Patience Is A Virtue

For some reason the dam broke yesterday and the sudden release that followed almost felt like a moment of catharsis after weeks of sideways churn. Years of participation in this nut-show have taught me a healthy amount of humility and I usually take my winners just like I take my losers: by focusing on what is ahead instead of yielding to emotions. This morning however I cannot help but feel a bit of pride and deep satisfaction. Not about all the bright green lights flashing in my trading account, but about the fact that we managed to trade through some of the toughest and nastiest trap infested tape I have witnessed throughout my career. 

The lessons learned and the mental fortitude we displayed throughout the past few weeks will leave a psychological imprint that carries forward – or in other words: What didn’t kill us made us stronger.

On the equities side we are currently seeing tepid attempts to produce a bounce. There is no telling as to whether it will succeed as we have long learned that low participation buying can easily paint a candle where institutional traders want to see it. But it seems to me that market participants are still a bit in shock here and are weighing their options, so let’s just just see what happens.

In case you wonder – I’m actually holding my positions here and have decided to merely move my stop to break/even. I’ve got the tiger by the tail now and I don’t intend to let go until I’m either stopped out or we are trading near ES 2060.

Now if you’re a subscriber then you ought to be long the Euro since near 1.088. As a matter of fact I posted this setup twice in a row and I really hope you took it. Here I’m taking partial profits but I think we’ve got more upside coming here after an obligatory correction. My target zone is near 1.12. Damn I’m glad I cleaned out my ATM while the getting was good 😉

And if you’re a sub then you also should be long gold – once again I posted this setup twice last week. Good luck catching this one now as it’s in short squeeze mode now and it’s not taking prisoners. I’m also taking partial profits here as I’m way beyond the 3R mark and it’s time to scale back a little.

Times Are A Changing

A lot of people gave up over the summer and particularly in the past few weeks. I could have lamented that fact and reminded everyone that the bus moves fastest when it’s empty. But frankly speaking I have long learned that the mind of the retail trader is terribly predictable and that attempting to sway instinctive herd behavior is tantamount to a foreman position at Sisyphus Industries.

Congrats to the few of you who stuck it out and are counting coin today. The rest of you I encourage to take this as a lesson and to start showing up for work again. Times are a changing and most likely we’ve got some turbulent times ahead of us – and that means trading opportunities. By the way this also includes supporting the blog even if it’s just via a measly Gold subscription. The server doesn’t run itself after all and how boring would trading be without Evil Speculator?