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Politics : Welcome to Slider's Dugout -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuckles_Bee who wrote (2419)	9/21/2006 12:33:42 AM
From: 8bits	Respond to of 50743

"What is "straight shooter" about "...but the Katrina gap is at $430 and remains unfilled."? There are LOTS of up/down gaps all over the chart since August 2005, so why does he pick that one? " Ok, some of his stuff.. yeah I don't get.. I try to look at the overall message. I don't know much about technicals nor do I subscribe to his newsletter but he has been calling the price turns and trends pretty well for gold this year, at least from what I have seen of his public articles. I am not buying the HUI or GDX but making purchases here and there of physical gold. (Basically dollar cost averaging...) I have a long term perspective (5 - 8 years..) Personally I don't think we'll see less than $500 this year. The window for European Central Banks to sell ends next Monday, so I suspect we'll drift up from there. FWIW, Marc Faber is calling a buy for gold if it trades between $500 and $550.

To: Chuckles_Bee who wrote (2419)	9/21/2006 6:20:22 AM
From: SliderOnTheBlack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50743

re: Technicians, Technical Analysis and straight shooting. When firms with Billions and Billions and Billions of Dollars under RETAIL management like Citi, Prudential and Smith Barney eliminated their entire Technical Departments and fired the likes of Louise Yamada & Ralph Acampora after 15 year stints...it kind of gives you some insight into the real-world day to day, cycle to cycle and year to year longterm efficacy of technical analysis. TA has to be kept in proper perspective. On Wall Street it's primary value is in "marketing." Having a unique mechanism to differentiate your methodology from the rest of the street is borne more out of gaining a marketing edge than it is out of real world results. TA has it's place in any traders toolbag...if only because so many traders are going to try to utilize it. It's greatest value actually comes when it is used forensically against a socionomic backdrop. What caused the madness of crowds to do what it did, when it did what it did... -- what really drove the herd? 98% of the time -- "what drove the herd" had nothing to do with where the Fibonacci levels were, or what the Bollinger Bands and Stochastics were reading... End of subject -- in my book. I know this is an endless debate...and TA afficianado's are going to dredge up tale of Richard Dennis's "Turtle Traders" and other trend traders who neither lived, or traded in a vacumn. They were also exposed to the endless 24x7 barrage of politics, economics, social trends, geopolitics and news that drove the underlying fundamentals and sentiment of the day. Hand the same chart to 100 Technicians from the same school of technical thought and you'll get 97 different interpretations. Hand the same chart to the same technician -- with a different backdrop of news, geopolitics, economics and herd sentiment...and you'll get an "straight shooting" violation every time. Technicans are human beings first and technicans second. They are no different from the rest of the human condition, as 95% of all technicans are also -- doomed by thier own DNA because it's impossible to trade within a vacumn. Technicans just like everyone else have emotions... they are not immune to the same greed, desires, fears and frustrations as the general population. Less than 5% are capable of being intellectually honest with themselves -- let alone anyone else. ...and that is especially true; when their subscriber base cuts and runs when they don't hear what they want to hear. Whipsawing and waffling by any other name are still whipsawing and waffling. Fundamentally, or technically -- here's what I want from a fund manager, newsletter advisor, or technician: 1. Ideas and opportunities that are still under the radar and priced accordingly. 2. Compelling discrepancies between price and risk ... both long and short opportunities. 3. Get me out -- into the major blow off speculative tops -- as oppossed to getting stopped out all the way down on major corrections. 4. Keep me out -- during violent whipsaw corrections. 5. Don't be afraid to tell me when the risk to reward ratio's all point to sitting in CASH. ...because I do believe that sometimes the best trade -- is no trade at all. 6. Don't be afraid to tell me what I need to hear -- and not just what I want to hear. 7. Produce results that significantly outperform the market in both up and down markets...over a long period of time. Do that consistantly and I'll gladly hand you my business, my money and/or my subscription. Just my .02c SOTB

To: Chuckles_Bee who wrote (2419)	9/21/2006 7:17:35 AM
From: SliderOnTheBlack	Respond to of 50743

re:........ "The Katrina Gap." Corrections are multi-faceted.They are not just made of time and price -- causation is also a factor. The "Katrina Gap" has more to do with "causation" than it does with time, or the tape (price). What caused the Katrina Gap? Mass leverage and speculation that the U.S. Government bailout package would exacerbate deficits to levels creating a rollover and a collapse in the U.S. Dollar. Natural Gas, Gasoline & Crude Oil speculation led...and other commodities like Gold soon followed. The danger of popular delusions and mad crowd/herd behavior is that occassionally they over-correct in the opposite direction. Is the "unfilled gap" a technical phenomenea, or a fundamental one? .... or more related to popular delusions, the madness of crowds and herd behavior? That's the $64 question. What caused Mother Rock & Amaranths demise was hubris mixed with massive leverage...and the failure to differentiate between a High Reward:High Risk bet and a High Reward:Low Risk one... Have you ever seen a herd of cattle spooked? Herds can be highly unpredictable as to direction. What is predictible is -- movement. a.k.a. V-O-L-A-T-I-L-I-T-Y ! When the potential reward is high, but the risk is also high...the best bet is often not on direction, but on movement -- ie: a bet on volatility. Can you say -- options straddles? -- Less portfolio exposure. -- Defined risk. -- You don't have to be perfect on the timing. -- You don't even have to be right on the direction. -- You can often collect in both directions. I've spoken about "straddles" on many occassions... the chihuahua crowd poo-poo'd them each time. Each time they made money -- in both directions. LEAPS made a lot of sense in this manic market of late. For those that are uncomfortable in going short (it's often equally, if not more profitable and often the money comes faster) -- LEAPS...either simply buying some puts when you cash out at the top, or buying some calls into these deep corrections... keeps you "in the game"...but, not at the mercy of the herd. The corrections in all longterm commodity cycles are so deep as to nullify any buy & hold thinking. You are still going to have to market-time to some degree. The key is to correctly identify changing risk:reward dynamics. You need to know when to be levered and when not to. When to sell into strength and buy all corrections; when to sell into strength and use straddles; when to sell into strength and buy puts & go short; and when to ultimately walk away. Trying to trade every market, day to day... week to week... and month to month is a fools game. In baseball when great hitters don't get a good pitch to hit...they exercise patience... they take the pitch and accept a walk. They don't swing at every pitch, nor do they try to drive a slider knee high and on the outside corner of the plate...over the centerfield wall. Sometimes they just try to make contact on a tough pitch and get a basehit. You swing for the fences when you get a waist high fastball right down the center of the plate that looks the size of a beachball... that's when you swing for the home run. Be disciplined, be patient...and trade like a Ted Williams, or a Tony Gwynn... not a Jose Conseco. You don't become a .300 hitter and a Hall of Famer on just Home Runs... you need a few singles, doubles, triples and walks to make it to Cooperstown. Trading is no different... later, SOTB