Alive and Well

I'm still here  trading everyday to make my living. That's because I'm a pro and not one of these amateur hacks that used to flood the bloggospghere, CNBC, and every other media outlet w/ nonsense and drivel. 

This has been brutal but it is what it is. Rome is falling. The good news I suppose is that this dreadful bear market has eliminated a lot of the mooches from the trading ranks. I most say that there were some real retards out there giving advice and blogging about a subject that they knew very little about -- Trading. A few of my friends got wiped out and are looking for work. Why'd they wipe out? They thought they knew something, thought certain stocks were just too low and wouldn't go any lower (bargains?), and worst of all they failed to bail out and even added to losers. One fellow thought that the government would save the day. 

What separates me from the hacks? Smarts.. No... they are probably smarter than I am. Three things, 1) I cut losses, 2) position sizing, and 3) I know that I don't know anything!

Me -- I've made some changes the past few months as I have done for the past 25 years. Persistancy is important as well as a glutton for punishement. A couple of things. Value investing is out -- I knew it was garbage 10 years ago but for some reason couldn't completely let go. I think I'm finally there. Value investing is horseshit because it leads you to believe that you know something when in fact the market is making you look good when things are working. These jokers who preach value investing, cash flow, etc... in reality don't know squat -- that's clear. A fact!  The downside will kill you. Value investing is just another name for cycle investing. Buy when the stocks go down and hope that the market bails you out.  These guys reading annual reports are wasting their time! Plus they got no, nada, exit strategy. You gotta have one or these markets will take everything you got.  It also requires a faith in these companies which I can no longer trust. The managers, executives and boards are a bunch of corrupt conniving whores. Not the kinds of folks I want to invest w/.  Do you want to place your money with Jeffery Immelt with the hope that GE will turn it around. I don't. This decade has convinced me that these stocks are nothing more than pieces of paper. I no longer care what they make, whose running it, what their earnings are, what their projected cash flows are, moats --- none of that bs. I care about one thing -- whether the stock is moving -- Up or Down. I have no allegiance to it, no annual reports, no conference calls (I don't believe what the bozos say anyway). 

I'm   about  85% committed  to trading the trends. Last year I developed 4 wonderful models that provide objective trend following signals. Two models are based on varying breakout time frames, and  the other two use moving average signals. I run them through Fidelity's Wealth Pro Lab which is a fantastic program. I also trade the futures this way. I also developed a intraday  model for trading the futures on a very short term time frame. Catching those bursts in the Bonds, e-minis, currencies. Very little thinking - just following. In essence hitting the micro short term trends (minutes, hours to a few days). I try to keep my opinions to a minimum and just follow the signals. I use hard stops and that's it. What I'm doing is very systematic. This is where my trading future lies until I quit after the next bull market. Dow 20,000 - 25,000 is when I quit and do somthing else. 

A couple of nice trends I caught recently  include SLV and GOOG. On the futures end I put an initial position this morning in soybeans. I've got a long position in sugar and gold and a short position in Live Cattle.