Platypus journal

Could not trade today because of personal stuff to do. I did have a signal from my system but it would end up in a break even or small loss so not a big deal.

I was reading what I wrote on my personal trading journals last week and I see that I desregarded a long signal because of my bias. Well it turned out that the signal would give me around 250 pips so far. Unreal how I still make this kind of mistakes

Well, well, well anyways if I make a mistake i definitely prefer it to be a no trade than a wrong one.

Ok lets see what the market will bring next.

Ok I guess we all agree that equities and E/U are facing tough resistance. Dow S&P and the DAX are up there close to the point of non return.

I believe the market got bullish because of the media effort and the "fake" earnings posted by the major banks. This is a game played by the banks producing fairy tales, the media marketing it and the traders faking to believe in everything. I don't believe not even for one minute that all problems are gone and the future will be rose from now one but...........being right to early is being WRONG !!!!

The beauty of this whole thing is that one can sit back relax and just watch where the big boys are leading the market. We retail traders can't do much to move the markets but even the ones that have power to do it can face obstacles that sometimes are impossible to overcome.

I'm very curious to see where and for what reasons this whole bulish BS will find its end. Well till there lets enjoy the trend.

People usually complain about market manipulation, inside trading, unfair trading etc. I would say that thits kind of thing is normal and people bending rules to their own advantage is something that exist since the markets started.

A lot of people also try to fool ( others and themselfs ) saying that the Forex market because of the amount of money traded , descentralisation, etc is a market more pure and less prone to be manipulated. Well I desagree.

For example I'm watching E/U 15 min chart. As soon as the 4:00 GMT bar closed on my broker I started to realise that something was going on.

Ok..the bar was a more than perfect bulish pin bar, short term support for hours the area was respected, so the big boys saw the long orders building up They left the next bar go a little up to gather more longs and BAMMMMMM !!!!
Slamed a big sell orders and catched all the stops.

If they trade with bigger capital, have acces to market deeps etc etc thats not unfair....thats just the name of the game and if we decide to play it we have to accept the fact.

That's the law of the jungle folks and your strategy should be design to survive it.

Smart money is aside waiting the FED to speak to make a move.

"Idiot" money is out there trying to make a buck or two.

Hedge funds, small banks etc are there getting SL for a buck or two

Usually Bernanke shows up to tank the dollar, lets see if he comes with a different tune today.

thanks p...

trading with a bias is very dangerous...

sometimes we need to hold a small position to hedge our own bias.
I'd try to be objective.

Yeah thats correct. But we humans always have a bias, so over the years I learned to only trade when I have a signal from my system. My biased (fundamental) trades are just to pass time with very small positions

Everybody still have fresh in their minds the recent fall the markets took and I bet every trader out there is trading in the fear it will happens again,because it was so recent and dramatic.

Well comparing these recent times and today, we can see that even if the bomb is still ticking underground, right now things are looking better, again I'm talking about "here and now", nobody can deny that the markets are more relaxed than they where in the climax of the crisis.

So despite a broader fundamental berish bias, latelly a bullish bias makes more sense since now and than the situation changed a lot ( even if superficially)

So speaking about bias.....

There is always material out there to support bulls and bears in their bias. In my view bias is at best a gamble or a lagging indicator.

The "gamble" happens when you are trying to forecast, because nobody can tell 100% what the future holds, so you are working with non existing data.

It becomes a "lagging indicator" when you start to work with existing data because there is not a 100% garantie "when", "how" or even "if "the past will repeat itself.

As an example,I have a bias about E/U. I believe the pair is heading to parity, but it could take years before it happens, so my bias could very well be right in the long run but since march the 4th the trend has been up so trading long latelly makes more sense.

I'm salivating here.....looks like we are starting a correction, no signal yet but as soon as my system gives me the ok I'm gonna short tha reck out of it

short from 1.4204

I got a weird signal from my system, I guess due to the sharp drop of the candle...lets see where are we heading.

Oddly Mr Bernanke helped the dollar today VIX and futures are mild but we get what we can, people seems to be jumping on bonds what is encoraging.

I will keep on eye in this trade...

Stops moved to break even. VIX and everything else suggesting that the bears are still weak.

Well well well....lets sit back relax and watch for the next signal.

take a look at this video...pay attention about what Bernanke says at 0.49 min.

After watching the whole video you will realise that those central banks are not "short dollars" but "shorting the dollar"

Good catch!

I would like to discuss a little more about the video above, because I think that Bernanke without knowing it, gave us Forex traders, a big clue about how things are orchestrated behind the curtains.

Basically in the video Mr Ben admited that they ( the FED) are lending billions of dollars to foreign banks.

We know that by law the FED can only lend against collateral.

So if a institution want to go to the FED's window and borrow money, they better have some good hard assets to put as collateral. When they get there the FED kind of look on what they have and see if the collateral is worth taken. If yes they have a deal, otherwise they have to go somewhere else.

According to the FED Lehman Bros was let on their own because they did not have a collateral worth to be taken.

Ok...back to the video Bernanke stated that the FED swaps dollars for Euros with foreigh central banks, so this banks can lend to other banks to lend to other institutions.

So basically the FED is taking euros as collateral for the dollars they are lending. This is kind of a syntetic short of a corrency...in this case the corrency being the dollar.

I guess it is fair to say that the FED is shorting the dollar even if indirectelly.

The second point is that accepting a corrency as collateral is a big gamble, because if the currency taken goes down in value your colateral will worth a lot less, making the whole principle of holding a collateral pointless.

So IMHO the FED is giving a big vote of confidance to the Euro taking it as a collateral. Going a little bit further, what if the FED had the ability to prop the Euro anytime they wanted ? oops....you know what...they can! Oh boy thats make the Euro a heck of a collateral, one can't loose money this way huh !

So I guess it is fair to say that the FED is trading with us in the Forex market

Bernanke did not explained if they pay interest to the ECB or whatever bank for their correncies swapped, if they do they are in desavantage because the interest rate on the dollar is lower. But the beauty of this thing is the fact that the gains from the swap back (assuming the euro keeps going up) will cover for it. And by the way I would not be surprised if they find a way to stick the rollover cost of the transaction on us while banking the profits themselfs.

Always remember the FED is not FEDERAL, they are a private bank cartel in the business of making money.

currency swap is for manipulate the rates, isn't it

Central banks use this kind of transaction to stabilise price and rates on currencies, thats business as usual but......if you watch the video you will see the FED lending money using another currency as collateral...thats different.

Futures looking good for a short...with a little help from the VIX and bonds and we can see some bear action...till than sitting on my hands.

E/U is behaving really weird latelly. more like GBP/JPY. It could be that we are caped and the choppiness is sign of a trend change. Or because of summer and low volume the pair is in the hands of some nasty especulators.

Well anyways I'm not playing their game if they are after my stops they will have a hard time finding it because I'm gonna stay on the sidelines

Ok guys...we are pass the middle of July. One more month and we will head for fall.

I believe that we humans are very influenced by seansos. Not because of some mistical reason, but just because we depend and schedule our lives around it that it just became embeded in our genes by now.

The earning season is almost done and the big players coming back from vacation will start to harvest their "crops" just like farmers do on fall.

Look at the major index charts and we see that we are at a serious resistance point. It looks like for me that this is it. Thats all the wealth we could build this year and now we are goint down the path of harvesting, managing, taking profit, planing for winter etc.

Back to the "hardwired" thing I believe psycological factors play a big role in the markets, because at the end of the day we are humans right. So I believe that fom now on we are set for a decline. Not a violent one ( not right now) but the trend could start to change from now on, slowly, sneaky, almoust imperceptible, and when you wake up to reality we are making new lows.

Thats my call, I could be wrong and in this case my indicators will tell me and I will accept it, the last thing that I want to do is to fight a trend but that said I'm bracing myself, IMHO we are heading down from here.

Good trade to all

P: think of it this way, draw a line of 180 day average and Jan to now.

if you keep depositing, what return do you have YtD?

it is not high.

so we have to conclude that either we did not see the real bottom, or we have not yet seen the real top.

other question, if right now is top, will economy not grow for the following 10yrs?