Here are some market quotes that I like.
- “Everyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach.” Peter Lynch.
It’s the stomach, not the brain so much. - Bull markets are born on pessimism, grown on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria. Maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and maximum optimism is the best time to sell.” John Templeton
It’s a sentimental journey. - “It’s not whether you are right or wrong that’s important. It’s how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.” Stanley Druckenmiller
You want to be right or you want to make money? - “If you can’t explain it to a 6 year old then you don’t understand it yourself.” Albert Eintesin
He wasn’t a trader. He was a trader’s trader. - “In order to be successful, you have to make sure that failure doesn’t bother you at all.”
‘At all’ are the key words here. Stop caring so much about the outcome and you’ll perform better— pat yourself on the back for following the process. It’s the journey, not the destination. The best traders have ‘no’ ego.
The goal of a trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary. - “Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate them than has been lost in corrections themselves.” Peter Lynch
It’s one thing to be intellectually bearish; it’s another to take a long setup no matter how bearish you may be. Don’t confuse your opinion with your positions.
Don’t confuse your positions with your best interest. - “The idea that trading success is tied to finding some specific ideal approach is misguided. There is no single correct methodology.” Jack Schwager
The belief in a Holy Grail has probably cost smart traders more than any single approach. But we’re fascinated by the idea that there is a key that unlocks the door. There is but every time we find it some SOB changes the lock. This is a corollary to when everyone in the market knows something, it’s probably not worth knowing.
The T Rex in the ointment is that “knowing something” produces a trend. And you want to ride that trend, but there is a point at which that universality in opinion becomes a tipping point, when everyone who wants to own an item has bought it. This is true on multiple time-frames. - The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.” Peter Thiel
Contrarianism for the sake of it is a mugs game. The crowd can and will be right for a long stretch. It is when there is a universality of bullishness or bearishness that is a point of recognition.
Likewise, markets can get very overbought and stay that way for a long time. Contrarianism and Overbought are not invitations to short and vice versa. - “When you understand what’s involved in winning, as do professional gamblers, you’ll tend to bet more during a winning streak and less during a losing streak. However, the average person does exactly the opposite: he or she bets more after a series of losses and less after a series of wins.” Van K. Tharp
Trying to get even is lethal. - The markets are the same now as they were five or ten years ago because they keep changing—just as they did then.”
Markets impulse when they want to, pullback when they want to and consolidate when they want to; they inhale and exhale as to range and volatility. Markets have an innate rhythm. These are cycles. But there are cycles within cycles. If you want to learn about trading watch water. Watch the ocean. - “Patterns of price movement are not random. However, they’re close enough to random so that getting some excess, some edge out of it, is not easy and not so obvious—thank God. God probably doesn’t care. Thank whoever.” Jim Simons
“God does not play dice with the universe.” Albert Einstein - “Anything can happen.” Mark Douglas
It often does. So have an Uncle Point for when you don’t honor your stop. - “Don’t worry about what the markets are going to do, worry about what you are going to do in response to the markets.” Michael Carr
We all are trying to figure out what the market is going to do. We should spend at least as much time with a playbook as to what our response will be. - “The game taught me the game. And it didn’t spare me the rod while teaching.” Jesse Livermore
Pat your back when you pulled the trigger and took a loss and treat it as a friend that you learned from. Learn to take losses.
There is only one way to learn the trading game and that is to play. - “The fundamental law of investing is the uncertainty of the future.” Peter Bernstein
When we speculate whether it is on a trade for 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 days, it is a forecast. To do so we must have tools that stack the odds in our favor.
To reduce the risk we must keep it simple and use a few methods so as not to increase uncertainty.
“Speculation is observation, pure and experiential. Thinking isn’t necessary and often just gets us into trouble.” Jeff Cooper
Retail traders love quotes. Boiling something down to a single sentence makes it appear as a universal truth. A physical law that cannot be broken. It’s a great way to reduce critical thinking.
“Quotes are useless. Pay no attention to them.” Andreas Clenow
Quotes are great. But they’re oversimplified.
Market narratives are simple. Life is complex.
The market.
Today is quarter-end and the last OpEx of the first half.
It was a doozy with the SPX breaking above its 4818 January 2022 high this January and making an all-time high of 5505 on June 20th where we got a Key Reversal Day.
From there the 3 Day Chart turned down immediately
Yesterday we got two consecutive higher daily highs putting the SPX in the Minus One (3 Day Chart pointing down) / +2 sell position.
The SPX is 4 points from a new all time closing high to buff out the first half.
Rotation and FOMO mark the action as flushed out software and cloud names that Hit and Run is playing this week such as SNOW, TEAM and ZS erupt our of the abyss. While chips take a breather.
The tension is on the tape as the market winds into the 92 anniversary of the July 8th 1932 Depression low.
There is a lot of synchronicity with this 92 year anniversary reflected in the Square of 9 Wheel.
92 (green) squares October 29th (blue) the crash in 1929.
So the 2024 vibrates off the perpetuated from the crash.
92 aligns with the price high in 1929 (purple)
92 aligns with (opposition) the number/year 1987u (red).
The presumption is that a as always is the case a reckoning will follow this blow-off.
And it will be this year.