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March 24th, 2008WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Catching a falling knife. This is a risky one. Stop $36.
Posted in Economy | Top Of Page
cryptogon.com
news – analysis – conspiracies
Seems like you have to be a circus performer to make any money in this market. I’ve actually been having a better time lately, since I got my bozo nose glued on, complete with multi-colored fro. I’ve noticed agriculture and water stocks making steady gains throughout the turmoil, while solar, the ostensible promise of the future, has been fluctuating wildly, but robustly. WWAT.OB moved from 1.08 on Wednesday to 1.00, dropped like a rock to .86 on Thursday, today it closed at 1.14, so had I the nerve to juggle scimitars as such, I could’ve made 32% in a few days. It’d be profiting off of idealism and the love-hate relationship that the mod mentality has with it. This whole thing is samsara.
The pennies can be great fun, or a nightmare. Make sure your stock is VERY liquid. When the pennies run, it can be VERY hard to get filled the way the crowd is going. So, when it’s gapping up, it can be hard to buy. When it’s gapping down, it can be hard to sell. Slippage can be insane. I think most brokers require limit orders on the pennies now, for good reason.
“I could’ve made,” is a phrase that all beginning traders hear in their heads over and over.
All I’ll say is:
Please learn some technical analysis techniques.
Don’t go in heavy, on anything.
Backtest your system.
Use fantasy money in a simulator to trade your picks on live market data.
Think, “I need to avoid getting decapitated today if I want to trade tomorrow.”
That’s a lot different than, “I couldn’t made…”
I am having serious moments of angst these days pdugan and Kevin over my investment strategy.
My research of late into future work to do in my day job shows me that bets placed on the future markets have a large hand to play in current and future pricing. Particularly in energy – I’ve been reading re for oil and natural gas, and how natural gas prices went through the roof over one rogue traders’ futures bet. Could this be the same thing occuring re food pricing? I dunno. I smell something funny going on.
What comes first? The chicken or the egg?
Bets that prices will go up in the future or that real costs are increasing? I dunno.
My knowledge of Peak Oil says yes, it is logical that prices are going up re oil and all the attendant trickle down costs.
Yes, I’m so into being liquid now I want the cash under the mattress.
So risk adverse right now that I think I’ve put my head into the sand and am starting to sing lullabies to myself so that I don’t go farking insane! Make money? I’m thinking more along the lines of preserving capital. And with the U.S. banks going through their voodoo metamorphosis, I am being to believe it is a dream, or more like the plot line of a science fiction novel that I’m going to survive the shootdown in Dodge City with a dime left of all of the electronic funny money no matter where I put it.
Catch a falling knife? I feel like I’ve become a sword swallower.
Kevin: Thank you for that general advice, I should try and detach my emotions further from my decision making. Tradeking has some tech analysis tools, which I use as probability adjusters in my decision making, I have made the mistake of going heavy on things, such as commodity stocks, last week.
I met one guy, an ex-pat in BsAs, who trades via an astrological system. He’s probably doing better than I am.
I should note, the same kind of swings I’m seeing in penny cleantech stocks replicates to the likes of Suntech ect. I think that sector is a real ambivilant point in the markets, since it seems to represent an energy solution out of the broken contract that economics is now struggling with. Just a theory though.
Eileen: If I were in your position, I’d be investing in land and permaculture around that land. Hedge against the game by playing outside the game.
Nice catch Kevin, 39.50 x 39.54 as I write this. Curious at what price you hand that knife off?
@jon
$36.78
The old daily Fibonacci retracement grid and stochastics under 20.
And in other news $ down sharply as Gold spot and April contract rallies back up to U.S. 935. Sweet!
As far as trading goes these days, no matte what you are trading watch out, these are “Strange Days”!
It’s like Crowley said: do not lust after results.