As yet another indicator of my diminishing computer skills (I was a computer scientist long ago) I tried to upgrade our forum software and made a HUGE mess of it. We ended up having to do a restore from an older backup and lost a good chunk of the past few months of posts.

If you have any questions, intros, etc. that are now missing feel free to repost and I will be happy to respond. :blush:

Mojo

Dealnews has just posted a smokin' good deal on a small CREE LED flashlight for $8!! I really like this one because of its brightness, ability to give you a general light or tight focus, and it runs on one AA battery (no special batteries needed). Attached is a screen shot of their post:

Click here to jump to Dealnews


Hurry... this will go pretty quickly!

Attachments:

I just saw a listing on dealnews.com giving away version 10.0 of SnagIt software. I use this software to capture and markup all of my price charts that I share and use in my trading journal. Excellent, excellent software.

Check out this link and hurry.... Usually these deals will expire after a certain number of uses:



Free Snagit Software

Mojo

After our nice run up over the last couple of days I'm watching closely for an signs of the market reversal or relative weakness as we approached the 50% retracement in the overall market.

Chipotle (CMG) showed up on my watchlist as its price behavior was lagging the rising market this morning. Its still a bit early, but take a look at this chart:



We are breaking to the downside yet but there are some bearish signs building (MACD, Volume, Fibo reversal zone).

Attachments:

Originally Posted by Mojo

OK, folks.... The downside of this has continued for a couple days longer than I expected. Finally, finally, I'm seeing the beginning of our first bullish sign on the SPX 10 min chart. Take a look:

Attachment 556

See that little bottom forming? If we can break that resistance at 1253ish that will give us a 'W'in pattern and our first bullish sign.

Mojo

Wow! MdrNate, NatNet, and the tech folks in Europe have just completed a major upgrade of our underlying software. What looked like several hours of work turned into more than 40+ hours. Big Props to MdrNate and crew!

If any of you guys see anything missing, not working, etc. please let us know. Unfortunately we did lose our new posts to the forums from June 14th - June 26th. If you posted there, please post again.

All the best,

Mojo

I've been trading UAL with Skippy for the past few weeks.* In the middle of last week we finally saw a base forming and went long with additional Sept 23 calls.* That's working out really well.* :)

At this point we are sitting in the "reversal zone" on the recent UAL decline.** Take a look:



I'm going to be watching this carefully and will sell July calls at 25/26 to protect.

Mojo

Outside of the fact that I love the Amazon Kindle I got a nice long entry today on the hourly chart.* Remember we started off pretty weak in the overall market but Amazon showed early relative strength and fired my entry.* Here's the chart:



Notice that the price action formed a basing pattern at 161, double bottom, and then moved into a classic "Win" pattern for the conservative entry.* Very, very nice!* :)

Overnight in the US, Japan continues to experience additional problems with their nuclear plants.* The Nikkei is down 14% and US futures are down -275 for the Dow and -45 on the NDX.* This is very, very serious and I wouldn't be looking for a strong reversal here.

I'm going to move to protect my downside and close out my bearish trades.* As soon as I can I will go flat on the market and hang out.* This is a good case of better being safe than sorry.

One of the two best and most common price patterns that I use is the 'W' pattern.* It is essentially a double bottom with a break out trade above the middle peak.* Take a look at this chart on NDX 10minutes:



Here you can see a pool of sellers sitting right at 2400 (creating overhead resistance) and a pool of buyers sitting just below 2300 (creating an area of support).* Notice how after the gap down the NDX moved to test the buyers at 2300, bounced up, found short term resistance at 2320 and retested 2300 again.** From there NDX moved to take out the resistance at 2320 and cruise all the way back up to the gap.

Here's how the chart looks with the 'W' drawn in....



The reversal and entry is triggered once the high of the middle peak is broken.* Pretty cool, eh?* :)

Mojo

All right, I've got a confession to make. I haven't been completely honest with my doctors…

For those of you that don't know I haven't been able to truly sleep and feel rested for the past several years. *yes my sleeping really does suck. I just completed my second sleep study and I've been told that I have "central apnea". Ironically, I don't have obstructive apnea which is typically what you see in overweight people. :-) *"central apnea" is basically a neurological defect where my body (and consequently my respiratory drive) decides not to breath. after say 60 seconds or so, along comes my rat brain (sensing something wrong) and screams "Oh My God!" and injects a huge dose of adrenaline into my bloodstream triggering my fight or flight response and waking me up. *This wonderful trick is happening about 35 times an hour so at least now I understand why my sleep is restful.

Occasionally (usually after a couple of hours of this) this reaction will wake me to the point that my mind takes off and I start thinking about everything else going on in my life (like breakfast, why is it so hot?, Where did my buy pillow go?, Egypt, second breakfast, the overnight futures, and of course what Internet deals had just come out!).

You see, one of the great dichotomies of Mojo, is that all the while I'm making "insane money" I'm actually a cheap bastard! *I've grown so used to and gotten so much pleasure out of the Internet deals that come out after midnight East Coast time that honestly I'm a little excited. Often in the middle of the night I will amble down to my office and begin scouring the web looking for great deals. *Over the past several months I've bought thousands of dollars in laptops, desktops, software, books, and electronics usually at discounts of 50% or better!! (God, I'm such a dork!) *:)

in all that time I've gotten pretty good at finding the best deals. Bar none my favorite website is dealnews.com. Dealnews.com aggregates the best deals from hundreds of websites and vendors across the web, organizes them in a clear and helpful display, and even selects the best deals for their "editor's choice". If you get a few minutes definitely check it out: HTTP://www.dealnews.com .

Yes, its true I can't sleep. *But I wonder how much more sleep I would get without all of this midnight shopping! *:)

Enjoy!

Mojo @ insanemoney.com

Here's a short video on how I'm looking to defend my Feb4 Weekly BLPS over the next couple of days. *Enjoy!

$10K Defense on NDX BLPS

Mojo

One of the biggest things to understand about trading… and particularly trading that has very short time cycles (i.e. daytrading / swing trading) is that when you get past the mechanics of trading it is mostly a game of psychology. *In this way trading is extremely frustrating (in that you are your own worst enemy) and extremely malleable (in that you are in control ultimately of yourself). What separates the good traders from the great traders is their dedication to self mastery. That extra 15% of effort often translates into millions and millions dollars of extra money.

This morning was a great example and contained some important lessons to share. I've got a good friend of mine, Skippy, who is learning to trade futures from me. Each morning on his way to work he arrives at my office at 9 AM and trades the futures until 11 AM. We've been doing this for a few weeks now and have had really good success. *One of the keys of this success is to maintain a stringent and rigid process of preparation that includes checklist, environmental's, and even very specific rituals. All of these things combined together to tell our brains and our bodies to get "in the zone" and prepare to trade.

This morning we were dealing with several unusual factors including noise in my office, my kids home from school, distracting conversations, and the fact that the stocks markets were closed yesterday but the futures continued to move (affecting the positioning of the GLOBEX highs and lows). *Skippy arrived on time and immediately began working through his checklist. Everything was looking good until about 915. At that point the impending market plus the distractions plus being away from trading futures for four days culminated in a "stress ball" that Skippy could not manage.

Immediately upon the open he was still rushing around adjusting charts, asking inane questions, basically presenting all of the signs of being stressed and rushed. He missed the first trade of the day, struggled to calculate some energy math, and collapsed under my questioning. Very smartly he decided to go ahead and halt trading for the day.

"What went wrong?", he asked. *"A lot...." and we went over the details. *:) *Specifically there are severals take aways from this morning:

1) Maintain the santity of your rituals and preparations. *Don't be distracted by others people, things, or your environment.

If you are, its simple. *DONT TRADE.

2) Congratulate yourself for noticing that you were out of sync with the market and not "in the zone". *As soon as you notice this, an even bigger congratulations, for going ahead and making the call to halt trading. (I can't tell you the number of times that I've blown out accounts trying to trade while I was out of the zone.)

3) Notice how quickly you forgot your rules and your setups in the face of pressure. This is exactly what were talking about when we say that your IQ drops by half once you are in a trade. :-)

4) Update your notes and in particular create pictures of your ideal setups so that you can quickly reference them and get back on track.

5) Finally (and this is tough one for a lot of us) use the past to quickly assess what you could have done better, learn from it, and then FORGET about it! *All too often we spend the vast majority of our time obessing over the past (which we can't change) and given up the present and future to do it.

Thanks for taking this journey with me Skippy. *I'm learning just as much! *:)

One of the biggest things to understand about trading… and particularly trading that has very short time cycles (i.e. daytrading / swing trading) is that when you get past the mechanics of trading it is mostly a game of psychology. *In this way trading is extremely frustrating (in that you are your own worst enemy) and extremely malleable (in that you are in control ultimately of yourself). What separates the good traders from the great traders is their dedication to self mastery. That extra 15% of effort often translates into millions and millions dollars of extra money.

This morning was a great example and contained some important lessons to share. I've got a good friend of mine, Skippy, who is learning to trade futures from me. Each morning on his way to work he arrives at my office at 9 AM and trades the futures until 11 AM. We've been doing this for a few weeks now and have had really good success. *One of the keys of this success is to maintain a stringent and rigid process of preparation that includes checklist, environmental's, and even very specific rituals. All of these things combined together to tell our brains and our bodies to get "in the zone" and prepare to trade.

This morning we were dealing with several unusual factors including noise in my office, my kids home from school, distracting conversations, and the fact that the stocks markets were closed yesterday but the futures continued to move (affecting the positioning of the GLOBEX highs and lows). *Skippy arrived on time and immediately began working through his checklist. Everything was looking good until about 915. At that point the impending market plus the distractions plus being away from trading futures for four days culminated in a "stress ball" that Skippy could not manage.

Immediately upon the open he was still rushing around adjusting charts, asking inane questions, basically presenting all of the signs of being stressed and rushed. He missed the first trade of the day, struggled to calculate some energy math, and collapsed under my questioning. Very smartly he decided to go ahead and halt trading for the day.

"What went wrong?", he asked. *"A lot....", I said and we went over the details. *:) *Specifically there are severals take aways from this morning:

1) Maintain the santity of your rituals and preparations. *Don't be distracted by others people, things, or your environment. *If you are, its simple. *DONT TRADE.

2) Congratulate yourself for noticing that you were out of sync with the market and not "in the zone". *As soon as you notice this, an even bigger congratulations, for going ahead and making the call to halt trading. (I can't tell you the number of times that I've blown out accounts trying to trade while I was out of the zone.)

3) Notice how quickly you forgot your rules and your setups in the face of pressure. This is exactly what were talking about when we say that your IQ drops by half once you are in a trade. :-)

4) Update your notes and in particular create pictures of your ideal setups so that you can quickly reference them and get back on track.

5) Finally (and this is tough one for a lot of us) use the past to quickly assess what you could have done better, learn from it, and then FORGET about it! *All too often we spend the vast majority of our time obessing over the past (which we can't change) and given up the present and future to do it.

Thanks for taking this journey with me Skippy. *I'm learning just as much as you! *:)

This morning started off pleasant enough in the markets.* Pre-market announcements did little and we were opening on a slight downward gap that was quickly filled.* On the YM (mini dow futures) we had overhead resistance at 12,000 and support below us at 11,975.* The 10am petro announcements came out and we quickly ran to the high side.* I was thinking that we would reach 12,000 and give me an opportunity to fade.* We never made it there...

We zipped up to 11,995 and quickly reversed gaining speed and volume to the downside.* I had a good friend and student in my office this morning and the alarm bells on my computer were firing away!* I said, "The market is crumbling pretty fast.* Let's see if we will hold at 11,975 (the morning low)???

Nope, not a chance.* Like a hot knife through butter we continued lower on increasing momemtum.* During last night's weekly member only class I talked about a reversal signal that I had learned from John Carter.* He called it the HOLP play which stands for 'High of the Low Period'.* It works like this:* Once you are in a moving market that is collapsing quickly, you would look for an increase in volume along with a break of the high of the low period (HOLP).* I brought this up to my visitor and we moved an order entry trigger down to the high of the lowest bar.* By 10:14 my entry was sitting at 11,946.* Just as the next bar formed, I went long 4 contracts on the YM.



I scaled out selling off half of my contracts at +8, quarter at +16 and held my runner for 27 ticks making $295 on a risk of 400.* So when you see a fast moving market, pay attention to that low period bar and be ready to jump on the reversal.

Mojo

Look, I'm a huge fan of their food (particularly their soft tacos carnitas) but this is crazy!!* Chipotle (CMG) with a share price of $228, off its all time highs, and approaching earnings is breaking out again.* Take a look:



Sitting with fundamentals that all that but spell 'bubble' and a market that is getting saturated (anyone remember when Starbucks was putting stores right across the street from each other?) I've got to be a little skeptical here.* Needless to say with this breakout occurring on a soft day like today (Wed) and the volatility continuing to rise, its probably good for a bit of a run.* I'm shaking my head in disbelief but I'm going long Mar 230 calls.

Mojo