Tuesday, February 16, 2010
teddy bye and cheerio!
The other day, I was updating websites I manage and realized I've been posting and creating web content for 13 years! My active web participation started with with a 'personal site'-- bandwidth from my internet provider, earthlink at that time. If you are a web newbie and don't know much about the early days, this was a few years before
blogging software automated personal journaling. "Posting" was the most common way we communicated ideas, and posting popularity is still quite high, both at interest-based communities as well through blog site commenting. My primary interests at the time were publishing--
The Mystery Box being the fruit of those efforts, and of course, trading which consists of this blog as well as my
trading pages where I share all sorts of technical analysis based trading methods.
I began by swing trading NYSE stocks, my first stock trade was T and was a purely fundamentals based trade. I had a Mac at the time and discovered the lack of trading software compatible with Macs. I grit my teeth and bought my first PC since the early early days of a massive IBM/DOS machine. Now having PC-based software at hand, the evolution from fundamentals trading to technical trading was almost immediate.
I don't know if I ever mentioned that my interest in technical analysis came about through reading
How to Make Money in Stocks by William O'Neil. The link is to the fourth edition, which looks to have been enlarged and expanded from the more basic earlier editions. The
CANSLIM approach is simple, but like all trading methods, depends on the trader knowing his limits. Like all my endeavors, I dove in head first and whole-heartedly. I found my journals from that time and was astounded at the number of issues I was trading and the detailed notes I kept.
The first technical trade I shared with the world --at clearstation--was ODP. As The Bubble heated up, I was drawn to trading NASDAQ issues. It is odd to look back at my early approach. I analyzed the cash index (COMPX)to determine general market direction and selected issues from Investors Business daily for swing trading (3 day to 3 month type holds). I subscribed to the paper edition and kept all sorts of folders with trading articles, both technical and fundamental. IBD was wonderful at blending these two interests.
My swing trading days ended with the bursting of the bubble,
which I did indeed call at clearstation I used the FTEXX board as a sort of blog...Posts 2, 6, and 9 trace my move from fully long into fully cash. I was using moderate stops (7-8%) on my trades. I had nearly two dozen trades active and one by one, the stops were hit, I think six on one day. It didn't take a brainiac to see that something big was happening. My interest in stocks nearly completely vaporized and after a few months, I moved into futures.
I continuted to post at clearstation and in parallel, opened an account at stockcharts.com where I could plot Andrews pitchforks. I created daily pages with my trading ideas, downloading charts from stockcharts.com and inserting them onto my hand-coded-html pages at earthlink. I was very active on the clearstation boards then and had a rather large following. I was also voted the
best chartist at stockcharts.com for six months running. It was, looking back, a kind of facebook/twitter concept for traders. Both sites are still around, still successful, and many of the same people are still posting over there.
I grew to actually detest that COMPX index. I switched to NDX futures and continued to use technical analysis of the COMPX and NDX to place my trades. It worked but my disgust with the NDX grew to the point where I switched completely to SPX futures. On January 9, 2002, I logged my
first entry here at actio-et-reactio and shortly thereafter, I discovered
Ensign. Ensign charting is perhaps the only thing that might pull me back into trading, or at least technical analysis...that software is just the best. Using Ensign eventually lead to the
dacharts community. Then, one day a smooth-talking kiwi showed us
The Box and then came many happy years trading the INDU. This latter phase is condensed as my actio-et-reactio blog journalled my adventures with over 300 entries.
And this is the last "actio-et-reactio" post. I often think of my trading buddies-- sputnik, Alan, rabbit, and pk, as well as the many many correspondents I've had over the years. I don't reckon I'll ever again trade as actively as I did in the past. I view the analyses, calls, comments, and methods I've shared as a gift for that moment in time. Like a cake, it was lovely to look at, wonderful to eat, but once it's eaten, it's gone! I look forward to a new adventure and I hope it has even a half of the intensity, interest, depth, breadth, and appeal as trading had.
Oh, the reason it is the last post is that as of March 26th, Blogger will no longer support ftp blogging sites (like mine). I don't fancy doing a blogspot blog or having them host my blog, so I've decided to close out my 'market notes' blog, and most sad to say, my meanders blog. I've installed WordPress on my own site and hope to be posting thoughts to a new journal I call "Word Matters" in the near future.
It's been fun, especially all the very special and wonderful people I've met and called friends along the way!
teddy-bye and cheerio!
Ana Maria
(gads! all those words and nary a chart!!!! what to do? what to do? I may come back and annotate this...but I'll need to chart something first!)
later the same day...OK...here's an obscure chart analysis: VIX. VIX has to be one of my favorite obscure charting fascinations. It still intrigues. What is vexing about VIX is its relativity. The addage "VIX is High, Time to Buy, VIX is Low, Time to Go" works, but Low doesn't mean "lowest" or high "highest". It channels! I've written about this before, but there weren't tags back then. Anyway, here's a quickie from
stockcharts.com. My wager is some channeling (market chop) with perhaps a run at another high, which will fail. If you look at market indices, there is a MACD cross, but sub-zero, indicating a weak rally. That and RSI is now channeling under 50, indicating weak channeling at best.
Labels: chart-analysis, Journaling, sentiment
Friday, October 24, 2008
Boeing Company market geometry
Aside from the remarkable price action at the current bisect (which is also confluent with the "Alan Box 50% of prior 5 years), check out the resistance/support at horizontals drawn from prior 'strike call' date/price. (The orange lines)
Regarding the Alan box, price technically failed to hold that gray up-line. It is in an "outside flag" and perhaps the best prior instance is the similarly failed "outside flag" just above, after the 9/5 strike call. Talk about timing...the call came just at the time of the big market drop.
Labels: alan box, bisects-forks-medianlines, chart-analysis
Friday, October 10, 2008
VWAP, The Line
As much as I love lines-- bisects, parallels, and rabbit's cross-over trendlines-- what has to be my very most favorite line is the VWAP, which
sputnik has shared over the past few years. Take a look at his latest-- super work, sputnik!
See more of his work at
www.sputnik.to
and up close
Labels: Dow-INDU, VWAP
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Lemon Schiff'on Cake
I added a Schiff'ed green fork to the mix...makes for some interesting price action at the lines.
I've noticed that when price crosses, but fails to stay above, one of the parallels, there will be a nearly equal situation on the return to the opposite parallel (the little yellow boxes).
Labels: bisects-forks-medianlines, Dow-INDU
Greek myths, the market, and the bottom of the box
The Nikkei dropped over 7% today, hitting 2003 lows.
So odd to see transpiring in slow motion the mess that has for so long been talked about and predicted. Ever since my interest in the markets was ignited, the more rabid bears have given the "big" breakup coming a daily urgency, as if the moment we woke up the next day, we'd see the dead walking the earth, clothed in rags, eyes vacant, searching for food, now scarce. However, day by day, the day of reckoning was pushed out in the future. It would happen after this rally, after that bubble, after this this next new thing.
It feels as if at least some of that future is here...the mess behind credit markets, investment banks, mortgages...it's pretty ugly and aside from all the jokes about broken clocks, 'they' were right. The work now is to rein oneself in from swallowing the hook, line, and sinker in one go. How awful to be your own best reversal indicator and not know it!!
My cat Boris, bless his dear departed cat 'soul', was once mewing mournfully at me. I wondered what was wrong with him as he was fat and just as fiesty as ever. I leaned over to pet him, stroking his back and tail. Then, this horrible thing happened. As he just sat there, a sickening pool of yecky greeny stuff oozed from him! He had a hidden abcess!! The pressure from my hands was enough to burst it. I took him to the vets as, after I drained it, it was enormous...you could almost see to his bone! He never, until that moment, gave a sign that he had such a terrible problem. I should better say, I never saw the signs. They were subtle, even for such a talkative cat.
You can believe I became vigilant after that, regularly checking him for signs he'd been out fighting and getting into scrapes. What's worse with what is going on now, it doesn't seem to me that people will really learn from it. If the AIG execs can go to the spa, on the company,
after they got the bailout...these guys are totally clueless! They just don't get it. They are the zombies, walking glazed eyed through a world of their own, oblivious to anything outside of them.
Two mythical Greek women come to mind: Pandora, the first woman, created by Jupiter as a gift to man, from whom we get the idea of "Pandora's box"; and Cassandra, who, given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, was cursed by Apollo after she spurned him, The curse? No one would believe her prophecies, even after coming to pass. What are we to learn from these muses?
Troy would fall, tricked by a Trojan horse, even after Cassandra foretold the event and they had heard what would happen.
The curious coda to Pandora's story is that, once the box seemed empty, she looked in to find only one thing remaning, hope.
Hope remains once our curiosity has had its fill, or in the worst case, once even cynicism has run its course. From something we can't even see, touch, feel, smell, or taste, the world must be rebuilt.
Here is Alan's update to his Dow "Alan Box"
Labels: alan box, attitude, sentiment
Monday, October 06, 2008
the INDU loves 50% of anything
very cool bisect and fib action of the INDU, partic. the fibs at the 50% and 150% of the 1999-2002 lumpen accumumlation range. I'm not so sure it's an accumulation range, but the action resulting from it sure did take off...so someone was buying!
This is a good zone for a reaction, the proverbial dead cat. But I'm not calling a "bailout success reversal". ixnay! ixnay!
By the way, there's a sort of bisect expando-zone price is headed into...perhaps some sort of drifting up, than BLAM, smack down again?? Who knows...just what the chart looks like to me. I'm in cash and conservative. While not doomsaying, I'm also not feeling frisky and adventurously speculative about the market in here.
Labels: bisects-forks-medianlines, Dow-INDU, fibonacci
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
$VIX hasn't backed off...
$VIX hasn't backed off from that little box it is making (on a daily basis) in the 30s. Looks to me it is coiling for another attack of the prior spike high. VIX is a sentiment indicator and the spikes are interpreted as "fear" indications. As a reminder, I'm thinking a trifecta of VIX spikes, similar to the 2002 group in the chart lower down on the page. That's a weekly chart, so it takes five of these daily charts to make one of those.
I'm thinking 2-3 weeks between each spike. The scenario are rally bumps from "rush to calm fears" money injections-- last week by Paulson and friends, and today from Warren Buffet-- paired with "no one buys that line" reversal sell-off slides. These latter bumps would be preceded by a VIX spike.
chart from stockcharts.comLabels: chart-analysis, sentiment
Friday, September 19, 2008
and now, for something completely different...
I just discovered there is a 105-year cycle in Women's Fashion. Alas, I don't have the original research, just the note someone did study such a cycle. Speculating that we are near the return of this cycle, the way back machine took me to this quote:
Most women's dress in this era was highly influenced by the advancing feminist cause, which after 1903 escalated to widespread civil disobedience by "Suffragettes" (radical suffragists). Women modeled their behavior and appearance upon the Gibson Girl the popular image of the "New Woman". Men's clothing styles such as the suit, shirt, hard collar and tie were worn by women forcing themselves into professions formerly occupied by men. Health fads of the 1890's and 1900's also encouraged women's sporting activities, particularly bicycling, which, in turn promoted sport clothing as a fashion.
image from costumes.orgLabels: cycles, sentiment
the week and the bail out
Labels: alan box, Dow-INDU
short term
Labels: alan box, Dow-INDU
Perspective
The short term cure of government liquidity-- a lovely sounding term for what is largely bond holder money and a mix of taxpayer dollars-- has stemmed the short term situation. On the week the massive move down for the week looks to correct itself.
The total ban on short selling of 799 financial names is completely uncharted territory. I emphasize charted as even during the 1929 plunge this extreme measure was not enacted. The waters are muddied on this issue as, in fact, naked short selling among "financial professionals" has been a long term unenforced situation. Naked short selling has been illegal for a long time, yet preferential treatment allowed it to go on none the less. This issue is a fundamental one much I don't include in my thinking as it has never affected my own decisions. Clearly, the world is in need of the global financial industry, but is this "the cure"? The very people who brought us the whole mess are just now being rewarded for the events of the week. My knee jerk reaction is that the foxes are being fed roast chicken on a platter.
Back to the charts. Weekly and monthly charts are pictures from the moon for most traders, and even main street, whose perspective has been shaped by immediacy. There's a place for that, but not just yet. Here are two from sputnik, both the same, one just a close up of the other.
Labels: VWAP
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Dow stocks, relative performance
A quick and efficient chart view of these stock is provided by stockcharts.com in their
Dow Candleglance.
AIG's market cap plummeted over the last year, down 98%, and as the INDU (Dow) is a market cap weighted index, must be removed. It is being replaced with Kraft (KFT).
Here is a chart of their performance relative to the INDU, along with KFT.
Labels: alan box, Dow-INDU
the first VIX study, circa 2003 :)
I found it, buried on an old page with wierd links etc...I've learned a bit more about web navigation since then, thank goodness!
It's at the bottom of the page, but here is the chart, from the last days at stockcharts.com, along with the words I wrote at the time. The result was, in fact, a channel with a subsequent upside breakout. Will past be prologue?
This SPX/VIX study came about because VIX wasn't on its own consistent enough to follow the 'VIX is low, time to go; VIX is high, time to buy' thing. I noticed a few things:
(1)The ratio SPX price relative to VIX channels (lowest pane)
(2)Significant channel shifts happen when price is trending up or down
(3)SPX/VIX reversals are good swing indicators, regardless of channel position
(4)'Significant' tops & bottoms are accompanied by channel shifts.
(5)The direction of the 34d, 60d MA (Bollinger Band basis) needs to shift as well to make the SPX/VIX reversals significant
6/6/2003: SPX/VIX finally got out of the gutter channel and into the center turn lane. It hit the upper channel line & is reversing, perhaps a bit like Oct02 with the perhaps significant difference that the 34d MA is turning up and price tested and moved back up off the 60d MA.
I'd look for a strong move out of the center lane to confirm more up. Otherwise, it may repeat the Apr-Dec98 center channeling, which could bode well for a trading range.If this pull back drags it back in the gutter, well, bummer! just another bear rally.
Labels: chart-analysis, market-calls-dated, sentiment
Trader Vix
I could write a whole buncha words about VIX and the old adage, "VIX is high, time to buy, VIX is low, time to go". I did in fact write tons of words on this quite a few years ago, but couldn't find it with Live Search, so when I find it, I'll link it.
This is a very quick study showing VIX in the lower frame in comparison to the INDU. It is a weekly chart, which I believe is the most appropriate for a sentiment indicator like VIX. If you followed every little squiggly VIX low or high, you'd be a dairy maid, churning churning your account. The take-away are the thick orange and green line showing prior VIX/INDU high low clustering.
The first part of my fearless (ie, WAG) thesis here is that the old high (that big cluster of high VIX in 2002) is a very critical test. The current weekly close low has cracked that test, but there are two days left in the week.
I'm not at all suggesting this is an "investor" buy, although there may be a short reaction rally after three days that have set records not seen since 1998 in terms of net down.
The second part of my thesis is that VIX, like the INDU test of the old high, must test its personal high from that same period (see the shaded red box showing the gap). That likely means more downside and a hammering of that thick orange old-high test with a few more spikes, similar to the past hi-volatility period. The potential target low in this WAG is 8000-- based purely on geometric symmetry. I'd hedge that, however, with what I didn't put on that chart, which is a horizontal line under that lengthy trading range from 2004-2006, at about 9500.
I'll revisit this over the coming months.
Labels: chart-analysis, Dow-INDU, sentiment
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
and from our friend sputnik
from our friend sputnik at
www.sputnik.to
Labels: VWAP
Report from Down Under
Labels: alan box, Dow-INDU
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Sierra Charts "Alan Box" files
Thanks to Trevor, who alerted me to changed links at sierracharts.com. I've updated the
da Manual Sierra Charts Alan Box page with the corrected links, including a link to the ZIP file of dll codes directly on my site should sierracharts.com links change again.
Labels: alan box
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Sunspots, War Cycles, and 2012
In November 2006, I published an article on the
relationship of War Cycles to the Sunspot cycle, a theory proposed by Alexander Chizhevsky in the early 1900s. It's a fascinating idea you might enjoy reading about if it is a new concept to you.
I recently discovered that the 2012 doomsday scenario is as well known among gamers as it is among traders. The April 2007 sunspot chart predicts a local high in
2012.
Wierd, eh?
"They flung mud at me," he [Chizhevsky] later wrote, "I was nicknamed not only 'sun-worshipper'—which I took for granted but also 'obscurantist' "
Labels: cycles, seasonals, sentiment
Bonnie Hill's Trading Pages
Delta and
PVAC users long ago discovered the treasure trove over at Bonnie Hill's cycle pages.
If you haven't visited
Bonnie Hill's site, mozy on over there and check out the vast resources she's collected, and keeps updated! She has recently added Ensign pages as well as a collection of general charting packages.
Have fun!
Labels: cycles, ensign, templates
Friday, February 01, 2008
sputnik's VWAPing blog
My friend sputnik, who trades from Germany, is posting his VWAP adventures over at
sputnik.to. Visit his blog for a link to the details about VWAP. Don't ask me about what the acronym means or the "how"-- isn't that useful. What matters is its behavior on the price chart. In the time I traded alongside sputnik, I can't tell you how many times VWAP behaved as a magnet, or "electric wire". He has an ensign template pack for the obsessed among you.
Labels: ensign, market-buzz-gurus, trading-method, VWAP
Friday, December 14, 2007
Attention, Users of VolSum, EVRAA, and VolShift
I have coded a
number of unique volume indicators over the years and a kind user just today emailed me to tell me that as of the December 2007 release of Ensign Software, the templates for VolSum, EVRAA, and VolShift are no longer working as intended. Unfortunately, I cannot at this time update the templates, but will let you know when new properly functional templates are uploaded. My very sincere regrets!
Labels: ensign, indicators, templates, volume
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
LBR is Blogging
I've not been in the trading arena for a while now, but a bug bit me today and I wandered around in one of my favorite pursuits: things Richard Wyckoff. If you don't know who that is, it's understandable. He was active in the early 1900s, but his influence continues to resonate, especially his ideas of "smart money" and the idea that volume reveals their tracks, information which is tradable! However, this is not a digression on Wyckoff In the wonderful way of meanders, that search lead me to fresh, but related nugget.
Linda Bradford Raschke (a.k.a. LBR)has a blog, in fact, since July of this year.
Her trading website is full of tradable information and the blog is a pleasant, but related, diversion.
Labels: market-buzz-gurus, volume
