Skip Danger

The news over here in Asia about Japan is not as strident as Americans see back home on CNN. My family keeps urging me to skip danger and fly some other way home than through Narita, but there is no evidence of radiation floating down towards Tokyo. Of course, winds may change. 

A more immediate danger I have been facing is to my pocketbook & digital lifestyle: Internet at my hotel sucks. To skip that danger, I scored a great deal on a 3G SIM in Singapore, and wrote about it in my travel blog. Just a few years ago we marveled at going hotel to hotel around the world and staying connected, but now the expense and limitations of hotel Internet are glaring. Rather than suffer $150 during my stay for lousy connectivity, I found a way to pay $15 and get complete 3G nirvana. If you travel, you might take a look. The wireless world is rapidly eclipsing the wired. 

For you traders, it has been a big week. Some of you are dog tired. Time to lay back and enjoy the weekend! Your favorite indicator, one way or the other, the STU, expects a bigger slide next week. So far this correction has fallen in three waves, and today's reversal has all the earmarks of a wave 4. If instead it pops on Monday above 1294, something else is going on. Better news on oil (Libya) and my flight home (Japan nukes) could spur the pop.

Of course, if the global winds shift, all bets are off. The G7 intervention is already fading, with the USD down to new lows. The toxic Dollar cloud may drift over Tokyo, too. Japan may begin to swap Treasuries for Yen, bringing the wealth back home, and unbalancing the Fed's QE plans. 

Another site you might want to check out is Mamma's new Skip Danger stock forum. Frequent readers of the comments know that it is a place to continue the sort of dialog that made this site worthwhile.  

If you do go check it out, drop back and let me know what you think. 

Comments

[Wave Rust]

Yel, yesterday, planes, passengers and luggage from Tokyo were setting off radiation alarms at either SF or LA airports.

maybe it's like taking a dip in one of those radon pits ,,,, kills all the bugs in your body that you don't know about ,,,, like that Thai tapeworm. :)

then again, it might be just the thing for substituting yourself for a housefull of night lights.

"My husband glows in the dark! And, I can't get to sleep!"

"Duncan has always been enlightening, but this is over the top!"

"The Enlightened VC Angel? Where's his wings?"

An enlightened trader does not take risks if there is no payoff. Right? There's no money in macho.

wave rust

Cheers

[yelnick]

Wave, passengers triggering radiation detectors may be nothing more than heightened awareness. I gather it has all been trace levels. Nothing to glow about!

[Wave Rust]

yel,

that is the general thing- traces, bnut it is on everything, the plane, in the a/c system, on their clothes, etc.

they've got water pumps running water directly into one of the blownup plants from overhead cranes. but all 6 plants have been under stress from no electricity. electric power is hooked up for the water pumps ,,,, don't know if it's available to all of the other plants.

not much news about the other several plants up and down the eastern coast.

the info and pictures are getting more limited since the sensational visual is not available and no fly zone around the plant is being enforced.

recovery stories are the basic fodder now.

when do you have todecide whether to go through Tokyo or some other route?

wave rust

very odd- just watched joint press conference with oblahblah and the new prez of Brazil, without an interpreter! WTF? win the future? heck, she's a here on a formal state visit and she's a socialist too.

maybe Bill dailey is on vacation. "Won't you come home bill daily, won't you come home?" they sure do miss axelrod and emanuel. when hillary wins the softer kinder "no fly" zone over Libya argument, somethings missing ,,,, or alot is missing. Obama is an empty suit? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say. Shocked!

Is he just a suit with no values, no clue, no direction,,,, maybe he should call Soros or Trumpka.

That's a new twist of the Emporer's new clothes. No emporer, just the suit.

[Chartanalyst]

MSFT Weekend Update: http://niftychartsandpatterns.blogspot.com/2011/03/msft-weekend-update.html

[upstart]

Need to double check my counting, but it looks like 233 trading days from the 4/2010 top would be Mon. 3/28. Maybe the slide stops there.

[Wave Rust]

okay Duncan

here's a WeatherChannel.com forecast for Tokyo's radioactive plume that may bring it to you for Monday's Tokyo weather ,,,, emphasis on forecast.

not good is it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ni2qGEL4k&feature=player_embedded#t=163s

wave rust

[joe]

You are so pushing your luck Yelnik. Most sane people would be leaving that area of the world, not visiting there right now.

I sure hope you depart before anything "more eventful" occurs.

Joe

[yelnick]

Joe, just passing thru the airport. Two hours. My biggest worry is a wind shift and they shut down as a precaution. 

[joe]

I do wish you well.

Joe

[Intrinsic Value]

Good point, I never really thought like that Joe.

[JT]

Wave,

You continue to talk out of your ass.
The Brazilian President, Miss Dilma Rousseff was hosting President Obama; not the other way around as you claim.

She chose not to entertain any questions, and she also chose not to provide an interpreter. Her choice.

Time to change your meds dude.
Whatever it is that you are taking... aren't working!

LOL!

But leave it to you to think that we aren't funneling a tremendous amount of military ISR equipment to the Libyan rebels via Egypt... Boy, you sure are dumb!

[trendlines]

DJ World Index: Through the Elliott Eye!

The world has had an incredible year so far, with misfortune striking many diverse populations, in the form of natural disasters. I believe it is our duty to lend our support, relief and prayers to those affected, to the best of our abilities.

Are we about to witness a financial disaster as well? Attached below is a chart with a simplistic view of the world index through my Elliott eye. If the labelling is foreign to you, you may want to browse through this basic Elliott Wave Tutorial. If you use a magnifying glass, you may notice a discernible trendline break on the chart. Note that the US markets have a heavy weightage in this index.

The question is: Is the C wave done? or was this 1 of C?
The nature of the decline that is currently unfolding might give us some clues. Assuming the most bearish case, i have drawn a projection of the possible path the world markets could take.

Big Picture

Since markets are fractals, any form of wave labelling requires the big picture count to be accurate. You may want to check out Robert Prechter's free copy of the February Elliott Wave Theorist for the US market picture, if you haven't already done so. (Available until Mar-21)

Asian Markets - baked in the same oven?

Although all world markets have general correlations, not all of them are in the same wave junctures. Some more bullish than others. For the Asian Markets big picture, you may want to check out the Asian-Pacific Financial Forecast service, by the brilliant Mark Galasiewski.

Very Short-Term

In the very short-term, most markets seem to be a few declines away from a short rebound into the next few weeks, which will serve as a back-test.

All the best!

http://trendlines618.blogspot.com/2011/03/dj-world-index-through-elliott-eye.html

[yelnick]

Wave, still planning to head thru Narita. Walked around Singapore to find potassium iodide, but they do not import it at all. Nit really that necessary for folks over 40 anyway. So a couple of hours in transit is my risk, plus whether they load local food for the meals to the US. My buger worry remains I get re-routed on the day.

Sent from my iPad

[Virgil]

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tokyo-Radiation-Levels/196845207013685#!/pages/Tokyo-Radiation-Levels/196845207013685?closeTheater=1

http://metropolis.co.jp/quake/quake-2011-03/tokyo-atmospheric-radiation-levels/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12722435

You're looking for 100 before you need to worry

[Virgil]

The simplest and safest ways to read the trendlines is to look for a retest after the break. The buypoint is then when price drops back below the start of the retrace. This corresponds to the Elliott Wave 2 or what Bulkowski calls the 1 2 3 trend break. He likes for around 20% decline on the first leg as another criteria and believes the steeper the trendline past 45 degrees, the weaker it is.

I agree about the Asian-Pacific Financial Forecast. You can say with some validity that EWI services are untradeable, but he's made some great calls lately of what I've seen.

[Hank Wernicki]

"In order to model the stock market, one must use fractals." ... Benoit Mandelbrot

"There are ver few lines in Nature."

This includes trend lines ...

[upstart]

Trendlines, I don't see that you can get a free copy of The Theorist. It looks like it's comodities free week at EWI. Am I missing something? Thanks.

[Hockthefarm]

trendlines/virgil:

So if this big down occurs as described, I guess it is bye-bye to the Obamster:

http://tradersnarrative.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/not-your-typical-pre-election-year-for-the-stock-market/

But the bottom line remains:

We need economic liftoff in the next 12 to 18 months or the real Prechter Point will be reached. i.e. no more debt spending to artificially hold the world economy up. The Bernank gets a wax job!
Hock

[Hockthefarm]

Hank:

""There are ver few lines in Nature."

There are trillions and trillions of them. Have you ever heard of a phase envelope??

Hock

[Virgil]

Hock it looks like a case of the chickn or the egg. Hank, fractals occur at critical points but how about the rest of the time? We're really looking at coefficient clustering. Yelnick explained it recently comparing it to percolation dynamics. The trends behave like a system at max entropy

[Virgil]

I like Skip Danger. It reminds me of the alt.newsgroups days. Information was free and worth something back then, burrowed away in the catecombs and caverns of the usenet like Carolingian Monks diligently recording & chronicling existence in anticipation of the next turning. Every rat boy in the inner city was going to have mini-eniacs embedded in their fingernails and every jerkwater rube was going to constuct micro manhatten projects in their storm cellers while the 100th monkey was going to skip across the morphogenetic field and turn bombers into butterflies.

I guess it worked. Now a guy burns himself in Timbukto and Facebook overthrows the dicator half way across the world. All the while 1000 guys are analyzing ever tic of the market like monkeys banging on typewriters. Still no perfect sonnet yet.

[Chartanalyst]

AAPL Weekend update: http://niftychartsandpatterns.blogspot.com/2011/03/apple-weekend-update.html

[Wave Rust]

Thanks for the help JT.

I didn't have time to watch yur buddy oblahblah more than a minute or two. I was trying to trade most of the day.

it's good you don't trade, or you'd have that interference or interruption of your earnest pursuit of issuing more bile.

Bile build up is bad and can cause gout ,,,, maybe you already have some mouth gout ,,, sure seems like it.

You take care JT deBile.

wave rust

[Hockthefarm]

Virgil:

Interesting that at critical points in a phase diagram, things get a little mirky. Practically, we avoid them.

Have been quite busy with work so am still reading Probable Outcomes by Easterling. I am enjoying it. He speaks to several age groups in the book and compares them to earlier generations faced with smilar stock market cycles. For those with 10 years or less to work before retirement, he advises caution.
Says it is critical for this group to have money 5 to 10 years from now when the bull resumes. Bottom line, he sees us in a secular bear that won't end for 5 years, possibly 10 years. This group should be growing their retirement funds with savings, not by taking on market risk.

Great market for day traders, but that is not investing by any stretch. I wonder how the big pension funds will handle the next few years?
Hock

[BZX]

upstart wrote::::233 trading days from the 4/2010 top would be Mon. 3/28.

I'm getting that same area as a possible rally high

Multiply the moon by the square root of 1 (spiral calendar formula) you get 41.5 days off the Feb 2011 high which is somewhere March 31

39 days is another cycle I watch -- off the Feb 2011 high is somewhere March 29

Next week should be interesting for the current rebound bounce to stall out and possible mini panic situation

[BZX]

i meant square root of 2 which is 1.414 * 29.5 = 41.7 days

go back over the market there are lots of trend changes at that 7 week mark

[BZX]

another typo....not 7 week but *6 week mark :)

you get the picture -- trend change next week!

[Wave Rust]

BZX

you are right, exactly.

All three days, March 28th, 29th, and 31st, are going to be trend/direction changes ,,,, sounds like a very wild time.

IMO, SPX goes much higher very fast at times, then sloppy and inching up. But sell either mid May, or, possibly just above spx 1500 before Memorial Day ,,,, whichever comes first.

Salute our service men and women, and then, sell the heck out of everything, and I mean everything ,,,, cover all shorts/hedges on the first big down move in June and July ,,,, then buy it all back in late summer/early fall (like Labor Day-ish).

Even bears will buy this low. The doesn't seem to be in yet ,,,,

wave rust

[JT]

"Thanks for the help JT.

I didn't have time to watch yur buddy oblahblah more than a minute or two.
I was trying to trade most of the day." - Wave Rust

Leave it to you to think that the markets were open on SATURDAY when President Rousseff of Brazil was speaking with Obama. You really need to change your meds dude . . . You are more of a fraud than Prechter.

[Mamma Boom Boom]

>I like Skip Danger. It reminds me of the alt.newsgroups days. Information was free and worth something back then,<

Virgil, I like it too. It's a nice clean look. Has value written all over it.

[twitter.com/Frac_Man]

Hock

Man created Lines

That's Old School Geometry

Do you see Squares in Nature ?

[Wave Rust]

JT
you gotta get out more often.

anyone who knows anything, knows that you can trade 24/7 365.

Sunday mornings in the east are a little slow though.

wave rust

[Wave Rust]

Hank,
I would argue that man is in nature. Is it naturally occurring straight lines that you are referring to?

btw, there are lines all over your charts. and, in its simplest terms, isn't your fractalization of market moves just an attempt to capture the natural repetition of the linear movement of price?

if fractals are predictive, why do they sometimes not work our and other times they do? Is it you or the fractal?

those are genuine quesions ,,,, no mocking involved. :)

btw, crystals have many straight lines. does that count?

wave rust

[twitter.com/Frac_Man]

Wave

Last time I checked Crystals are Rough

Hank

show me the straight lines ....

[Virgil]

Cleavage planes in galena and calcite. Spider web, honeycombs, beams of light. Symmetry is a property of a low temperature/low entropy system like a crystal with clustering, clumping, correllations. Total energy - temp x entrop equals free energy. Nature always tries to minimize free energy. At low temps (pull backs flats, or retracements) entropy (volitility) can be low too as long as total energy is high (clumping into patterns)

[what ever happened to P3?]

Once again EWI and Hochberg were wrong yet Yelnick continues to reference their "guidance". Yelnick, I have always enjoyed your writing and thought but asked you on several occassions why you continue to reference EWI given that their accuracy % has to be very low. I just wish you would quit giving those guys credence by referring to their work. They are costing people alot of $$ all the while they continue to live well off their subscription base.

[anti-EWI puts everyone and everything else to shame]

P3 Dude:

Are you five years old?

Nobody is forcing you to follow EWI's advice. You could have done the intelligent thing and faded them and made lots of money. If you had done the opposite of what they have advised over the past couple of decades you would be richer and wiser. I have followed many gurus and strategies and newsletters and there is nothing that comes close to the wonderful record of anti-EWI.

So grow up, wise up, and start taking the anti-EWI stand.

[trendlines]

upstart, sorry i saw your message late. The free theorist was until Mar-21. If you did try before that, you should've been able to access it with a club id, which is free.

virgil/hock: good points. so far the decline in the SPX has only been in 3 waves. For an EW purist, the 5th wave needs to be here with a turn down below 1300. Any further upside indicates C wave is likely not done yet.

[trendlines]

upstart, if you really like a copy, leave your email here and i will send it to you.

[Wave Rust]

trendlines
C should be done by the end of the month

I know I have sounded like a bullish broken record for years ,,,, but for an investor, this bull market is so frikkin young, I can't believe how high my projection mechanix take this market into the next decade.

I feel like I did back in the 70's when the Dow was trying break above 1,000. It was like, "If it ever breaks it and holds and then keeps going, the Dow could double or triple!!!"

Well, it went alot farther ,,,, I have since expanded my imagination capacity.

BUT, here is my week to week concern: many bulls showing up on Bloomies, CNBC, WSJ, financial mags, Yelnick !, Birinyi, and so on.

I'm well aware that this is now the 3rd wave or "Recognition Wave", but as I see it, all 3rd waves are recognition waves, regardless of degree.

Since I see this wave (from March '09 low), on daily/weekly bars, as a 3rd of Intermediate 1 of Primary 3, the markets have lots of price and time to go ,,,, that is, 1,000's of SPX points and years and years of rally with some magnificant "crashes" interspersed to keep things orthodox with Elliott's simplicity (not RBOB "gassy" Prechter).

If this is the 3 of Int 1 of P3, then 4 should begin in several weeks, and last for a few months of sideways than 5 should end around Super Tuesday in 2012, when Oblahblah looks like he's going to be re-elected.

And, that's my tunnel-view of the near term.

wave rust

want a 2nd opinion, ask JT. He'll ask Carl Futia and then get back to you. LOL