0823 CST Between yesterday and today, I am off my game. I've had a remarkable month, even with these last two days, so in all likelihood, I will probably call it a day, unless something comes up around 0900. If we hit 111 03, and certainly 111 04, I've been stopped out. If not, I'll post more. Good trading!
Don't worry - happens to me all the time. Sometimes I even can't find Lance's trades on the ticker - I need to take a break.
on a more serious note. what a day we had. 4% GDP price index and as you know this is one of the better numbers to reflect inflation because it includes substitution effects. I was lucky to sell to suckers buying the weak GDP number. Today's data may be blessing for shorts. The next week may be a bit softer due to Friday employment report - market will be afraid that it comes below expectation. So despite possible stronger ISMs we may see all sell-offs faded (I would love to be wrong on this one though). Next week we get only one speech that is going to indirectly reference monetary policy (Moskow in....Chicago! already on Monday 8:35CST). Have a good weekend!
I agree...however I received a PM from another follower of this thread about the Lance's 'strategy'... :eek: I was not tired or wrong...
No you were not hallucinating, I have seen his posts evaporate in a few minutes, if he did not like his entry.
'substitution effects': interesting, but where do you about that? I would appreciate any reference you have; on my side here I have handy the following books: Tainer - Using Economic Indicator to improve...'; Niemira 'Trading the Fundamentals'; A.D. Picker 'International Indicators and Central Banks' Thank you, B.
I will disappoint you - it is something I simply remember from university years which is very long time ago. Pick any book on microeconomics and look for Paasche/Laspeyres indices and impact on budget constraint for an agent. In general price indices (CPI/PPI) are based on "optimal" baskets and are (infrequently) adjusted. GDP deflator is based on actually produced basket of goods, i.e. it is not as subjective as CPI/PPI. I tried Wiki and here is what it says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator (look at Calculation section)
Closing comments on April 2007 It is important to collect statistics on your trading each and every month. It is important to review your own stats. Data mine yourself so to speak. Here are some random thoughts 1) Determine how many winning trades you are good for in any given day. There are variations on this, such as in a row, or total etc. I'm good for 3 in row. On stair-step days I'm good for many more than that. 2) Determine how many total trades in a day is your sweet spot. For me the answer is between 2 to 6. Once I go beyond 6 trades in a day I approach one of two possible outcomes. The first is a lot of work for very little extra return, or even less of a return than I had earlier in the day. The second is a possible large loss day. 3) Determine your usual daily profit, your usual daily loss, and find out your sweet spot as you go beyond the bell shaped curve. 4) If you are going to use stops sparingly or have discretionary stops, then you must have account balance stops without question. This ties into item 3. Never allow your daily loss to go beyond a certain amount of the average. In other words, your average daily loss should be reasonably acceptable given your positive expectation of ending each month profitably. You need to recognize when something is wrong. Do you want to trust your methodical stable approach up until the day you contemplate an outlier loss or do you want to stop yourself at a fraction of an outlier loss? All of the stability in the world won't make up for one outlier loss. 5) Cycles do work, but there is discretion involved. For example, are you going to take a cycle sell on a day when the market just popped up 48 ticks, and is now in the process of retracing 8 of those ticks? Of course not. Make a note of the time and buy after the cycle hits or disregard it altogether on such a day. 6) I see that taking two trades and only two trades a day, throughout the month of April, would have resulted in roughly the same monthly return but with less exposure and less risk to my account and peace of mind. I'm fine tuning the criteria for the trades now. I did a lot of work on the weekend for this. I'm not prepared to provide the details at this time, but it is nothing that can't be pieced together by reading this journal. I'll leave you with one final thought. This came to me as I was contemplating the bond market, day dreaming if you will. I believe it to be a significant breakthrough. Time spent at price. Think about that for a while. Better yet, if you are so inclined, read my posts for April 2007, do some standard relaxation exercise, and say to yourself, "Time spent at price? What does he mean by that?"