Thank you for another set of relatable topics, Golden, it is greatly appreciated. Many here have seen the markets before the constant monetary intervention since 2009. I was trying to pay uni tuition and got into biotech, being comfortable with that because of prior study and experiences. Not sure I would have had a go without a specific pretense. It was not an interest in the markets per se, it was just about fledgling biotech companies. Passive investing. Probably not a good idea to do such things with the limited resources of a student. It was during a bull market, so it was hard to mess up. Sometimes we may not appreciate the relative ease of picking stocks during the mean-reverting advance seen in a bull phase. Much later on, trading became a thing in itself and the first serious trading was with metals. After that, it was volatility-related things and index futures. Once you suffer through and survive the initial issues that @shooting star nicely illustrates, it is not easy to turn away…even when things get as choreographed as they have been lately. Goals? I want to help my friends and go fishing for mahi mahi and yellowtail and other stuff off your coasts!
Hi @roberter, sorry Frank is in hibo. I enjoyed his parting lecture on liquidity. I would tell him that the first toads of the season are out, but this will offend. He might like some of the small colorful lizards we have here. Like him, they sit and wait even when their metabolism is getting into gear in the warmer weather. As for mammals, we have many and lately there is a cottontail rabbit who comes to my door, stopping to peer through the glass. She may have babies in the hedges, an area that offers security relative to the fields…but I've never seen one so bold. She would hang out for ages, and I saw her licking the pavers, so I went and got a mineral block. The next day she came by and licked it for quite a while and then left immediately, not to be seen near the office door for a few days. I guess she had enough moisture to compensate because she's been here briefly since. I see another spot on the block where she got some more salt. Hope she knows what she is doing. Wild creatures usually do.
This week's US market action was hard to read. The sideways moves are not the perplexing part. That jumpiness toward the end of the week is. It is hard to see how our current levels would inspire new money investments this month. Up front we have Wednesday’s FOMC decision and participants are still considering whether Thursday's hot consumer price data should be viewed relative to last year's issues. Amid continued sector cycling, the ES profile is registering indecision on top of previous indecision - and that is not comforting for swing traders. That lack of initiative-buying combines with the time of year, current valuations, index loft (relative to even before the covid drop) and a long list of risk-measurements related to implied volatility. That IV is on balance is getting sold as we see the longer-term grind lower in the VIX. The downside levels of ES/SPX support listed weeks ago here are still unrepaired as we change over to the September contracts in an array of futures. By the way, ES futures will have a wider difference to the SPX index as we start the new contract. I will be checking back on the June or continuous contract charts often anyway. Maybe we could dribble sideways to higher into quarterly expirations, but I will not be shocked if we get some realized volatility soon. I will only do intraday trading in index-wide products until I see a reason to do swing trades to the upside. That could come in the form of other timeframe buyers that I cannot currently detect. One would think traders with a medium-term view would require more evidence of conviction above the 4200 level, and I am surprised at how many futures traders think everything is fine here for an immediate and sustained run higher. If we do break higher in the short term, I will not regret having been sidelined because we can only trade what we think we understand. For now, I feel better in safety mode but watching carefully.
