I wasn't sure whether to post this under Psychology or Technical Analyses, so you decide, in a way that's not the main issue. What is more important is how we relate and interpret expansion of volatility near critical zones. I am the sort of person that always analyses things that take place in my day to day life, life of people around me and indeed the whole world. At times I can't help but draw parallels between certain similarities between various events that relate to us, humans. Events that either initiate by out actions, or they have nothing to do with our conscious decision making, some of these things are to do with nature, organics, chemistry, molecules. I will struggle to explain my thoughts here and will probably end up shooting myself in the foot, so need some of you deep thinkers to perhaps help me out here. In layman's terms here's how it goes. Everything, absolutely everything in our lives is cycle based. There is a time when an event starts and ends, leading to another cycle being born, sometimes cycles evolve, but that is not an issue. The issue that bothers me is how we manage to interpret cyclical actions that direct us to a point in time when we see a change is upon us. And that point in time is volatility expansion. "Volatility - The rate of change in the price of a security over a given time" Now let's link volatility to our life, after all markets are driven by humans, so why the hell not? Here are some examples: Say we have a real nice dinner, it takes about 3-4 hours for our gut to digest and turn all that gorgeous food into shite. So we walk around with all that stuff and feel fine, after 3-4 hours we start feeling uncomfortable, farting and all that stuff, getting bloated, anus starts to expand. So we know that it's about time we had that dump. Also, we can't help but notice that the more we have consumed, the more shite we will produce, right? Both above points can be linked to market's cycles ie the longer the run up/trend the bigger the fall (eat a lot), near the time when that fall is to start price action experiences expansion in volatility in both directions (lots of farting). Here is another one, if we try and stand on 1 foot for a long long time, be it 2 hours, after a while we start to get real tired, start to lose balance and our body starts to rock bit by bit from side to side. Just before we eventually fall on our ass, we go through a stage where our mind realising that we are about to lose balance starts to send signals to our limbs commanding them to shake violently, that is another form of volatility expansion near a critical zone. Here are some more and brief ones as you know what I am referring to now: Female paine levels near birth or contractions; Weather changes nearing a storm; Near the time of death; Heart rate before and after a long sprint; Poker player's action of 'All In' after a losing streak; Engine being run at a maximum RPM creates intense heat levels and smoke prior to collapse; When we have sex and prior to having an orgasm decibel levels increase, so does a body's temperature; There many more other examples where a cyclical event can be seen nearing the end of a cycle by pure observation of a simple pattern which is not too difficult to spot, just like an ultimate crescendo in a music piece that either brings us back to pianissimo or the end of that musical piece, a finale. Anyway, sorry for being a tad random, I am simple a piker trader trying to understand how our world works. This bull market will finish totally and another cycle, a bear phase, will be upon us only when price action starts being extremely volatile, only after the smoke has settled we will be able to engrave - May this Bull R.I.P. 2000 - ....
"Here are some more and brief ones as you know what I am referring to now: Female paine levels near birth or contractions; Weather changes nearing a storm; Near the time of death; Heart rate before and after a long sprint; Poker player's action of 'All In' after a losing streak; Engine being run at a maximum RPM creates intense heat levels and smoke prior to collapse; When we have sex and prior to having an orgasm decibel levels increase, so does a body's temperature;" ------------------------------- All of the above could be analogies to a corporate life. They could be happening collectivly in a sector or individually across a spectrum. There are other cycles but the only constant we have in cycles in the presidential cycle. What is unique, times and people change but there is historic precedent on what could effect the outcome of the market in the years surrounding the elections.