Miscellaneous

Shape Of My Heart

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A slightly different post today…
I recently came across an interview Sting gave about the song ‘Shape of My Heart’ and guess what? Yes, it made me think of trading. It’s interesting that in all these years, the song was release in 1993, I had never made the connection…
Here is what Sting said about the song in a promotional interview:
“I wanted to write about a card player, a gambler who gambles not to win but to try and figure out something; to figure out some kind of mystical logic in luck, or chance; some kind of scientific, almost religious law. So this guy’s a philosopher, he’s not playing for respect and he’s not playing for money, he’s just trying to figure out the law – there has to be some logic to it. He’s a poker player so it’s not easy for him to express his emotions, in fact he doesn’t express anything, he has a mask, and it’s just one mask and it never changes.”
And here are some of the lyrics:
He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn’t play for the money he wins
He don’t play for respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of a probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance
ENJOY!

EOY Action

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As we move into the last trading day before the start of the holiday season, our focus will be on how the weekly candles on the indices close today.
Everyday posts on the blog will resume in 2018 but the twitter feed will remain active. If possible, we’ll try to run some kind of open-access webinar over the holidays, so stay tuned for details here on the blog.
If you are looking to sign up for our Daily Webinar Group, please note that today is the last one for 2017. Daily sessions will resume on January 2nd and the recommendation would be to sign up before then as that is when we go through our year-end review and look at the bigger themes/swings for 2018.
Remember that trading condition can be very thin from hereon into 2018. Usually, you would not expect to see aggressive and sustained action but stranger things have happened…

Floored

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Weekend Risk

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“The greater the demands on me, the more I need to sustain my inner calm and stability.” – bkwsu.org
A lot of headline risk today and over the weekend. Draghi, May, North Korea, New Zealand & German Elections… as usual, we favor defensive positioning into the weekend. There is very little to add to what we have been discussing these past few weeks. We are just waiting to get all our ducks in a row.
Today is shaping up to be one of those days where you could see a lot of air-pockets across teh board as most participants are in ‘wait and see mode’ in a headline driven market. A lot of the charts are still inside FOMC ranges and it will be very hard to read too much into the moves unless we get decisive breaks and holds outside these ranges. More importnatly, for a bigger pictures point of view > no change to our outlook.
Remember that risk happens fast and that picking up pennies in front of a steamroller works until it doesn’t. In this current context / environment, there is absolutely no excuse to getting caught off-guard over the weekend.

CPI Focus

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“Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.” – John Maynard Keynes
Since we keep on getting questions about the daily webinar sessions and to mix it up a little, today’s note is slightly different. Pretty much all of the latest charts we have posted on the blog or on twitter and discussed in the weekly outlook video are still in play so we are just going to highlight some of the things we are going to be discussing in today’s session:
  • EEM is on the run but USDJPY doesn’t seem to care just yet and we will probably not have a clearer picture unless we see a a break and hold outside of the 114.50/112.00 range. We still believe that we have some unresolved business at the 112.00 pivotal mark.
  • Equities hovering at highs, waiting for CPI numbers as bonds sold off a bit and USD tries to stabilize around the November low. It’s going to be down to the number to see which way we go but we believe there will be a lot of positioning post release, probably more so on a numbers miss. Could be a very interesting opportunity to get in on the next rotations.
  • A lot of wheeling and dealing on GBP pairs but where to get the biggest bang for your buck if you are trying to position for the next leg of the move? We suspect that it’s not on cable.
  • Financials, Retail, Tech… is there a tell on a possible market top out there?
  • What’s the deal with Silver and Gold and what other metals offer a far more interesting and less volatile asymmetric risk/reward profile.
  • What’s going on with the commodity currencies and why is our ranking in terms of interesting trade location > Kiwi, Loonie and Aussie.
Wishing everyone a great day ahead and an every better weekend! TGIF 😉

Update CTA/HF Performance

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Full Year 2016 from BarclayHedge:
  • Barclay CTA Index: -0.90%
  • Barclay Discretionary Traders Index: -0.83%
  • Barclay Currency Traders Index: 1.74%
  • Barclay Systematic Traders Index: -1.40%
  • Barclay UCITS CTA Index Index: 6.80%
  • Barclay UCITS Global Macro Index: -4.02%
  • Barclay Hedge Fund Index: 6.15%
  • Barclay Global Macro Index: 1.49%
  • Barclay BTOP50 Index: -4.88%

2016 Thank You!

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Talk about a year full of surprises… markets kept on forcing participants to stay focused, manage risk and continuously work on their game. The first thing that comes to mind is one of our favorite Jesse Livermore quotes:
“The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the man of inferior emotional balance, nor for the get-rich-quick adventurer. They will die poor.”
Despite the fact that many will find the quote harsh, it’s very hard to argue with. Remember that this is a very hard game and that no one that is actually trading and actively managing money is consistently hitting it out of the park. Like everything in life, it has its ups and down; the important thing is to try to keep things on a steady path by minimizing extremes and constantly focusing on continuous improvement.
I would like to thank everyone for their continued support and look forward to keep on trying to take things to the next level, not only with 50Scouts and our live daily sessions but also with all of the free content.
Please note that the blog will be on holiday mode for the following week as we get ready for the New Year. Don’t forget that the best way to stay up-to-date is to simply sign up for email alerts.
Health and Wealth to all for 2017!
Thank you once again,
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Poll: Early Morning Outlook

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LinkedIn Updates…

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Updates will be posted on LinkedIn too:

I will not be sending out any invitations to connect but will be more than happy to accept any requests.

Hope this helps.

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