Category: Trading

Fake-doom

~ Jo ~ 4 Comments

Meghan Markle has gone into labor. This makes me laugh, because it appeared on my trading feed. Just before the market started tip toeing towards the edge of the the gravel strewn cliff as some sort of portent. (NYSE opens in about 10 minutes) It’s been a choppy day so far. I’m above water, but its been a hard day grinding it out (as evidenced by the heavy metal on my headphones and the lack of any other open tabs). I’ve positioned my shorts in anticipation of opening bell about an hour ago. So nothing to do now but watch and see what happens. (might as well blog)

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I know everyone has their own theory on Donald Trump. Personally he reminds me of a less sane (and less capable) Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg.

Which if you’re not familiar with the name, is the bad guy from the Fifth element…

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…who wants to break stuff (in service of his dark master) because… well… in his opinion chaos is profitable. It’s actually the part of Donald Trumps personality I find the least the odious, the randomness I mean. Assuming this facet doesn’t destroy the world (its not necessarily a given that we all survive). I suppose this may need some back story, DT tweeted more trade war stuff with China… on Friday night (I think) which markets didn’t necessarily appreciate and since today (Monday) is the first real day they can demonstrate their agitation its been a relatively grim day for some. Especially EM (which I trade).

(About twenty minutes later)

Hmm. *Joey having closed the last of his positions* Well… that was totally less dramatic than Bloomberg led me to believe. Did the trading algorithms not get the memo? (vaguely he wonders what he should do now, having worked himself up into the frenzy of anticipation)

Its a boy! (again how is this news worthy… also, damn… did that baby just parachute out of her uterus, because that seemed especially expedient?)

This trading day has been the equivalent of a premature ejaculation. All build up and no mutually beneficial climax.

Sigh. I mean it happens to the best of us. We will attempt to be better tomorrow.

 

Trading rules

~ Jo ~ 6 Comments

I believe self imposed trading rule-sets and methodology are very much personality dependent and that there is no generic one size fits all.  Trying to emulate someone else is often just smashing a square peg into a round hole.

While I hate definitions, in this case it is likely important as it ‘frames’ the rule-set.

I started out as a scalp* trader on 1 and 5 minute charts in a very choppy bear market (which could likely be considered a form of masochism). I never ventured anywhere near the longer time frames, I had this puritan belief that scalping was the only path and having cut my teeth here I was loathed to stray from what I knew (that the violence of the shorter time frames can become a comfort zone is quite weird)  

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*literally it was the word ‘scalp’ that appealed to me. With an inflated sense of self, a (not always metaphorical) tomahawk in hand, this trading ideology was going to be my tactic come hell or high water. (of course this meant I got wrapped up my in my own dogma and ended up not being able to see the forest for the trees…) 

I consider myself more of a (well rounded) trader now, in so far as these sorts of wordy explanations matter. I now appreciate the longer time frames and my trades now vary from the infinitesimally short to (occasionally) several hours in duration. My workspace however is still very boring. (I think on the shorter time frames oscillators are a mostly a waste of time) I use Bollinger bands, a 20 period moving average and at the bottom of the screen I have the MACD (with the default (12, 26, 9) settings, RSI and volume.

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The Candle-stick Rorschach Test

~ Jo

Staring at Candle-stick graphs all day is the modern day equivalent of watching clouds and imagining dogs.

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One day (when I am big) I will endeavor to create a Candle-stick inspired Rorschach Test for Day traders that have burned their shadow into the wall behind their work station. The correct answer (insofar as Rorschach tests have correct answers) is of course gently swaying boobs.

Although maybe this just tells you I played a lot of 16 bit games when I was younger and that my brain automatically converts pixels into things I like.