This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Negative Interest
From the Slope of Hope: We are well into the eleventh year of Slope of Hope, and I think part of the appeal of the blog has been that I write from the heart. I've debated today whether I should write this post, but I'm just going to go with the same instinct that I've always had and write what I'm feeling.
Specifically, I am starting to wonder if I've completely lost interest in the markets. My life still revolves around U.S. equities, watching the charts during market hours and keeping an eye on the ES and NQ after hours, as well as FOREX. But, I've got to tell you, the past six years have transformed my disposition toward the markets from excitement to frustration to despair to disillusionment to sheer tedium.
To be sure, I'm not alone in these feelings. A number of my closest trading acquaintances have, in one form or another, divorced themselves from the market, or at least their former style of trading. Three flavors of transition spring to mind:
- Adaptation - These are folks who have decided that the old style of trading doesn't work anymore, and they've taken a totally new approach to the markets. One chap in particular (you know who you are!) has become his own high-frequency trader (or at least something closer to that), making hundreds of trades a day, seeking to capture tiny profits on each. Molecool has built an entire company around his new trading system. Some folks have switched to binary trading. Regardless of the change, this category describes people who have dumped traditional analysis and trading (which I still am engaged in) for something radically different.
- Treason - I use this term jokingly, but these are people who have changed from permabears to permabulls (again, you know who you are!) Their prognostications are just as passionate as before, but instead of sounding like mouthpieces for ZeroHedge, they sound like mouthpieces for Jim Cramer. Not to say this is foolish - - let's face it, the market just keeps going up - - but I can't help but feel a twinge of betrayal.
- Abandonment - Finally, here's the group that has simply said "f*ck it" (which isn't easy, considering the difficulty of pronouncing an asterisk) and stopped trading altogether. Our beloved BDI is a shining example of this, and good for him for giving up on these absolutely ridiculous markets and focusing on his new line of work. I'd be lying if I said I didn't envy him.
Well, if I'm so unhappy with the markets, why not follow suit? Well, let's take them one by one.
Adaptation seems the noblest of the above three. After all, don't intelligent, thoughtful people change their style to fit new conditions? Isn't that the entire basis of evolution? Yeah, it is. But there are plenty more opportunities in life than trading.
For instance, I gave binary trading a try. I was pretty excited about it at first. But, for me, it's ungodly boring beyond all measure. The folks at Slope who successfully trade binary refer to it as "working in the salt mines", since they're quite aware that it's a drudgery, albeit a profitable one (for some, at least).
"But, Tim, making money is what it's all about. Don't you want to make money?"
Ummm, no, I don't. Not that way. I don't handle boredom well.
If I was offered half a million dollars a year to sew buttons on shirts, that would be a fantastic offer, but I wouldn't take it. I need my mind to be engaged and my creative urges satisfied. Sewing buttons doesn't do it for me. Neither does binary trading, or executing hundreds of trades HFT-style. I'm a swing trader at heart, and I choose not to change.
Well, how about becoming a raging bull? No, thanks. I think the 15,000 posts (literally) I've written offer up a respectable argument on that count.
OK, how about just leaving trading completely? Well, one problem with that is that I've spent over a decade of my life building out this little corner of the Internet. It actually doesn't take that much interesting motion in the markets for me to find charts I really like to share. But I know myself well enough to know that, unlike Bob Prechter, I can't simply cease trading and discuss charts purely on an intellectual level. I've got to have skin in the game. I've got to actually be in the mud to care about this stuff.
So I feel a bit stuck, and I'm not quite sure why I'm in this funk. I think it's just the tedium and monotony of markets lately. Over four months ago, the S&P was at about 2080. Right now, it's at about 2090. Surely there must be better uses of our time than a market like this.If these markets just keep doing what they've been doing lately, I really need to get the hell out of here.
- advertisements -
NEVER SAY DIE!
What's wrong w free infinite supply of $?? Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country will give you. It's free!!
Tim, I hear you! How I hear you!
This is not a free market anymore.
The ups and downs are triggered by politics...not by fundamentals.
Bad economic news? Big up day...cuz Govt/Fed will step in.
Good economic news? Often down cuz Govt/Fed will not likely step in.
Govts doing the Zimbabwee economics thingie?
Gold/Silver should be shooting up....but then do not.
etc etc etc
Used to be that I could get 5% on a 12 month CD....good safe income for a non-pro investor.
No more. Govt/Fed sets interest rates to help itself and screw elderly on fixed income investments.
Solar? Lost my shirt.
Low income housing? Lost my shirt.
Energy stocks? Butt kicked.
Metals? Butt more kicked.
What to buy these days? Apple at historic prices and join the lemmings?
Hey! We have an Apple pc....twice the price of an equivalent generic and has been less trouble free.
Never again.
We hear you Tim and you have my upmost respect for all you do at your blog. In a normal market you buy stocks and then you short stocks. Have been involved in that for over 30 years. But these last 4 years with 2 exceptions, one that worked and one that did not I have not shorted one stock, ETF or bond. My point, these markets are no longer normal and it is not worth it. Has it been over 2 years since we have seen a 10% correction?
So I have gold, silver and a few miners, all of which are under water and hang in there. My commissions to Ameritrade are down 95%. I really have no interest in these markets.
Thank you. I've been trying to adapt, after skills I spent 20 years honing apparently don't matter anymore. Finding it a daily struggle to try to manage client risk as opposed to going all in and eliminating (maybe) career risk.
It's so broken that I wonder what they teach in B School these days? I mean the student smust crack up if the professor talks about things like "fundamentals."
The excitement of trading is the fun of being in a crowd and trying to predict how they will react. When the crowd has been rendered powerless to influence anything, and rather is now forced into a pre-decided, molded channel? Yeah, there's no fun in that. It'll get fun again when the crowd breaks out, and there will be plenty enough excitement for everyone. At the same time there is excitement in the money world, look for "excitement" on the streets, too. The pressure is building. Change is going to be more than a bull or bear market when the walls containing sentiment collapse.
completely agree with you...central bank driven markets are sucking the life out of me...I truely think I would get more satisfaction out of running a soup kitchen
Yeah it does get real sucky sitting there looking at the screen with SPY trading for 2 - 3 hours in a 40 cent range. Only move is via an Up algo or two and then a down algo or two.
Latest thing I notice is that it does not matter if overnight SPX futures is down or up trend, but for the past 3 days there is some huge buy programs on futures that kick in just as the cash market opens. Plunge Protection Team? Vroom up goes the cash market.
Sittting there and watching how the Algos can rip a trade to shit, I wondered .... aside from last October, I wonder how many Trillions have been lost by short sellers and Put buyers?
And it truly sucks when you are stopped out 9 of 10 short trades.
My inclination too is to toss in the towel on trading. Buy 100 shares af SPY and 100 of IWM and say fuck it. Buy in May and go away?
You certainly cannot beat a Zombie market .. I mean a new addition
Don't fight the Fed
Don't fight the trend
Don't fight the Zombies.
And Zombie it is. Bad news does not mean shit. Hell - I heard a guy today state that the earnings season doesn't matter. In his opinion, the market has priced EVERYTHING in.
Hell look at the reception to the latest Growth numbers from China. Prior to the past several years, thet news would have been greated with a 1,000 point Dow fall. Today? Who the hell gives a flying fuck? WTF didfference does it make? Ramp everything up to new records (midcaps) or near records.
And did the trannys collapse today? The airlines on the Oil spike?
Piss on it.
Wait for the PPT surge. Buy volatility. Sell volatility on the Euro-close drop.
Winning is boring.
Het presidium in Nederland wordt pas vrijdag geïnformeerd over de nieuwste ontwikkelingen in hotel GradjA. In het DAB-systeem is de kamervoorzitter en de vice-president van de @RaadvanState dezelfde (rechts)persoon. Op die manier heeft het collectief bewustzijn van Nederland ook meteen toegang tot het geweten van netwerk @0ranjePapegaaY.
http://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/risico-op-nieuwe-financiele-crisis-nee...
In ieder geval zal het weekelijkse gesprek tussen de Koning en onze @MinPres ook gaan over de bevindingen van Koningin Máxima. Zij neemt vandaag en vrijdag in Washington deel aan de voorjaarsvergadering van de Wereldbank Groep (WBG) en het Internationaal Monetair Fonds. Daar zal informeel de volgende fase van de 3e SpinozaGolf bekend worden gemaakt. Behalve moeder van haar kinderen is Máxima sinds 2009 ook het KanariePietje van secretaris-generaal Ban Ki-moon van de Verenigde Naties.
http://nos.nl/artikel/2030377-geen-commissie-voor-gedupeerden-woekerpoli...
Minister Dijsselbloem heeft woensdag in een Kamerdebat al gezegd dat hij niet kan garanderen dat verzekeraars zich aan het script van de 3e SpinozaGolf zullen houden. Woekerpolissen zijn beleggingsverzekeringen die veel heeft opgeleverd aan netwerk WitteGejT, maar de haat van het volk tegen het SCHULD=H00P-principe alleen maar heeft aangewakkerd. Dijsselbloem zegt het ParadigmaConflict wel te begrijpen en wil zelfs graag een 'nationale commissie instellen om de rommel op te ruimen'.
Eurogroepvoorzitter: 'Maar het is te complex en het gaat gewoon niet lukken', 'Een commissie kan alleen werken als alle verzekeraars en gedupeerden zich van tevoren committeren aan de uitkomst' en 'Zover reikt mijn macht niet'!?!??
Het is duidelijk dat Dijsselbloem de onmacht van de politiek om het systeem 'Liegen om te Leven' te ontmantelen wel voldoende zichtbaar heeft gemaakt.
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2015/04/15/overleg-coalitie-over-opvang-illegal...
IMF-directeur José Vinals wilde nog niet zo ver gaan om het kwantitatieve verruimingsbeleid van de centrale banken te bezien als de manier om de haat tegen de werking van het systeem 'Liegen om te Leven' nog wat verder op te voeren. Netwerk @MinPres gebruikt ondertussen het gedoe rondom 'de opvang van illegalen' om ook de VN ervan te overtuigen dat ...
Why do you post German shit on an English website?
Right-click your mouse on it and choose "Translate to English".
It would be far more efficient if the author did that.
That is Dutch, not German.
Face it Tim, modern Algs are programmed to suck retail traders accounts dry by exploiting many traditional TA methods and common stop levels. Personally, when I drift into a losing streak, I revert to paper-trade for up to two months. This pacifies the deeply rooted desire to trade without any stress. I've been trading FT since 2002. Also, if you enjoy spread trading may I suggest checking out John Carter@Simpleroptions.com. The Bull market which began March09(SPX M/WK) is still intact.
I think you are looking at it all wrong Tim!...You should be testing good "SHORT" positions!
You know all those companies, going up in price, are not worth their current price and are heading lower.
try it, you'll like it...Right
It's over. Isn't it. Suck in the Doom.
How do you make money binary trading? I thought it was a giant sucker bet?
O ya Tim it sounds like it is time for a vacation. Take the summer off and I guarantee next fall you will see something exciting.
A succinct summary of how I feel also. I chose abandonment; putting my investment/trading in tangible local trading, reducing myself from equity trader to common merchant. Good luck to all of you fighting the fight; and to you Tim, thanks for your posts.
How can you trade a down swing when you know the Fed or citidel or ICANN will gap you premarket into the poor house
at least I have been smart enough to have not shorted in size anything in 6 years.
but even the up plays have me spooked lately
I feel your pain, Tim.
They keep changing the rules and moving the goal posts, but this too shall pass.
Hang in there, Champ. We need you.
I've read you for years Tim. I know this quandry. 2008 taught me to become educated or at least try to understand all the machinations from sub prime to QE. Now it is better to just be a lemming and drink the cool aide...till it is not. Thanks for all the work.
KILL SELF
You usually get talks like that right at the top.................
Good luck anyway
Keep up the good work
There once was a day, while I worked at LACMA, that I saw Corning drop 300 points in 2000. I bought a bit. Two hours later I sold it and made $35,000.
I haven't been in the market since 2008.
I'm one of the "Fuck it's".
One effect of the NIRP has been to destroy seniors on a fixed ss income or even some pensuioers who get COLA which has been near zero for years despite the soaring Real cost of living. There's alot of retirees where I live who calculated they can live on 5%-to-8% returns on their pension savings for rest of their lives only to be very disappointed and now scambling to survive and not be thrown out of their [overpriced] houses they cannot sell in this warped market.