this is the long term xlf chart. Compare it to the current SP500 daily chart, the patterns and progressions looks very similar.
current sp500 chart daily... projecting out the xlf progression on the daily spooz brings us to 1250.
mbusch and synic, thanks a lot. i am learning a lot from you guys. always nice to see people posting helpful analysis and also maintaining their decorum as gentlemen. appreciated!
Ah, you noticed! Different account, different tactics. The trades you are referring to have been position trades in my IRA account, not daytrades in my commodity trading account. In the past, my IRA has been quietly invested in a collection of mutual funds with very few transactions. Over time, I've been moving to funds that are at least partially hedged against market risk. However, I'm now convinced that we're either about to enter or have already entered a multi-year secular bear market in which buy-and-hold investors will be seriously hurt and the major indices could lose 1/3 to 1/2 their value. Hence, my IRA strategy going forward will change from buy-and-hold to position trading with a bearish bias. Some months ago, I liquidated about half of the IRA mutual fund holdings and have been about 50% cash. I'm now looking to liquidate most of the rest of those holdings on a decent bounce. In the meantime, I'm glad to say that my position trading in the IRA account over the past couple of weeks has done considerably better than offset the substantial losses in those remaining mutual funds. I have had the feeling, however, that I'm running up a down escalator. My position trading in the IRA uses longer timeframes and wider stops, more in the style of B1S2 (although I'm not quite as risk-tolerant as he is), while my daytrading style is closer to that of Apex82 (although I'm not even close to having his skill). Once I liquidate the remaining mutual fund positions in my IRA and the bear market becomes better defined with less upside risk, I expect that my trading activity in the IRA will subside somewhat (longer timeframes) and I'll be able to spend more energy on the daytrading account. Unfortunately, I have not progressed in my mental discipline to the point where I can trade multiple accounts or multiple markets simultaneously. I envy folks like Apex who do this every day, and aspire to develop that skill in the fullness of time. For now, I've learned the hard way that if I try to focus on several things at once, I lose in all of them.