bottom line for short term trading is that 1167 should now be considered key support. It looks like the market wants to take a quick ride to the low 1200s before terminating the wave up from the early February.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I missed putting out a report last weekend due to the fact I was out of town supporting my wife's business at the last frontier of capitalism: the Warrenton/Roundtop Antique Festival. I think of it as the last bastion of capitalism because of the unrestricted nature of the event. Anyone can set up a booth for 10 days for a relatively cheap price (i.e. $200-->$1,000 for a 200 sq.ft space). There are few restrictions on what you can sell, how you sell it, or your hours of operation. Basically, if one brings good inventory and presents it well, one can have some good success. Alternatively, in one brings crap products, the marketplace lets you know it very quickly and the vendors don't return. This market efficiently "separates the wheat from the chaff."
I love going to this show mostly for the people. It's pure "Americana," as it's a beautiful cross-section of this country: from the true "gypsy" dealer who lives in his truck to the high end dealer accustomed to serving only the rich and famous. Everyone is welcome here.
Last night, while watching the Final Four, I had the privilege of chatting with a few folks at the "Third Base" Bar (A "real" country bar that only takes cash, serves only beer and has the menu scrawled on the wall) in Warrenton, TX. One person was an African-American furniture mover from Atlanta, GA. He had been moving furniture all over the state of Texas for weeks and was sleeping in a tent. He had this to say: "Hey, you gotta go where the work is. I've got a mortgage to pay. My wife complains about me being away so much, but this is good work. I gotta be here. This is good money. The bills don't stop." Indeed....
The other person I chatted with was a lady named "Jackie," who had been working non-stop in a food both for several days. She was a local who was studying to be a Registered Nurse. Her plan was to get her license and open an "Assisted Living" home nearby, bankrolled only by her family and friends (No TBTF banks involved here).
Both of these people look exhausted, but satisfied in their own way. Each was doing what they had to do in order to "make it." Those kinds of conversations make me hopeful about this country, despite our many problems. This remains one of the few places where you can easily "go where the work is" and improve yourself if you have the determination and a little bit of help from friends and family.
Attached here are some latest thoughts on the S&P 500. The bottom line for short term trading is that 1167 should now be considered key support. It looks like the market wants to take a quick ride to the low 1200s before terminating the wave up from the early February.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I missed putting out a report last weekend due to the fact I was out of town supporting my wife's business at the last frontier of capitalism: the Warrenton/Roundtop Antique Festival. I think of it as the last bastion of capitalism because of the unrestricted nature of the event. Anyone can set up a booth for 10 days for a relatively cheap price (i.e. $200-->$1,000 for a 200 sq.ft space). There are few restrictions on what you can sell, how you sell it, or your hours of operation. Basically, if one brings good inventory and presents it well, one can have some good success. Alternatively, in one brings crap products, the marketplace lets you know it very quickly and the vendors don't return. This market efficiently "separates the wheat from the chaff."
I love going to this show mostly for the people. It's pure "Americana," as it's a beautiful cross-section of this country: from the true "gypsy" dealer who lives in his truck to the high end dealer accustomed to serving only the rich and famous. Everyone is welcome here.
Last night, while watching the Final Four, I had the privilege of chatting with a few folks at the "Third Base" Bar (A "real" country bar that only takes cash, serves only beer and has the menu scrawled on the wall) in Warrenton, TX. One person was an African-American furniture mover from Atlanta, GA. He had been moving furniture all over the state of Texas for weeks and was sleeping in a tent. He had this to say: "Hey, you gotta go where the work is. I've got a mortgage to pay. My wife complains about me being away so much, but this is good work. I gotta be here. This is good money. The bills don't stop." Indeed....
The other person I chatted with was a lady named "Jackie," who had been working non-stop in a food both for several days. She was a local who was studying to be a Registered Nurse. Her plan was to get her license and open an "Assisted Living" home nearby, bankrolled only by her family and friends (No TBTF banks involved here).
Both of these people look exhausted, but satisfied in their own way. Each was doing what they had to do in order to "make it." Those kinds of conversations make me hopeful about this country, despite our many problems. This remains one of the few places where you can easily "go where the work is" and improve yourself if you have the determination and a little bit of help from friends and family.
This blog should not be interpreted as investment advice of any kind.The authors are NOT representing themselves CTAs or CFAs or Investment/Trading Advisor of any kind.The authors may or may not trade in the markets discussed.The authors may hold positions opposite of what may by inferred by this blog.The information contained in this blog is taken from sources the authors believes to be reliable, but it is not guaranteed by the authors as to the accuracy or completeness thereof and is presented here for information purposes only. Commodity trading involves risk and is not for everyone.
Fictional Character Quote of the Day:
I guess it comes down to a simple choice. Get busy living or get busy dying.
- Andy Dufresne
"The Shawshank Redemption"
About this Blog
This Blog's primary focus is on trading based upon technical analysis. It is run by "AmenRa" and "AndyT," quasi-anonymous traders who employ technical analysis to assess market conditions and trading opportunities. AmenRa utilizes 3LB techniques, Moving Averages and Fibonacci sequences. AndyT's analysis relies primarily on "Wave Theory" and Fibonacci sequences. The Comments Section is uncensored and open to the public. Please try and adhere to the "Blogger Policy."
