Category: Trading

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TLC Weekly Update March 5, 2021

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This week the stock markets worldwide zoom in to just one thing – the spike in US T-notes yield rate. It dropped a bit below 1.5%, we got that Monday mega rally. The next day it edged higher to 1.5% again, Nasdaq 100 higher flyers all hammered. And then yesterday Powell said nothing to calm people down, next thing we know yield just spike through the roof and collapsed S&P back below year 2020 close. Watching the markets move feels like watching a drunk doing all sorts of crazy things.

Got to wonder by next Friday will the markets remember what happened this week.

I watched a video about Turkey’s real estate trouble. The trouble there looks to me already happening everywhere else. Real estate investors should pay attention about this.

I came across this video recommended to me by a friend on tendon training. He is so surprised that what is said in the video confirms what I told him decades ago that the classic martial art training if done correctly it does not focus on training your muscles but your tendons. Sometimes it is important to not slap the words of “not scientific” on things you do not understand. I have seen first hand how one of these very old master martial artists with a thin and flimsy frame who can punch lightly and destroy a concrete wall …

No magic. No tricks. Pure hard work over several decades.

And obviously his disciples could not achieve the same level of power due to “demand of modern life”.

Jordan Peterson’s new book Beyond 12 Rules for Life is just released. Accompanying that, of course, are internet media exposure in place of the old world book tour. One of the conversations that stands out and worth watching the whole thing is the one Peterson did with Tom Bilyeu. The conversation leads to interesting explanation by Peterson on several psychology concepts that would take years to learn. Be warned – it is two hours long.

I am extremely busy working on multiple fronts and that stalled my effort on producing videos / short lectures for my trading courses. I can foresee that by end of March my marathon push to setup my prop trading firm will reach the milestone of completing the work on laying out the foundation. There will be few mundane tasks left and back to a more regular schedule to focus on research and development. I will then be able to pick up from where I left off on producing the videos.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update February 26, 2021

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This is last trading week of February. Many people are wondering why the sudden selloff in Nasdaq 100 big techs while the know nothing media b.s. all the way from blaming this on the Robinhood crowd to mythical creatures manipulating the markets. Gee, I told my premium members in the February newsletter than last week of February has a seasonal correction coming.

I am not using esoteric analysis whatsoever. It is the fact that the big caps all have such a spectacular rally last year majority of the longer term players have not unloaded their stocks. And people has to book at least partial profit to utilize their tax break this year. Nothing voodoo, just common sense.

But telling people there is nothing special can’t attract clicks, likes and viewership … I get that.

I have a very busy week all week dealing with technical issues as I am testing one trading account with a new brokerage connection. Encountered all kinds of odd issues and have to solve them one by one. Anyhow I think I have done everything necessary to ensure the smooth transition of my main trading account over to the new routing path. Will see what happen next week.

I am not a big fan of going to the theatre to watch the latest movies. However, I came across this article on Zack Snyder’s new director’s cut of the movie Justice League and stirred huge interest in me. The theatre release was like 2 hours while the upcoming director’s cut will be 4 hours is already fascinating enough for me to squeeze time out to watch it in the future …

For those of you who are interested in marble machines (or that you just want to kill some time) you may like to watch this video of having 1000 marbles run thru this machine.

I was in the market for a air purifier lately and did some research before I made my final decision. I need the purifier to ensure the room that I have my computers would be near dust free. It is very hard to do that in Canada effectively. I am very glad I found this video reviewing the common air purifiers available on the market here in North America. If not for this video, I would make a very bad choice choosing the machine that I thought to be the best and it would make me very miserable.

The lockdown in my area is relaxed since the beginning of the week but somehow I do not see much changes so far even though restaurants are now open for dining indoors with limited capacity. The places with most number of people going to are, not surprisingly, Home Depot and Canadian Tire, the home improvement and maintenance stores. Looks like the trend for people to work from home is definitely going to stay.

Back to work on other projects.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update February 19, 2021

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This year 2021 is definitely at least as bizarre as year 2020. Looking at the extreme weather we experienced this week, I wonder what else is in store in coming few months. I will not be surprised if it gets any colder here in Toronto, the polar bears will come visit us.

One good news I got this week is that Big-Game Hunter ES, the fully automated trading strategy I have created, made it to the Top 10 List at Striker Securities. BGH is the only day trading strategy made it in the list.

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BGH had some tough time over the past 2 years from technical issues to dealing with Trump’s tweet storms. I am confident that with fewer disruptive events, BGH will do fine going forward.

When I was searching for performance evaluation methods online, I came across this interesting video about the origin of minesweeper and solitaire that extends to a talk about performance feedback and evaluation. Understanding this is useful for anyone, traders included, who are trying to improve their skills of any kind.

For those of you interested in building your own PC, here are some good news for you – the Intel iCore series CPU prices just crashed hard. And in fact, if the momentum tells anything, it may persist for a while. The pressure on price came from multiple front, including the leak of the pricing of the next generation iCore CPUs.

In my case, I don’t need the latest and fastest computers to do my work which is mainly research and development of trading algorithms. Due to limitations of the trading platforms available in the market, there is really no point to pay top dollar for the top of the line computer models. Instead, I use multiple cheap computers at the same time. If one computer is doing some heavy duty optimization work that can take hours to get the results, I simply continue to work on a different set of trading algos on another computer.

Every famous investor going on TV or other media these days are talking about how unreasonable the stock markets are at the current price level. However, majority of them are also experienced enough to not going short against the markets. Not that I believe in the bullshit of Elliot Wave Theory, but trading legend Paul Tudor Jones really sums it up nicely,

“There is no training, classroom or otherwise, that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it’s the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market.”

There is no shame to take profit or lock in gains on some of your long term holdings given the current high valuation of many stocks and the indices. Not protecting your capital is very irresponsible for your financial well being.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update February 12, 2021

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Today is the official lunar new year. Well, technically it was Feb 11th 2:03 pm Eastern Time for the new moon to take effect. However, lunar calendar is limited by human ability to call a day two different ways (i.e. too complex for normal people) so the next closest day has to do it.

There is absolutely no celebration of any kind visible in various areas in the city where Asians having stronger presence. The lockdown is not over. Restaurants can only sell take outs or do deliveries. Even family members not living in the same household is technically not allowed to visit each other unless “absolutely necessary”.

Psychologically, lockdown is taking a toll on many people. If you are one of those who got depressed by lockdown, please try to do some exercise and learn to do meditation to counter the effect. Even simple breathing exercise can help. Don’t let the world crumble around you just because of the dumb decisions by the government officials.

For Bitcoin fans, here is an interesting story about a bitcoin billionaire. The rise of bitcoin’s status from not recognized by the banks to the point that the banks stating that they must be involved now means a lot to the BTC crowd. What holds in the future though is anyone’s guess.

Lately Goldman Sachs did an interview on Stanley Druckenmiller. He is one of the best minds in the investment world. His take on the current market environment is useful for anyone having investments in the markets.

I came across this video of a 12-year-old kid who built a nuclear fusion machine. This makes me wonder … all these hypes on electric cars that ignore the fact that making an electric car has a front load of environment pollution equal to the amount of pollution generated by a normal car over 20 years time span. Serious research effort should be made to power cars by nuclear fusion, not electricity.

Another week just fly by so quickly I find it hard to believe it is already mid February. I have so many things I need to get done yesterday. I guess I will be busy as usual in foreseeable future.

Have a great weekend all!

Oh …

Happy Lunar New Year!

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TLC Weekly Update February 5, 2021

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Another wild ride in the stock market this Non-Farm Payroll week. Majority of the bears must be questioning their existence due to the melt up style rally all week giving us yet another all time high in S&P500 and Nasdaq 100.

Well, this deal or no deal dynamics of the stimulus package has been affecting the stock market ever since last quarter. Whenever a bigger deal is promised, stock market jumps higher. Whenever there is rumor of no deal, the stock market jumps even higher because a deal is imminent.

Now that today US Senate approved the package and US Congress has the ability to pass it easily … it will be interesting to see if we get “buy the rumor, sell the news” effect.

I am not sure about you, but I did indeed dropped my cellphone into water more than once. This article provides some good tips on how to deal with the unfortunate event.

For the sake of fun, I watched this video on machines peeling eggs … very interesting. I was searching for automation related videos and this one shows up … maybe I should be more specific with my search.

And this video show up when I search for building things manually … it is a long documentary video that you do not need to watch it from the beginning to the very end. This kid is just amazing. He is probably one of those who can survive WW3.

This weekend I have to reorganize my computers and doing some hardware upgrades. Given my luck lately, things probably will not work out as expected. I will take it slow so that I will not mess things up. After all, it is Mercury retrograde from Jan 30 to Feb 21, for those of you who are into astrology stuff.

After taking care of the hardware, there are tons of paperwork waiting for me. I guess there is no break this weekend.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update January 29, 2021

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Today is last trading day of January. While I am writing this the trading day has not ended yet but what a fight between the bulls and the bears. What many people do not realize is that brokerage firms almost always want January to close positively so that they can lure the investors into doing some business with them. i.e. the January effect.

The line in the sand is the 2020 year close. All morning S&P500 was trying to defend that price but failed to do so by lunch hour. I wonder if they will succeed later today?

I came across this video talking about “negative ion” products. Make sure you check it out to avoid these items because they can inflict serious harm. I am glad that I came across the video because I am a sucker at trying out novel health products …

For those of you who wonder why we experienced the GameStop fever and started to question whether stock market is functional, check this video out. Mr. Meldrum provided the most complete explanation of what happened to these fever stocks. I like to add that the selling of orderflow data by firms like Robinhood to HFT firms also add to the mess.

However, it is not something new at all. At the end, it is always those who board the train unprepared will be hurt the most. So know what kind of game you are getting into before jumping in.

Watch this video from CNBC on Chamath Palihapitiya’s take on the whole fiasco.

I am working on so many things lately it feels like I am running out of time everyday. Maybe I can slow down a bit once I resolve several technical issues with my automated trading. I will definitely write about that for my daytradingbias.com premium members because it is a very serious issue that can affect their trading.

Some readers keep asking for an update of the Big Game Hunter ES performance. I have downloaded the statements and have someone taking care of the performance summary. I will post it in the company blog later today.

I guess that’s it for the week.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update January 8, 2021

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US electoral dispute is now over. But we are left with more questions than answers on the future of United States. Given how ugly this 2020 election has become, I can’t imagine what will happen by mid term 2022 …

Luckily I am just a Canadian. Canada being such an unimportant country, its political dramas do not lead to any meaningful impact on the world. This makes me feel much better during our elections.

Here is an older article about human brain’s approach to process sensory information. The article came out back in Oct 2019. This understanding of the human brain has helped computer scientists to breakthrough many of their problems in AI last year. So not everything happening last year was bad.

For some mysterious reason, youtube chose to put this on my front page. It turns out to be a charming video that I watched years ago.

I forgot to mention that I finally stopped my 20+ years habit of writing down notes on notepads some 2-3 weeks ago. I took the leap of faith to replace my written notepads with Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. It takes some adjustments to my routine but I can tell you after 2 weeks of notes taking on the tablet, I will never go back to pen and paper.

I chose this tablet over other options because of the included software for notes taking is better than ipad and ipad pro. I can now easily include clips by taking a picture using the tablet, or taking a screenshot from the browser. But most important of all, I no longer need to find space to store even more notepads.

I picked up a Rubik’s cube over the holiday with the intention to practice my cube solving skill. Then I found this on youtube. I want that cube!

I was asked by many friends about my year 2021 outlook. I will summarize the main points here. Some are technical view based on market data. Some are astrology based projections. And some are just wild imaginations. Consider this a mocking of all the predictions people made for 2021.

  • shortage of food and essentials
  • worldwide cargo transportation cost going much higher
  • interest rate goes up
  • civil unrest everywhere
  • a real pandemic will arrive that reduce global population by 10%
  • major earth quake happening somewhere
  • aliens finally public broadcast their existence among us
  • gold to crash 50% in a year or two
  • bitcoin to crash 80% in a year or two
  • aliens giving us warp drive and unlimited energy technology

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update December 18, 2020

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Last option expiration week of the year is now finally over. The rest of the year are filled with holidays so majority of the traders will not be trading. I wonder how many trading bots are aware of this and avoid trading too.

The other day my son showed me a game he’s playing online. It is a form of tower defense with several twists to make it appealing to gamers. Similar to all the other latest online games, it is free to play with extra items that one can pay for. I ended up digging out some old research on the economics of these games which explained that they make money by exploiting a form of human defect. Interesting.

In the spirit of the holiday season, here is a video on an animal letter opener.

One of the most messed up political drama this year is definitely Brexit agreement negotiation. Seriously, just watch this video and you will understand completely why there can never be any progress with the Brexit negotiation. Yet another example of politicians love wasting other people’s money …

It is time for me to slow down a bit, do some planning for next year and find inspirations from leisure reading.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update December 4, 2020

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This Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) week has surprised many people who keep talking about how overpriced the stock market is while all week the market just levitated to stay near all time high. Can’t blame them. Normal people, which include majority of the traders, do not pay attention to the obvious bullish biases during NFP weeks. It is a good thing for those who are aware of it and act on it.

Holiday season now in force so trading volume should be reduced somewhat. However, given the uncertainty of the US election still hanging around, I don’t know if the traditional Christmas rally can happen in a normal way like the past. Well, what’s normal this year at all?

Interesting read about the Donut King, there are lessons we can all learn from this story. From rags to riches once we all heard of but twice, makes it all more interesting.

This touching story about old couples who have to face the hard decision to send their loved ones to nursing home or palliative care is a problem many of us have to face eventually. From my personal experience and also shared knowledge from close friends, it gets harder if you are old and frail yourself as the caregiver. It is important to ask for help when you are exhausted and feeling hopeless.

I came across an interesting video talking about the discovery of how Ancient Egyptian sounds like. I wonder if they really got it right, or, like what most economists do, that everything they do are just pure guessing.

Here in Toronto the lockdown has escalated and a new trend has emerged. People are moving to houses in small towns outside of Toronto. It is like a mass exodus thanks to the technology we have available nowadays making it possible to work from home. These small town house prices have skyrocketed some 15-20% in a few short months while Toronto downtown core condo prices dropped 10-15% overall. This is a price shock event that will take time to absorb.

I reached a major milestone with my trading venture for which the automated day trading model I envisioned some two years ago is now mostly completed. It covers about 80% of the strategies I deem important. Looking back, if I did not made the decision to aim higher, this would never happen. Doing this while the stock markets going through its craziest time was a tough challenge. It also makes it much more satisfying.

For my trading venture, having the first model completed is just the first step, although a very important step. From here my team will have to expand on what I have accomplished and expand the research and development work across many more markets. It will be even more challenging when we start to tackle markets we are not familiar with. Can’t wait to see what we will accomplish in year 2021!

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update November 20, 2020

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Another week that the stock market flirting with all time high yet not quite able to stay that way. More vaccine news but not good enough to offset the other pressing issues. Traders should be happy that next week is Thanksgiving week. Traditionally, pro traders who are doing fine up to this point for the year would wind down their trading and take a break all week. Let’s see if trading volume will drop like the past this coming week.

I have been reading books and studying history to try to get a better perspective of the current global situation. It feels like we are going to see drastic changes in coming few years as the post COVID era is getting very chaotic already. It is important to figure out what to do and prepare for this “interesting time”.

I came across some amusing reads that has nothing to do with the big picture though.

For example, this one on the birth of chaos theory and this other article on Olive Oatman the pioneer girl are good read.

During this holiday week, would you be interested in trying the sport of egg boxing? I find this quite funny since we can never guess what people do with their spare time …

Lately, I have this burst of creativity that keeps me going 12-14 hours a day working on my projects. Very good progress is made and I am happy for that. Hopefully this can last long enough so that I can complete several projects before the end of this year.

Have a great weekend all!

Happy Thanksgiving Week to my US readers!