I thought I might try something different here, and see how it goes. It's quite difficult for me to post a lot to the various topics, especially with charts, since the method I use for posting charts is very cumbersome. Some charts can take me a half hour or more to put together. Since the charts I use for posting are not my 'working' charts, this work is duplicative.

I have various ideas and thoughts here and there about different things, and if I have a 'central clearing area' where I can just put out a sentence or two, pointing to something without doing the work, the members can do what assessment and analysis they want with the ideas, and post charts if they want, preferably to the respective areas they have for that topic. This way it would leave this topic more 'clean'. If you have a question or comment on what I was pointing out you could post that in here.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this, or anything you think would be helpful/useful. Keep in mind I am not going to just tell you all my best setups in advance, especially if I plan to trade them, as that is not 'what I do' in here, or anywhere. I want to point out things that may need some work, and might go unnoticed otherwise, or are just of interest.

100% IB extension here as well

well, it certainly looks like they are ready to pop this

Well, Terry Laundry is bullish as all get out. He says we are about to pop up in a mania rally that will carry until August 2010. Not August this year, but 2010. He didn't say exactly how high, but from his chart it sure looks like new all-time highs. Imagine that, the S&P up 150%-200% in a year and a half. The Asian markets would be up perhaps 500% or more. But then here's the wild part.

He then says down to catastrophic new lows, maybe in that S&P 300 area, it's hard to tell from his charts because they are log scaled and only marked at 100 and 1,000. He predicts this somewhere between 2013-2016, give or take. The cycle may not end until 2020, though. I'm not sure who would be more surprised, me at new all-time highs next year and the Asian markets up over 500%, or the people in 2013-2016 when the S&P goes from say 1,700 or 1,800 to 300, losing say over 80% of its value. Is any of this possible???

I guess all that matters is that I have setups each day for intraday plays, and maybe some setups for 1-3 day plays, and forget the rest, as roofer says. Other than the market doing almost nothing and sitting there, no matter what scenario unfolds it just doesn't seem to matter for the trading, so I guess who cares. The point of these discussions never has been to predict the market or anything of that sort, only to consider longer-term aspects so retirement money can be best placed, and protection from things like a collapse in the USD can be considered. It's never been about short-term trading decisions, as it's essentially irrelevant to those.

I'm getting to the point, though, that I feel I have zero clue as to what may happen any more, and I'm ready to just give up trying to do anything with retirement money or to protect capital from devaluation or collapse. I just have zero idea what the odds are on any of this. I will say that if this goes to new all-time highs, if Asia goes up 500% off its lows, then I have to admit, unlike what I felt from 2007 until now, I essentially have zero clue as to what is going on with the markets. So, I'll just buy 1-3 day call positions (along with my usual intraday approach) over and over and over until it stops, if it ever even does stop. That's my plan.

quote:

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Originally posted by jimkane


I guess all that matters is that I have setups each day for intraday plays, and maybe some setups for 1-3 day plays, and forget the rest, as roofer says. Other than the market doing almost nothing and sitting there, no matter what scenario unfolds it just doesn't seem to matter for the trading, so I guess who cares.

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That's how I look at it and imo that's the beauty of intraday trading. Every day is a new day and who cares if it's up 30 or down 30. Not that I want to be glued to a screen every day. I actually dislike that, but I have found that I can only trade well if I am completely detached from the markets. I really don't care if the DOW is going to hit 20K or 2K anymore. Sure, I don't want people to get hurt either way. I just think we are so deep in fantasy land and they are so good at making it look real that there ain't much of a chance getting outta there. In the long run we're all dead, so who cares....

I do not know how we could ever get that high for a long time given what has gone on, and the fragile condition we are in as an economy and financial system, however because of blogs like this and the tools we all have as you say it doesnt matter as long as we are on the right side. I would have to say it would make houdini look like ntg f they manage to do that and manipulate the market up there I cannot see it but given what we have seen thus far who really knows.

48 years ago my mother sat me down and told me to always remember her number one rule of the markets.when the government floods the market with money, it NEVER goes into productive activity, it always goes into speculation.epic flood..epic speculation....looking for short sharp shake out to keep 'em guessing.....feb2007?

Great points, everyone.

I just heard one of the better things I've heard in a long while on talking head TV. The guy was talking about the massive global imbalances and issues we are facing, and he wasn't giving it the usual everything's great sugar coating. He said you can step off a 100 story building, and for 99 floors feel like you are flying. It's that last floor that gets you. I just felt that was exactly where we are now (not neccessarily having fallen the full 99 floors yet, but the overall analogy), despite the rhetoric we keep hearing. Kind of reminds me of that annoying guy in the movie 'Groundhog Day'. He says to Bill Murray 'Watch that last step, it's a doo-hoo-hooooozy!' Yep.

Anyone want to have some fun? If I had my DT on this comp I'd post a chart, since it is great at this kind of time thing. Take a look at the 'W2' in this bear, from say 1/22/08 to not the usual place where it appeared to end (say on 5/19/08 as a DB ABCD), but to where it started to plunge down, let's say 9/19/08. This was about 168 days by my 'date counter' on QCharts. This is a 'down and dirty' calculation. Now move ahead to 10/10/08, the end of that plunge, and arguably, the start of a big correction. The recent high in the market was on day 166, and the 'plunge' day we just had was day 168. Very interesting, eh, that we have just hit into key price areas, at key lines areas, and did it in just about exactly the same amount of time it 'went sideways' for the last correction. Just as other mid-June time factors are hitting, as I showed in the commentary last time. Just as Neely comes out and says we are going to have the biggest drop in a decade from right here, below S&P 500 this year. I did some work, and I have a key October time factor that comes in then for a low, and if it hit my line and deep projection and everything down there it's at S&P 300! Also notice the price at the end of the 166-168 days is just a bit above the price at the start, just like last time.

Now, I don't ever make any predictions, we may be at S&P 1,700 like Lazslo and Terry Laundry say, with lots more to go. Who knows. But if this big sell is to take place, we would need a monster shoe to drop, in my opinion. Downgrade of U.S. debt out of the blue, North Korea launches a nuke on someone, >>Iran actually has a revolution<<, a big terrorist attack, some major financial shock we don't see coming, and so on. Maybe none of it happens, but I'm girding my loins here, waiting, in case. Meanwhile, I listen on TV to them saying the signs of recovery are just growing every day now, and the recession is basically over at this point.

I recently heard a guy, and he was the first I heard that said what I thought was true, but I figured I must just be totally wrong. I don't see how they have 'deleveraged' at all yet. I think they are still fully levered up. That 876 trillion (okay, most estimates are in the 600-700 trillion range) of derivatives worldwide, those aren't gone. The banks are using the TARP money and other monies they have been given, with the ways to circumvent the rules (as discussed in that one link I posted) to keep playing the same games, in my opinion. The issues have not been addressed at all. Nothing has changed. Anyway, this guy was discussing a report he just put out saying all the above, and more. He basically said it was a joke. If that's right, and that was the first I heard that my suspicions may be correct, then a monster shoe could drop any time, and a major unwinding could take place. I don't think anything has changed. You can't unwind nearly a quadrillion dollars in worldwide derivatives and have the market still have a PE in the 'normal' range in my opinion. We'll see.

BTW, not that it holds a lot of weight or anything but "Neely was recently recognized in Timer Digest's May issue as the #1 stock market timer for the past 12 months."

I think the second chart is particularly telling. I agree with the conclusion, this market is nothing more than Euro-yen carry trade on, Euro-yen carry trade off. No balance, no participation, no depth, as I discussed in my last monthly commentary, just leverage/deleverage, risk on/risk off, and that's it. Skynet is totally sentient. How long, like in the movie, until the machines decide to vaporize the useless humans?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tale-two-decouplings