I'll start the week with this nice cartoon:



Source: http://www.theburningplatform.com/2013/10/20/sunday-funnies-61/

Thank you. I'm kinda not feeling so well today, from a standpoint of feeling like I'm making much of a contribution, so that helps.

Originally posted by MarcinO

You won't discourage me from attending the forum that easily.

Actually, I reread that article, and I think he means the opposite of what I thought he meant. I think he means how did they let him on TV because he's the only one telling the truth about this issue. And, I know this is a trading forum, but this thing is so dead I can't stay awake, so why not ramble. I absolutely can't stand when all the stooges say 'we need to reform entitlements, that's the problem'. Even the top blogs I follow say this. To some extent, this is total BS. You can usually count on me to have a different viewpoint, and one that is mathematically well thought out.

Look, people pay their whole lives into social security. I've been paying for almost forty years now. Some for fifty, sixty. Now, the gov gets my money for fifty years, and all the while they devalue my dollar endlessly. Then some ne'er do well in math (who generally seems to be very good at math) adds up how much a person paid in, sees that they get more out, and says it's an 'entitlement' and 'welfare'. Okay, I give the gov let's say $100, which let's say buys 400 gallons of gasoline, and then fifty years later they give me back $500, which buys me 100 gallons of gasoline (or use any staple to 'adjust' for inflation), and I am getting back more than I put in? I am getting welfare? Are you truly that sub-moronic to not understand that? (Not you, my dear reader, I mean those supposedly math savvy bloggers.)

Listen, our gub-er-mint has so many departments I can't even begin to count them. Endless departments. Most are totally useless, bloated, and unnecessary. We have endless 'subsidies' (corporate welfare). We have inefficiencies that make any old communism country seem thrifty. $900 toilet seats and $500 hammers. It's a running joke. And yes, social security was designed as a safety net, not as a forced savings. So, it should be means tested. 'Rich' people should not collect. In that sense it becomes like a 'welfare' program. But the amount of social security you get depends on how much you paid in. How many 'welfare' programs are like that? None. You get what you get, and you may have never paid a dime into it.

And, if Greenie and Denniger think social security is 'welfare', why do we give it to the richest of the rich with no means testing? How many welfare programs do that? None. Point is, people paid into this their whole lives, at gunpoint (literally). They have no choice. Then they get back less than they paid in, and they call it an entitlement, 'welfare'. They say we need to cut entitlement spending. No talk about cutting all that massive bloat at all, all that theft. No-siree. Cut from the poorest and lower middle class, who couldn't save anything since '71 when they really started to destroy our savings with their no gold standard money printing. It's sick and twisted, and if there really was truth being told, the above would be presented. But even the 'truth tellers' are not telling the truth. People are so easy to fool.

Like that was hard to see coming...

Originally posted by jimkane

ES making a move here?

So, will this act as a bearish ABCD up in here? The LOD is a super-key area. This is going to be interesting.

ES sure 'seeing' that bearish ABCD area so far. But, watch this exact pullback spot here.

Woo-hoo, it looks pretty weak. But, it's just a chop range day, so why get excited.

So, is the ES making a real move now? I suspect it may be. A grind up into the European open. We'll see.

There goes the RTH HOD. Time for some nice acceleration into the European open. 'Too easy'.

Another easy trade, huh? It's sure seems easy when the market is trending strongly.

From my 2:31 PM post. Now, do the work for the LOD, it was a spectacular area. As close to a no-brainer as this methodology can provide. The post quoted here was to point out when I sensed it was going to come out of the range and start moving. Notice how they took it up and then slammed it down. So, they make it look obvious that it is going to head up, suck them in, then take them out before doing what it originally intended. Very evil, but very effective.

Originally posted by jimkane

ES making a move here?

Chart:




Chart created on QCharts, courtesy eSignal

And, for a follow up, let's be fair and look at Friday. The market's be on fire, another new all-time high. How many did they have, for the entirety of My Pivots? 2,000? 4,000? No, twenty. But four were mine, so sixteen, really. Now, perhaps the three from today (excluding my one member) were also in yesterday. I can only see the last time they were in, that could make nineteen, at the most.

Just think about this right now. The market hit another all-time high. The bull is raging, one of the longest and strongest ever. Public involvement should be at a maximum. I doubt many in here have been to BigCharts.com. It was a quickly program I used to look up a chart when all my charting programs were closed out for the day and I wanted to quick check something. Nowadays probably most would use StockCharts.com for that. Anyway, at the peak of the dotbomb bubble, it was sold... for $80 million! That's what generally happens when there is a bull and the public is stock mad.

I recall when every last person I knew was a 'trader' in '99. My plumber literally quit his job of decades and went 'full-time' trading. My dentist, he was going full-time. My friend's doctor, he closed his practice. My dad's friend was up like $200K in AOL, and he had just bought a house for like that much (back when, and in a place, where that bought a lot) my dad told him 'I think you should sell the AOL, pay the house off fully, and be really happy with that deal.' He laughed and said it was going way higher, and he was going to be a multimillionaire. That was the top. He basically lost it all.

I remember a good buddy's sister, I think she was an engineer, she quit to 'trade' full-time. She took her life savings, and everything she could borrow. She went 'all in' on CREE. She was doing well with it. Pull up a chart. Mine is adjusted for splits, so I'm not sure what the actual high was, but that doesn't matter, it won't change the percentage drops and so on. So, at the peak in early 2000 it was over 100. At the low a few years later it was 8 and change. I asked him somewhere around there how she was doing. She was 'holding on', and said 'It will come back, they always do.' Good thing she didn't choose eToys or WebVan. Anyway, now fourteen years later, with all this Fed pumping, it still isn't back, and do you have any idea how much the buying power of those dollars has dropped since then? My calculations, based on my own personal CPI, is about 66%, I think it was, in the last five years. Imagine over those fourteen. So, even if she is still holding, and sells at break even, she really took a total reaming.

The point? That's what public involvement usually looks like at a bull top. I'm not arguing this means this 'bull' has a lot more to go, what I'm saying is, this market is broken. That kind of action can't happen. No one has the available credit for it. The 'public' is margined on the same order now as the 2000 and 2007 tops. They have no home ATM piggy bank, no savings left, no credit cards to run way up trading. And less than zero interest. In this way, this is not really a 'bull' market (hence my constant use of quotes every time), it's a cyclical 'bull' in a secular bear cycle, created solely with stolen and funny munny, while 'Rome burns'.

And, again, the point? All this is confirmed when one realizes a tremendously well-known, famous, popular place like My Pivots, on a day when the market hits another all time high, and pops in GOOG over 120-something dollars in a day (or equal or even higher percentage moves in the likes of CMG, NFLX et al) are not uncommon, generates a total of perhaps nineteen members to visit for the entire day. So, no wonder I have four visitors a day. Thinking of it another way, I have like 20% or 25% of the level of traffic (in terms of members) as one of the biggest and best forums out there, a forum with over 122,000 posts, has! That's great!