I love it!
definately me too 
[I]
“The pockets change, the suckers change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes, because human nature never changes.”
Jesse Livermore, 1923.[/I]
Golden golden advice . psychology of human behaviour. Fear and greed . nice post pipsmehappy
I am a bit cautious about adding to this particular conversation because it is not really related to the topic and I am by nature a very low profile person and very respective of other people’s interests. So apologies to PMH beforehand and I’ll be brief.
I do not disagree with what you are saying Turbo but I didn’t think we were actually discussing a war between machines and humans, only that machines on their own would end up all owning one stock and that the entire market would cease moving. I would certainly not envisage a war between men and machines, on the contrary, it seems the overall aim is for humans to use machines to gain the edge over other humans and to improve efficiency in market activity. It is the outcome of these developments that has allowed even people with no experience whatsoever to trade with even 10 dollars and micro -sized positions - and with spreads that even the world interbank market participants would have sung about only a few years back. Naturally, like all things in the greater picture of the universe, this creates both good and bad. What is used is also abused, what creates also destroys.
Everyone and everything has a good side and a bad side. We generally talk about “greed” and “fear” as though they are evil things. But in the overall development of mankind maybe these also have a positive, constructive and protective role. If, for example, one creates an political/economic system that suffocates the human drive for personal gain then the human stops working and channels energies into corruption and crime - is this not in essence the achilles heel of the communist structure? Similarly, fear is a protective emotion that helps to sustain what is achieved and avoid non-recoverable loss. These are not necessarily bad.
On the other hand we have emotions that are generally considered virtuous such as compassion and charity. These are currently overtly visible in the horrendous refugee problems throughout the European continent. There is an evident and good need to help fellow humans in distress, but uncontrolled compassion and a sincere but blind desire to help others are open to abuse by factions only intent on infiltrating and destroying the fabric of these countries through terrorism.
I do not think one can divide stocks and forex in this way. Forex was never intended as a production mechanism in itself. In fact forex isn’t a “thing” at all. It is money that is the “thing” - forex is only the exchange of various currencies, nothing more. Even from the early days of trading, there was a need for a common unit of exchange. A house builder could not build for a farmer and get paid in carrots. If one creates a product it is meaningless unless it can be sold and distributed. In a domestic market money provides that means of buying and selling and also overcomes the obstacle of time by allowing one to store wealth rather than having to eat carrots all day long before they go bad. 
But forex is [U]not [/U]currency. Forex is nothing more than an [U]exchange [/U]of currencies. Its object is to facilitate the sale of products into countries with a different currency to one’s own. How can a company grow beyond its own national borders and increase its stock value without being able to buy and sell in other currencies?
Surely, stocks and currencies are not mutually exclusive instruments - Where stocks might be the physical locomotive, money is the lubricant that allows it to move.
No, I have not forgotten that. But fund managers are not individuals who are simply given some arbitrary target and left to go on with it on their own. Behind every portfolio manager and institutional trader there is an organisation. Portfolio performance is measured and reviewed again industry benchmarks, not just how well some cowboy traded the market this year. Objectives are set by teams and organisations that also set rules and exposure limitations. In fact, many portfolios contain restrictions of profitability by limiting exposure on ethical, political or environmental grounds. It is not nowadays ALL about the money.
No, I am not a forex broker. Did I give that impression? Yes, I remember these and many other scams that have been uncovered - and there will always be more, as we are currently witnessing with the Panama leaks. But even though financial systems are always subject to abuse, fraud and corruption, is the only answer to regulate them so rigidly and openly that abuse is impossible - or would that limit economic advance so much that we would be much worse off? Is it better to have totally rigid regulated market that prevents abuse or an open market which accepts the risk of abuse and tries to prevent it and plug the loopholes but equally allows the fruits of free markets to flourish?
Hmmm, not so brief afterall, sorry!
Great post, Manxx!!!
Guys you have a lot of passion! , i can see how you posting things , you guys can publishing a book definitely
Well I guess its a kind of offshoot from the title of this thread - when markets are quiet we have time to actually think about what we are doing! (but that doesn’t automatically mean that we know what we are talking about - or what we are doing come to that!) 
But, you know, we males of the species are only capable of thinking about one thing at a time. I have always envied the female ability to manage an infinite number of issues simultaneously!
awesome thread some great posts
i am 1 yr into market study/trading and my guard hasn’t droped since (luckly for me very early on) the day i released what i was getting involved in
there are certainly some big moves on the horizon,the markets have to move to work, the brexit vote alone will cause big ripple at very least
main positive for me is as manxx said in quiet times we have more time to research so hopefully will be better prepared for potential moves
yes, yes, one thought process at a time
thats why we can stay focused and come to more precise conclutions
Manxx, sorry i didnt answare yet but this weekend i was Godfather in a wedding (i think in english its caled best men or so, not sure, in croatia its godfather) so i was drunk starting friday ending monday morning and barely looked into forum except some thought-less posts. will continue the talk within the next few days
Ahaa, so now we know the [U][I]real [/I][/U]reason why " Markets are too quiet: something big is brewing…"
“Croatia has unpolluted marine areas reflected through numerous nature reserves and 116 Blue Flag beaches. Croatia is ranked as the 18th most popular tourist destination in the world.” Republika Hrvatska has been on our list for too long already. Did Macedonia (Ohrid) 2 years back and that was a great holiday.
Ten days later, and the same, weird calm appeared in the markets (Forex and equties)…
What is going on?
Timing seems to coincide with your change of Avatar…;D
I had noticed in some other places that folk had migrated towards the Asian pairs AUD, NZD, JPY etc and against CAD rather than USD. That seemed to be commodity related and people were posting their regular gains, but recently that has turned to posting about stopped trades. Maybe even commodity-based markets are also slow? I don’t know I don’t follow those personally.
Maybe also currency/equity markets have lost their relationship to core economic and business factors having been thrown around for so long by Central Bank activity and speeches. The USD is far more than just the US economy, it is also the contract currency for business activity all over the world. The kind of one-day upheavals resulting from Central Bank activity is devastating for international businesses and large investment/pension funds who are the main actual customers in currencies rather than pure speculators.
Maybe the relationship between true value and current value has become so smudged that no one knows where we should be…
…or maybe it is just April
Great post, Manxx!
sorry for my late reply, i had some difficulties with posting on BP the last 3 days.
yes i agree theres definately something going on. since today im short on the dow but it is more a “ok i see problems heading our way right now and we might up for a surprice”-trade then a technical analysis trade.
april is always quiet but this time its aswell weird
Hey Manxx,
in the forex you are the master here, about commodites i can tell you we had some nice movements the last 10 days, copper was cornered, oil got rallied up in the assumption that this weekends oil producer meeting will solveproblems with low price (wishfull thinking and the oildprice is already on the way down again since yesterday) gold is ranging at the moment without any clear sign of a brakeout, but still the last 4 days was a nice downmovement of nearly 40$ which i catched only to the half unfortunately.
so yes something is brewing when forex is quiet and the indexes are quiet but the commodities are moving fast.
yes definately, i lived 4 years in dubrovnik in my mid 20ies, i can definately recomment that city to see croatia its aswell the main filming area for the (i never watched that series) Game of Thrones and you have guides walking you all around everywhere where famous scenes were filmed from that series, its funny as hell.
and yes, i only bath in croatia as the water there is really extremely clean, in my time in USA i was not even once bathing in the sea as it looked dirty hehe
Hello TurboNero and Manxx,
have a great weekend (as there does not look to be anything worth watching in the markets for the rest of the day -
depending on which part of the world you live; here it is nearly four o’clock in the afternoon…
I am not sure about sea quality in Croatia, Macedonia, or the United States, but I know that the West Coast
(of Scotland) is quite clean but bloody freezing, so there is no chance of finding me skinny-dipping there!
Rome is pretty horrendous for water quality in some parts, so when you go to the beach (Ostia) you will
need to choose carefully along the many miles of privatised ‘resorts’…
That is my bathing assessment done; now on to more familiar stomping grounds haha
‘The markets’ is a terribly generic word that I used; really, unless you are God (which, by definition, none of
us can be - assuming he/she/it even exists), there is no way that you can have your eye on ALL MARKETS IN
THE WORLD, from emerging market ETFs, to Germand bund, to corn futures, to exotic currencies and
VIX indices…
I mean, we are limited by time and by need to look at what can help our trading: we are not, any of us,
trying to write some anthology of world economics haha So, for me, for example, ‘the markets’ this week
meant that all the these have been ‘quiet’ (again, a relative term, depending on the time-frame within which
you trade or keep a watch on the markets):
-
some currencies (mainly NZD/USD, NZD/JPY, EUR/GBP, EUR/USD, AUD/NZD, USD/JPY);
-
some equities (mainly FTSE100, but also S&P500);
-
US Oil - yes, it made a ‘break’ of the 200-day moving average, but it does not look like much
when you see the bigger trend.
It is a narrow corner of ‘the markets’, I realise, but it gives me (a forex trader, mainly), enough of
a view of what risk trends are, namely whether ‘risk aversion’ is just oiling up its hammers or just
being once again ironed out by some secret world order haha
Have a great weekend yourself, PMH (you too, TurboNero). It has been a quiet week to trade but a nice week to get to know you guys a little better.
I, too, am finished for the week and soon off to sauna and a couple of beers (I’m a few hours ahead of you PMH).
The lakes here where I live are extremely clean but swimming is a little difficult at the moment as they are still frozen over :D. But it is no longer safe to walk on the ice and already several people have drowned from their own stupidity. It happens every spring as the ice crystallises in the sun and crumbles - Midsummer and the midnight sun is the other period when we reduce our population by drowning!
Hopefully, next week will see some more sensible and worthwhile moves…
weekend? whats a “weekend”?:33:
definately agree, nice to get to know everyone bit better