Maverick, I completely agree. Was trading TSLA all day and had lots of fun. I also trade Fdax and it still is a very good instrument to trade. The environment changes and you have to adopt. FDax also trades different from a few years ago.
Hmmm. Well, maybe we don't disagree on too much. Here's a big problem on ET, and maybe I can clarify how I feel about it personally: When I write something for the betterment of the community of traders, or to honestly express a reality that exists, for some reason everyone here thinks that that's indistinguishable from my trading tactics. Not so. I'm also able to find small pockets of stocks or interesting industries (like coal and iron ore) where there has been a bunch of volatility and not too much fake bs. I'm able to make a living and get by. Still, it's good to speak up from time to time about things that will eventually affect all of us. If things continue the way they've been going they might get even worse than they are now. Our industry is crumbling. If a few of us have found ways to make a couple bucks should we just shut up about it? There's no faith in retail community anymore in the stock market. That lack of paper makes all traders suffer. A person can be objective in his analysis and thoughts and philosophies and trade in a way that is contrary to all that because he recognizes that things are fradulent. It still is worthwhile to speak about things that are bs in this Country. That's the essence of free speech. If we want things to change, we have to speak up. Ahhh...screw it.
If you want to speak out against that stuff, do so on another thread where it's more applicable. You were "speaking out" as you put it while bringing the market into it. The reason I posted on this thread was to respond to the absurdity that anyone would simply get short the market because of some event that means absolutely nothing over the long term. I have to admit these types of threads annoy me because they really do not belong on a serious forum. But then you ranted about some stocks that keep going up despite bad earnings or bad guidance or whatever. Look, this has been the case since I started trading in 1995. Hell, we had internet stocks rally for 300 days straight trading at 1k times forward revenues! Companies would come out and say they saw no signs of profitability for the next 5 years and they still went up every day. That was 15 years ago! Look, nothing has changed. It was like this in the 80's, the 1920's the late 1800's. If trading were so easy that you could just get long good companies and sell the crap ones we would all be billionaires. It's all about game theory. Dealing with imperfect and incomplete information and trying to out think the other guy. Nassim Taleb had a great way of describing the markets. He said it's like being a judge at a beauty contest. Only instead of picking who you thought should win, you had to pick the girl other people thought would win. And THAT is what changes everything. That is the function that makes trading difficult for most people. Because most of us could easily pick the prettiest girl, but what if you had to bet on everyone else? And what if they had to bet on who you thought that they thought....and this is the essence of game theory. I'm not trying to berate you. As I said before, we probably agree on the politics. I get a little annoyed when people say there is no opportunity or there is no movement or the market is dead. All I see is movement and volatility. Then you ask the guy what he trades and he says the spoos. LOL. Well then OK. That is part of the problem. There is a whole world out there of trading products from 10k stock, to over 50 different futures. And every combination of the two. Hell is anyone watching rbob? Did you know it came in 50 cents in the last 4 weeks? That's over 20k per one contract. That's a sizeable move. And all the corresponding crack spreads moved accordingly. But one has to put in the work to learn and study these things. Just getting lazy and trading the spoos everyday is not going to cut it. And I'm not saying "you" are doing that, but many here are and they are many of the ones who bitch that the market is dead. Well, they are trading a derivative of large cap stocks. Not even sure they realize that. Anyway, I'm off my soap box.
Want a straw man? It's Keynes. Not Taleb, Keynes. You're blind, man. Since you started trading in 1995 the environment has never been worse for traders. There's a reason props are all laying people off and banks and hedgies laying traders off. It's not just regulation. If there were so many great opportunities they would easily love to absorb those costs. stat arb is a shell of its former self. Correlations have never been higher. bond trading - DEAD. yeah, it finally made a decent move this year over 5 months. Look at the chart over the last five years. DEAD. Fixed income correlations and all its attendant instruments have compressed into one giant clusterfuck that's all tied together. That's much, much bigger than stock market. Ditto for currencies mostly. Wow, tesla dropped 15 points. Nice micro situation. Also, what's 15 points for a $180 stock? Compared to 1995 through 2010 the stuff we're seeing today is peanuts. When was the last time you heard the words, "limit down"? "limit up"? Every wonder why?
His posts are COMPLETELY on topic, in case you forgot the thread title. You can tone down the arrogance a tad as well.
I'm sorry man, I just can't agree with anything you said. In fact we had limit markets all during last year and the year before. Did you not watch corn and soybeans and wheat trade up to record levels? Dude where were you went cotton went limit up almost every single day on it's move from 40 to over 200! And bonds dead the last 5 years? We trade up to record highs!!!! Dude, we set record lows in rates (highs in price). And we had moves in crude oil from 75 to 115 back down to 75 again. Honestly man, I just have to disagree with every single one of your points. And again, you continue to make the mistake of using outliers as your baseline for volatility. That would be like me comparing Joe Montana of 1984 to Peyton Manning's numbers this year. If we use Manning's numbers as our baseline Joe Montana had no right playing professional football. LOL. You need to look at the long term averages and if you do, you will see the markets are no different now then their long term averages.
Again. People read what I don't write and think. I don't have ideology or ideas on how markets should be. Markets have always been manipulated, that's a matter of fact. Difference now is how and how much central banks manipulate markets. It's not only the FED. Actually, I believe they made an agreement with standard manipulators (market makers,big speculators) and governments to move the markets all together. I don't judge what they are doing, I believe they're doing the only possible things and probably I'd do the same were I in their shoes. I surely don't blame them for my trading errors which come out from my absurd behaviour and novice silly mistakes (though I'm not a novice). Had I followed my method and some basic,simple observations(which me myself made),I would have never had any problem,neither in this market,nor in previous ones: me too don't see any real differences with what markets have always been. It makes no difference what I think about value, but it does what hedge funds managers think. As a whole they are big enough to make a difference, and many of them are angry with the FED as they wait for prices to "clear" to step in, but FED doesn't allow this. So they don't step in, and remain out of the market. What really lowers prices in current stock markets valuation is factoring in the risk that something goes wrong given that this system is completely rotten. And this factor is not really subjective.
couldn't agree more with cmdtytrdr. from my experience-chaos,uncertainty,high volatility are best times for trader to make a killing. we don't have that anymore. every day(like today)-flat open,low volume. news or no news-flat. but saying that this is partially because public is over hedged? common..95%+ of US population probably doesn't even know what the word means
keeping the rate ARTIFICIALLY low. i can repeat this one more time-money have no other place to go,but the stock market. and FED is the one and single force,who propping it. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/brea...d-fed-real-challenge-says-funk-113125348.html