My first attempt at trading options
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The market is hard to "predict", which is why I like charts. Unlike analysts, who usually make their money selling their analysis instead of actually trading, LOL, charts show the current trends, they don't try to predict the future. You can see from my patterns that I tend to "buy high, sell a little bit higher". That philosophy will never make you the "most" money, whatever that is, but it will usually keep you from losing money. :-) September is historically a pretty slow month, and so far that seems to still be reasonably true. But Katrina does not seem to be having much of an effect - that makes me suspicious. Personally, I think that the big boys are skewing the market pretty heavily right now - propping up prices so they can gradually ease out of their long positions. If that's true then the market may drop gradually over the next few weeks. My mood is extremely cautious right now. But it is impossible to see the future.
rwestgraham wrote: market is hard to "predict", That's been my experience. As far as charts go, I find them hard to read. But, I'm learning and trying. Thanks again for your input. rwestgraham wrote: big boys are skewing I see you're familiar with market manipulations. rwestgraham wrote: impossible to see the future Aint that the truth.
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rwestgraham wrote: market is hard to "predict", That's been my experience. As far as charts go, I find them hard to read. But, I'm learning and trying. Thanks again for your input. rwestgraham wrote: big boys are skewing I see you're familiar with market manipulations. rwestgraham wrote: impossible to see the future Aint that the truth.
Honestly, I have not had the best success trading individual stocks on Nasdaq using charts. As you know the market is definitely manipulated. With many stocks it only takes one or maybe two market makers to completely control a trend. So with many stocks, no matter how good your charts look, you still never know when a market maker may decide to jump in a clobber your trend, and they can turn in minutes, even seconds. Now the QQQQ is not nearly so easily manipulated. The setup I showed you in May-June 05, by the time the MACD hit the zero line, you already had a LOT of inertia that had pushed it up to that point. So you have 3 possible scenarios - the trend will continue for a while, the trend will fizzle, or the trend will reverse and tank. Either of the first two are both reasonable liklihoods. But the likelihood of the price rapidly tanking at the crossover is possible of course, but the probability is really not very high. A fizzle is OK - most likely the price will move sideways for at least a little while. There is no shame in taking most if not all of your money off the table, and if the trend fizzles, the QQQQ usually, not always, but usually gives you more than enough time to get out safely. Or as in this case, the inertia keeps moving - you make money. Now, suppose the QQQQ was going up (it wasn't but ...) before Katrina hit and you were happily riding the upwards trend. I genuinely believe that the market response, or more accurately, the illogical upwards response, was the result of a concerted effort by all the big market makers to avert a sudden tank of an already modest down trend. So in this case, the market makers stepping in to try to create a "soft landing" actually would save the little guy - they propped up the price by buying up shares at least long enough for someone like me to not only get out, but maybe get out with a profit even. I think that trading the trends on the QQQQ tends to align you a lot more favorably with the actions taken by the market makers, as opposed to a lot of other Nasdaq stocks where the market makers sometimes step in and really run up a price, but also frequently step in and step all over the little guys.