Turning The Corner

My Tenerife adventure seems to be slowly turning the corner. Yesterday we spent a good part of the day just hanging out and relaxing in the cozy little backyard area behind the house. The weather was brilliant with about 22 Celsius in the sun which is about 71 Fahrenheit. It was a bit chilly still in the shade as our little mountain village of Chirche is situated about 800 meters high (a bit over 2600 feet).

It is difficult to describe to you how quiet this place is. There is absolutely no noise pollution whatsoever beside the occasional car passing by the house (about one every 20 minutes) and some strange dog howling in the mornings over on the other side of the village. Last night we drove back from Los Gigantes and decided to pull over on some small country road to just enjoy the view of a gorgeous silver moon and to soak up up the absolute silence surrounding us. You could literally hear your ears ringing as your urban mind attempts to adjust to the complete lack of sound waves. It’s a huge treat for us as we’re inundated with noise day and night pretty much all year long over in Valencia.

Above I posted a semi-panoramic view of the backyard, there’s a little fountain gurgling along way in the back and you also can’t see a big outside table with chairs, a bench, and an old fashioned wood oven I expect may yield the most fabulous pizzas.

Another reason I decided to come to Tenerife was because of an opportunity to train with a very high ranking Systema instructor called Alexandr Maksimtsov. He looks pretty imposing in the video and believe me that he’s even more so in real live. Hands like shovels and he doesn’t have a gram of fat on his body. Over the course of my time here I have scheduled about a week worth of training sessions which I’m sure will be good for quite a few souvenirs in the form of scrapes and bruises. One of the reasons I really enjoy practicing Systema is because it draws many parallels to success in trading. The underlying goal is to achieve balance and success in all aspects of life. It’s actually not meta-physical at all and very result oriented in that it dispenses with all the bullpucky you may find in traditional martial arts as taught by many of your local McDojos.

My volatility/trend view on the spoos flagged something interesting a few days ago. There was a volatility alert (blue candle) which suggests that we’re going to see larger candles. It also pushed the trend indicator into a spike high which usually suggests that there will be a little shake out. The last time we saw this combination happen was last November and what followed was a little fake out to the upside followed by a sell off.

This time around I think we may see the inverse. We already got a long scare-me doji yesterday and equity futures are now advancing higher in the early session. Given where we are in the overall long term picture I believe that the medium term odds support the bullish case. That of course assumes that the 100-day SMA at ES 1980 (ESM6 – we started the June contract now) will hold and serve as as a support base.

Alright, Mrs. Evil is about to reach for the kitchen knife so in the interest of my already battered physical well being I’ll have to cut out here and wish you all a wonderful pre-spring weekend.