"after all, we are in a bull market."

What do we do now? Things look good and markets are banging new highs but there is always something around the corner. The market needs a breather, it needs to breathe in and breathe out, now it's very overbought and best thing to do is manage open positions and wait for a pullback for new set ups and entries. As always one day at a time.

Barron's magazine cover; Dow 16,000!

this chart is from John Hussman, showing a new one and two previous Barron covers and market action, timing is not perfect, nothing is, but gives us a clue of what it could be

follow up: UNG

don't get scared out but be aware of the bigger time frame and what we are doing here, have a fail-safe stop at break even on the remaining position, just in case

“I look for conditions of disequilibrium. They send out certain signals that activate me. So my decisions are really made using a combination of theory and instinct. If you like, you may call it intuition.”
~ George Soros

I would say, market analysis, as many have observed, is an art, not a science.
Action, this is where the rubber hits the road. In the end, however, the "hidden ingredient" for market success is the trader's own instincts or intuition.

intraday 5min. view of SPY's price action

someone was playing games today

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
Bruce Lee

follow up: UNG

We talked about this break out and we are getting it today. What do we need after a b/o ? We will look for a follow through, that's the key now, follow through.
May the trend be with you ~ and you with it.

S&P 500 cash

One day at a time, today we got an inside day and can go ether way, and trading back at the top of the range, the line of least resistance continues to be upward.

What to do when in a range?  As the trend rider, there's not much to do when a market is stuck in a range. Manage your open positions and just sit on your hands. If it rallies out of that range-and sticks, then you look to buy. If it sells off out of that range and continues lower, then you look to short. It's that simple. I used the word simple and not easy. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

Trading & Ego, The Ultimate Chess Game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chzqWI346DI&feature=youtu.be

How much further could gold fall?

                                          The truth is that no-one knows.

The 1970s can offer insights. The gold price from 1974-1976 corrected 47% before it rose 8x to peak at US$887/oz in 1980. Extraordinarily, the price increased 4x in the 13 months before the peak.

commitment is the game and fulfillment is the aim

"I would sometimes think that maybe I ought to stop trading because it was very painful to keep losing. In 'Fiddler on the Roof,' there is a scene where the lead looks up and talks to God. I would look up and say, 'Am I really that stupid?' And I seemed to hear a clear answer saying, 'No, you are not stupid. You just have to keep at it.' So I did."

- Michael Marcus

Market Wizard, is noted for turning $30,000 into $80 million. If even he started out taking enough lumps to generate serious self-doubt, how can traders learning in today's environment expect less of a persistence breakthrough challenge?

the line of least resistance is upward

for now  ~ one day at a time

follow up; UNG and SMH trades

now needs a break out and a follow through

stopped out at break even on a half position after taking 1R profit on the first half

advance through trial and error

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.
~Marcus Aurelius

just a reminder, QE

"As more and more money gets printed, currencies will inevitably devalue and hard assets including stocks will rise. Should inflation start to run rampant, stock markets, as history has shown, could start to rise in a parabolic manner. One would hope central banks would slow QE to prevent this from happening, as the aftermath of such a stock market bubble is always catastrophic."

follow up on one long UNG, and one short SMH

refer to previous posts regarding real time, actionable comments

a trader is a person who earns what he gets...

"The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot are traders, both in manner and spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his body as fodder, or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit-his love, his friendship, his esteem-except in payment and in trade for human virtue, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect."
~from Atlas Shrugged

SMH follow up

fail-safe @ 35.29

SMH- s

@34.79

market is now at the top of a 13 year "secular" bear range

a picture is worth a million dollars

“bandwagon” theory

Traders often hear about “tulip mania,” the “South Sea bubble” and other similar events where traders have followed the crowd to send prices to extreme levels. You might add the technology dot.com bubble of the late 1990s or the more recent housing bubble to the list of those events where traders got carried away with higher and higher prices. Everyone wanted to be part of the action – the “crowd psychology” or “bandwagon” theory. The same type of crowd response applies to price action on a smaller scale, too. For example, when a market is coming up from a basing area on the charts, “smart money” is responsible for the majority of the initial buying. As people jump on board, we see the bandwagon effect, and that bandwagon pushes prices up. Volume tends to surge at its peak, certainly on the buy side, during the markup phase in the middle. Later, toward the end of the trend, smart money is not doing the buying; somebody else is. The smart money is doing the selling. The market tops by rolling over or sometimes with a spike top. We can see the crowd impact expressed in price and in volume. Just think about what happens among professional traders when the stock market goes up even when the fundamentals don’t provide much support for such a move. Prices often rise because institutional money managers feel pressured to follow the crowd and chase performance. How can they explain why their results are below the industry benchmarks if they don’t go with the crowd and buy the stocks everyone else has in their portfolios? That rationale alone can drive markets higher than they “should” go.

trend trading, momentum, swing, price action, trading futures & equities

"If you are ready to give up everything else - to study the whole history and background of the market ... as a medical student studies anatomy. If you can do all that, and, in addition, you have the cool nerves of a gambler, the sixth sense of a kind of clairvoyant, and the courage of a lion, you have a ghost of a chance." 
---Bernard Baruch