European Vacation

Well – in short: we are outta here. After spending over twenty years in Los Angeles Mrs. Evil and I decided that it was time for a change of pace. It’s not that we suddenly got sick of all the sunshine and the easy life style over here in Los Angeles. Rather being both native Europeans we really started to miss much of our old identity and were starting to lose some of our close friends and family. You know how it goes – out of sight out of mind.

So after Stripey and Squeaky (our two genetically modified cats) died merely eight months apart due to illness we suddenly found ourselves free like birds. And as that last hurdle to moving on had given way the decision was made to pull the plug on California and to spend at least a few months in Europe to see where would want to settle down. Spain is high on the list – and although it’s in the shitter economically it remains a very beautiful and warm country that offers the possibility of both a European but also relaxed life style. And that is exactly where we are heading this weekend – and unless we completely hate it we plan to stay a few years and become fluent in castellano. Those poor battered Spaniards have no idea what they’re in for!

A major part of our decision also was to lighten up and to become a lot more mobile. As a matter of fact in the past few weeks we have been selling almost everything we own – how crazy is that? Tomorrow I’ll be selling our car and on Thursday I won’t even have a bed anymore and we will have to bunk at a friend’s house. All month Mrs. Evil has been sorting through our things to see what we’ll keep and what will be tossed out. Although we live in a pretty small house I was amazed at how much crap one accumulates over the years. And it’s actually liberating to let it go! This weekend we’ll be traveling with a combined five suitcases. Everything else that remains goes into storage and will be shipped to Europe a few months from now if we decide to stay. If not – well, coming back to CA won’t be too difficult and we have a network of friends to fall back on.

Of course on the business side – i.e. this humble trading blog – this move caused us quite a bit of headaches. Part of my operation is run on a web server but all the charts (i.e. the Zero, ZeroFX, Geronimo) actually have been run out of my evil home lair. Until last Saturday that is – when I converted everything to a few virtual hosted desktops running in the cloud somewhere in San Jose. It took quite a bit of doing and we are still resolving a few hick ups – but thus far it’s looking promising. Carrying all my equipment around with me while we were sourcing Spain and maybe France was simply not an option. The way it is set up right now allows me to log in remotely from my lappy and have access to all my charts, my trading strategies, the Zero, ZeroFX, etc. Sure – trading from a lappy for a few weeks will be a pain but once we find our new home in Europe it’ll be easy to simply ship my equipment and rebuild my evil lair over there.

It’s possible that things may be a bit bumpy in the next week or two and I humbly ask you to be patient and put up with the occasional snafu. As you know I can be very effective when on the road and actually this trip will be a lot more relaxing than my last one as I have a lot more time to myself and won’t be running around like a chicken. Of course Volar and Scott stand by to fill in while I’m traveling. As I will be in Madrid this Sunday there should however not be much of a gap in my posts.

In case you are wondering: No – nothing will change in the evil lair. All services will run as usual and as a matter of fact I may just become even snarkier – so watch out! 😉

Finally we get to the charts. The spoos have been venturing higher since I took this snapshot (sorry, I have movers crawling up my butt). For the record – I’m getting rather tired of this trading range, but bear in mind that this is the purpose of this exercise. Don’t get emotional – especially if you are jet lagged (ahem). The daily NLSL at 1357.5 is the bears’ inflection point – we close below that and we’ll go to 1320 and possibly lower. The hourly is where we want to watch out for a breach of 1362.5 – a pop above that may get us an EOD rally.

The weekly SPX cuts out much of the daily noise and that 1368.69 NLSL is now officially breached. Remember however that it’s a weekly trigger and only a Friday close below would suggest we go lower. However, in the interim you can use 1369 as a line in the sand if you are short.

That was a nice little pop on the ZB today – which is exactly how things move after hemming and hawing around near support lines. I would do nothing right now and keep my stop in place.

Our cable short setup is coming along nicely. I told you guys to wait for a signs of weakness and this is just what the doctor ordered. Most likely we’ll get an inside candle today – and you know the drill, if not please consult our cheat sheet.

Before I run here’s one goodie I decided to throw to the leeches – my MMMR1 Volatility chart. Very interesting reading today and especially in the context of Volar’s insights on SKEW and vol risk (check the previous comment thread).

Hasta luego,