It’s going to be a wild Friday it seems. Retail sales and CPI data disappointed earlier this morning, causing yields and the U.S. Dollar to head straight for the basement while gold of course is heading higher. I guess gold could be trusted after all, but hindsight is always 20/20 and you never know how the numbers get shuffled. Of course the NQ is soaring as I’m typing this as bad news is good for equities – back to the old QE script I take it. Unfortunately my long term outlook on not seeing a meaningful interest hike anytime this decade seems to be playing out as feared. Or as the saying goes: Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter 

I remember spending one hour each way in L.A. traffic commuting to and from my job as an engineer. That was about a decade ago or so shortly before I decided to ‘retire’ from the software industry and dedicate myself exclusively to my passion, which of course was trading. It’s been a very turbulent time since that day but as I’m sitting here now in my beautiful Valencia apartment overlooking two gorgeous 15th century buildings I don’t know how I survived that traffic ordeal back then.

Catching entries and holding them for more than a day or two has been increasingly difficult lately, in particular since the beginning of June. Not only are we in a seasonally bearish period during what still continues to be a late stage bull market (until proven wrong), but intra-day volatility also appears to be in a cycle of expansion. Originally this post was supposed to feature an early summer lottery ticket but upon further consideration I had to (once again – yes) err on the cautious side. Call me a chicken but I think a more conservative approach has kept us out of a lot of trouble recently.