Nobody Has A Crystal Ball

Before I close up shop for the weekend I would like to address a topic of great importance, the understanding of which I deem to be integral to surviving as a trader in today’s markets. I’ve repeatedly touched on this over the past few years but today presents me with a salient example to hopefully drive this point home once and for all. This afternoon one of my newer readers (name witheld) sent me the following email:

I am enjoying your straight forward approach .
Great call in copper!!
8 point break under 341.35 ...... hope you flipped....
There was a great daily crude set up today....
... hitting doubles.
Again, great call....

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m as human as the next schmuck and such praise always goes down like buttered toast. I think most traders who start a trading blog do it for a variety of reasons. Yes, it’s a good trading log for yourself, if you’re a seasoned player you are able to help others succeed, perhaps like yours truly you can even eek out a few subscription Dollars. But that still leaves a lot of folks who do it for free and most likely they do it for a mix of all the above and perhaps a bit of street cred or even fame. Who hasn’t dreamed about making that one big call – pointing out a top and watching the market drop like a rock 2008 style. Or catching that big bounce at the bottom tick and rubbing it in everyone’s faces for years to come.

However I hate to burst your bubble as for me nothing could be further from the truth. See, I don’t make ‘calls’ – as a matter of fact if there was such a thing as a ‘sensing the future’ gene I am probably last in line. But what I’m good at is seeing opportunities and evaluating the odds. Let’s review today’s copper setup as a prime example:

The whole story started yesterday when I suggested to my subs that copper may be interesting as it was still following the 25-day SMA down but had painted two hammers in succession. My parting words on the subject were that as long as the SMA remained intact the trend would lead us lower.

Now this morning I looked through about 10 charts and copper happened to be one that I made available for free. The setup looked just like some of the ones on the FX front – 100-hour SMA touch and possible bounce. Except that there was a NLSL pinned on the SMA as well. So my thinking was this – IF copper manages to drop through that SMA plus the NLSL then we may just see a slide lower. Did I anticipate a drop of this magnitude? Of course not – my crystal ball is still in the shop and the guy who’s fixing it is still waiting for the flux capacitor which seems to be perpetually out of stock.

And the moral of the story? I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t make ‘calls’. You may congratulate me and believe whatever you want but the truth is that I simply follow my charts in a mechanic and disciplined fashion. I take my entries, set my stops, walk away. I don’t give too much thought about rumors or the news – that’s for the suckers at the other side of my trades 😉

Silver has dropped as well and I wanted to put up a little pointer for you guys. Since I’m in a good mood and it’s Friday I’ll put it out for everyone to see. The daily panel has us dropping hard through a NLSL – that’s bearish. But wait there’s more!

The other day I showed Scott my P&F chart and told him that I would *love* to see a touch or drop through 26.5 – for obvious reasons. Well, it has happened and unless we see a bounce here post haste I have an inkling we may just fulfill that bearish PO of 21.5. Wouldn’t that be something? 😉

A few more goodies for my subs and then I’ll crack open a cold one:

It's not too late - learn how to consistently trade without worrying about the news, the clickbait, the daily drama and misinformation. If you are interested in becoming a subscriber then don't waste time and sign up here. The Zero indicator service also offers access to all Gold posts, so you actually get double the bang for your buck.

Please login or subscribe here to see the remainder of this post.

Cheers,