Hi PokerSam,
I think you are a good trader and as you hopefully remember I have stood in your corner at other boards when people where attacking you position. Don't take this as challenging your opinions but as looking for common ground and understanding.
I'm slightly disconcerted about this board starting to feel like a cult. There are two things that you do that I do not like at all: you often use HAHA in your posts in context that I really do not see any other point except expression of contempt of the other person i.e. there was no joke or humorous context. Second and more pedantic point is your use of the expressions "the proof of the pudding is in the tasting". The correct expression is "the proof of the pudding is in the eating".
Any way back to the stock market things:
First mistake many people make is not reading the small print i.e. judging whether is being said is still valid and whether it matches the time frame that they trade. When people make trading recommendations/changes of position, they really should indicate the time frame in mind: some hours, intraday, few days, weeks, months or years. (Not a critique of you per se.)
I was left with an impression that you expected us to hit 39.50+ sometime AFTER the August option expiry (you responded to someone that there was not enough time to hit that by the expiry a while ago). You have since modified the high of the correction a bit down which is no problem.
Personally I feel that we might make at least a local top at these levels if not even bigger one. My confidence in the near term developments is decreasing and I have actually scaled down my market exposure because of it. As I said before, I am collection September to December puts, but I have taken profits in some September puts after big declines where I hold further out puts.
I was long only for the very initial part of the correction up, since I have not trust in the fundamentals or the move as a whole: it all takes place with decreasing technicals. I don't want to be caught long on a 200 point INDU move down which will turn into 500 point move. It sounds huge but it actually is not by historical standards. The volatility has been increasing.
You have said that you are only guided by ewaves and Williams and something else that I forgot. I simply do not believe in ewaves for the one simple thing: it is fatalistic i.e. somehow the markets will follow the predetermined pattern no matter what the external influences are. Pretcher is making a big case that ewaves actually control social changes in the society and so on which is just rubbish.
"Ewaves map the emotional swings of real people. It is human emotion that drives the markets (primarily fear and greed) and those emotions are affected at times by fundamentals and at other times they are not. The tech bubble had nothing to do with fundamentals, right? It is much easier for me to follow the emotional swings of the markets because they follow a set pattern than it is to try to figure out how humans will react to a change in fundamentals."
This is simply something I do not believe for the same reason I do not believe in god. It's a statement that cannot be proven right or wrong, as it does not actually say very much.
Btw. do not unreal people have any influence on the markets? Sometimes I think that markets are actually mostly formed by the unreal people until the reality makes itself know as the unwelcomed houseguest.
We are in full agreement on two things:
1) People can be impatient
2) Extremes of greed and fear make the markets very interesting to trade and profitable; as for assuming that weaves actually tell you when the switch takes place from one to another I do not really see evidence for that.
"You say we must finish this correction in the next two weeks because we are gong down. So, contrary to your statement that you DON'T, I guess you DO claim to know how things will unwind."
No, I don't think that we have to finish the correction up in any given time frame, but I see three things:
1) most technical indicator are indicating no trend or slightly overbought
2) the candle formations look to me slightly more like a top than continuation of the correction up. Either way, it looks like we are about to see a large move one way or another.
3) this past week we had quite dramatic reversal down. I consider Friday's action very, very bad for the long case.
I am looking for reasons not to trust what I see and stop from throwing myself 100% short yet. I am trying to understand the logic/reasons that could make us to extend the correction a lot further (and for not being vague, I'd consider >2% above the recent highs a lot).
The only scenario for a good rally I can see is for the feds to raise rates, sell off and rebound on the expectation that it was the end of the tightening period. But what levels would that start from?
AI
