Many thanks sketcher, good to hear that you are profitable with the filtering and high probability stuff.
Not sure what you mean about ‘fanboy’, long time since I was called any type of boy
Also not sure about all the despondency that you witness on BP, maybe I’m blind to it, apparently that comes with age.
The need to predict for me is paramount, if you can develop that particular trait with success then the market opens up with all sorts of opportunity, from being in business to being an amateur trader.
Take care.
(more conciliatory post than the first :))
Well, to each their own I suppose but I haven’t needed to predict anything to open up the opportunities presented to me as this year closes & next year opens.
Those guys aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, as apparently weren’t the technical template crew, & they don’t fit the profile of your typical forum participant, but I’ll be forever grateful for their input in fast forwarding my automated model implementation courtesy of Tess & Co’s programmers, & also for putting me in front of investors who, in my wildest dreams, I wouldn’t have stood a chance accessing.
They made an assurance that if my results & consistency held up this year punting my own money using their framework they’d give me the opportunity to talk to some serious money & they’ve been as good as their word!
Folks can disparage them as much as they like (& they do) but they don’t know the half of it & those fella’s won’t & don’t need to brag or boast about it either. They literally could care less what anyone thinks of them. But boy, when you actually meet them & see what’s going on behind the curtain it certainly raises an eyebrow or two!
DoubleEcho (Scott) & apache (jose) linked me to a long standing successful punter in September through to years end, where not only am I currently executing my deals alongside him from his institutional sized account, but also receiving 1to1 options tuition to improve & enhance my risk, defence & offensive tactics going forward, which I’ll need when I take up a split funding deal early next year. I’m damned if i’m going to put all this work in only to crawl along for the next few years punting a typical retail sized account.
They needn’t have done any of that, certainly not to the extent they have, but it further confirms they practice what they preach & put their faith in the concepts they present by divvying up to those who have the nous & wherewithal to step up, stay disciplined/focused, get their arses in gear & evidence their progress.
I wonder if anyone of you will even see this, (I hope Peter does)
When it comes to fundamentals and longer term view and some future prediction there’s no better place than here
So as I was scrolling through trade economics one thing caught my attention the government debt / GDP figure and how most developed nations have enormous debt with US at 104%, Japan 229%, Italy 132%, Greece 176%, Canada and Spain in the 90%. And in comparison China is at 44% and Russia at 18%.
I know I shouldn’t be making any conclusion based off of this number alone, but here we’re talking about government debt not private sector. I just don’t understand how the world is so concerned about China getting through the economic slowdown (transition) when most of the developed nation’s debt looks much more concerning.
And where do you guys think US economy and dollar stands after the election ? Any one of you done inter market analysis ? Peter, FE, Philip ?
EDIT: maybe I should have also looked at the current account balance but in the long run logically speaking money will dry out if there’s no inflow. As working age population shrinks government tax income will decrease. Where do we stimulate growth in the economy as population ages and household/private sector debt mounts ? I read a piece on negative interest rate, from what I read it won’t do much to stimulate borrowing, spending and investment but there’re more downsides. Although I haven’t done any concrete numeric analysis I don’t see a pretty picture.
It’s very much changed times in the US and UK right now. Previously politicians that are regarded as being ‘conservative’ would insist on a policy of less govt spending, less taxation and in more recent times a programme of austerity.
In the UK’s case that meant a clear, defined target of zero deficit by 2020.
The conservative mantra was always ‘balance the books’, the more left approach was to spend your way out of trouble - often a depreciating currency helped pay back the deficit.
Presently the UK and likely the US are stealing the left’s mantra, the notion of the need for a balanced book is on the back burner, spend now, worry later.
Both sets of politicians do not like low interest rates, nor are they fans of an independent central bank, we now know that Carney will depart, maybe even sooner than the announced 2019 date, Yellen?
This change of focus by the UK and soon US is designed to help retail spending, boost the economy and by consequence raise the value of their respective currencies.
One major currency sticking with austerity is the Euro, perhaps Eur/Gbp lately is reflecting some of this.
Up ahead I suspect no more rate cuts, good chance that the cycle is now changing, first the US, then either EU or UK.
Have a good week.
Edit: UK likely to announce a decrease in VAT (sales tax) from 20% to 17.5% as a temporary measure, first concrete step to the new ‘stimulus’, bet Trump is watching.
Btw, the UK Fin minister shares the concern expressed in your post, on Sunday past he commented:
“We have to maintain our credibility - we have eye-wateringly large debt, we still have a significant deficit in this country and we have to prepare the economy for the period that lies ahead.”
The PM likewise is rolling back on the rhetoric, yesterday she spoke:
“People don’t want a cliff-edge; they want to know with some certainty how things are going to go,”
So there is hope that politicians are at last listening to the economic advisors.
(wonder was it the same cliff that I mentioned back a couple of weeks ago :))
Those advisors are warning that debt will cause problems up ahead, specifically because the consensus is that interest rates will rise globally.#
In Jens Weidmann’s words in Frankfurt on Friday past when speaking of interest rates - “what goes down must come up.”
Some weeks/months ago you were talking about parity on EUR/GBP and about the forecasts of different banks. Do you think those forecasts are still in place? I do see some fundamental changes maybe in the policies and also there is not so much GBP weakness in the last weeks. Will be interesting how it will turn out.
Seems like XAU and XAG strength did not hold too long, we are heading to new lows.
I see that DB are telling their clients that they still see parity on GBP/USD in 2017, obviously EUR/GBP is my own particular focus, there has been weakness on EUR since FOMC Wed, coming with the USD buying.
That weakness translated to EUR/GBP coupled with some deals on GBP/JPY.
In UK there has been talk of a ‘transition’ period, this idea was first raised privately by BOE and it makes sense, although some of the expert politicians are already rubbishing the notion of a ‘soft’ Brexit.
I recall an old trader once saying that a currency never travels directly to it’s destination, as Williams commented, it’s like a drunk, he staggers first one way, then the other, the trick is to figure where he is headed.
I suppose not much need for buying Gold now that we finally have a business person in charge of the world’s largest economy.
I hope the holiday was great and you started a great and successful 2017.
Lets start the year with a fundamental topic. Here in the blogs (and also on other sites) the analyst´s favorite topic to explain GBP movement is “hard Brexit” or “soft Brexit” as it changes on a daily basis every day in the news. They like to state that in “Brexit days” no matter which kind of economic data comes out, it is like a knock out and the Brexit topic will decide the direction.
Now my question to you is what do you think about that? Also the same? Or is it only a fancy way to describe price action if there is no better reason why price moved strongly in one way? How do you personally see the “hard Brexit” and “soft Brexit” influencing the economy and price action?
Above was 3 months ago, the notion of hard or soft was then being born.
Things have been busy since, many commercials have been taking a view on Eur/Gbp, or more precisely Gbp/Eur - 1.17 seems to be the line - I’m thankful for how all has played out, yet concerned for those younger than I.
Always I felt that the beginning of this year would set the scene, so the week ahead could well be foundation, my instinct remains as the above post.
Btw, apart from likely renewed talk of tapering on Euro Jens Weidmann has been a voice in the wilderness so to speak, he has been warning of increased Euro inflation in recent months, now the numbers are proving him correct - watch closely his next speech, the market will react.
I also checked the COT Index signals on commodities and Silver and Gold is giving quite some false signals lately. Crude oil looks a lot nicer. I guess it is a hard battle for commodities as the USD sometimes shows a lot of strength and then there is some extended weakness as well. To make it easier: no obvious trends.
I suppose difficult for USD traders to form an opinion with all the tweeting etc. - will take a while to see a economic policy formulate from all the turmoil.
Likewise with oil, my own feeling is that COT is mirroring a shorter term view being taken by commercials.
I suspect that they may be hedging on short term gains but are very aware that the longer term outlook on oil price remains subdued despite OPEC, good chance that US policy may be biased in favour of greater production regardless of environmental lobby.
Anyways, all long term stuff, right now the ‘week ahead’ on Eur/Gbp has just closed.
Price is finishing well below the 1.17 as mentioned, today was 1.14 - many of the international guys have pitched their tent at 1.17 or below (i.e. 84.00 or above) so instinct remains, and fingers crossed
sorry to enter your thread since i do not read it often and actualy never post.
i am/was looking for a good short entree on gold the last few months. But right now i am a bit suspicious on shorting gold.
It is of course too early to think about a trend reversal but the last 3 COT reports show a increase in open interest on gold alongside the latest reaction from 1125 to 1200, the volume aswell increased quite above the average of the latest downmove.
I entered a few short positions the last few days at around 1200-1207. The plan was to keep them open till minimum 1125 (and further) but today, after seeing the latest reports, i reduced the target to 1175-1150.
given the situation that the charts show a potential upmove (at around 1175-1150) i’m considering to start going long in the medium term on gold.
That is a funny way to start the post as in a forum the advantage is that you can post anywhere
Thanks for sharing your view on gold.
From a COT perspective, the one strategy I like the most and also like to use is the “1 minute Commodity Trader”. You find a link for the description on the first post of this thread.
Based on that, gold is not giving as good signals lately as in many occasions, this is due to the fact that we have a ranging market condition if we look at the last two years.
The trend is decided first in that strategy and then we only look to enter the trades in the direction of the trend.
Looking at the last trend changes, we had on in the beginning of 2016 when an uptrend formed, and one in the end of 2016 when the first sell signal came.
Based on this strategy we are still looking for sell signals. It is a good RRR to trade on this strategy as the SL does not need to be wide compared to the possible TP level.
And if a trade is stopped out, then it is an early indicator for a trend change.
From a COT perspective we are in a downtrend, but from a technical analysis perspective the lowest low on the weekly wasn´t broken yet.
Interesting is the difference between commodities, copper is already in an uptrend based on that strategy.
I have a question for you seasoned cot analyst: The school suggests using the “futures only” reports for cot analysis on the forex markets, but wouldn’t the "futures and options combined " report include even more market participants? Or does the synthetic compilation (futures equivalent) of the futures and options combined report makes it… irrelevant?
Sorry for the late answer. The question you ask was also once a topic I believe in the thread. In the beginning we used the futures only report, like it was suggested in the BP school. After that, we changed to the “futures and options combined report”. The reason was quite simple: based on the books we read about the COT, they used the combined report so we thought there is no reason not to do the same way like the experts do it.
I have to mention though that I did compare the results for some instruments and what I found is that the results were almost the same (at least for those which I observed).
I hope this helped, if you have further questions, do not hesitate to ask.
Thanks ForExchange (although my response time is shameful), I have another question. I read an article today on the topic of “dark pools” and I see that the SEC is regulating these “non public” exchanges. But, are the moves of these institutional traders included in the weekly COT reports?
To be included in the weekly report the size of the trade (lets call it the trading volume for the instrument) of the trader/company/institutition has to reach a certain size and you need to use the given exchange. I do not remember exactly what the size of that trading volume was, maybe Peter does.
Sorry, I haven´t seen your post as I do not get emails somehow anymore if there is a post. The new format of the site is not my best friend.
I check the site, unfortunately it seems like they offer now just very limited services for free. I also wanted to dig deeply in Gold, but it did not work.
I do not know any other site which has such great COT analysis online. Do you?
