TRADING HAZARD

                             The Little Guy Learns Early In Life

I made a good chunk of the money, which got hijacked yesterday by the gold dealer, back today in a market that can only be described as psychotic. Pick your spot; liquidate on the spike. If you don’t, count the seconds until you are underwater on the trade.

Oh yea, add to this dealer slippage and it becomes a professionals game of hit and run. You have money on both sides that have thrown a lot at this market, and are pushing their financial weight around influencing prices aggressively.

This was the 5^th day in a row gold was basically stuck in a $20 range. We get knee-jerk spikes/drops that take us to the edge of the range and then it’s a very quick reversal to the other side. This is a market that doesn’t have any idea where it wants to go.

And just when you think there is a correlation between gold and whichever other market you watch, BAM! – whoops, sorry, that ain’t gonna work anymore.

Watching crude oil today could have made you wonder if the circus is hiring. Very tight range all day and night with 2 spikes that literally came in 15 minutes each and put in 100% of the day’s range of 156; no test of yesterday’s low [not even close], only knee-jerk buy stop induced trading after hours of nothing. Yuck. And here we are, smack dab in the middle of the approximate 18 day 104 – 108 / bbl range.

I don’t like these trading conditions any more than most of you; last time I can recollect things were like this was in 2005, where it lasted about 3 – 4 months before returning to more normal conditions. Making incremental returns isn’t why I’m in the trading business for over 30 years; but neither is losing 10% or more of my account in 10 minutes.

We simply deal with it; you absolutely can’t force things. In retrospect, this is the market’s way of taking back money you took from it in earlier periods of trading. We take what the market gives us and trade accordingly.

I may get a paper cut now and then [can you tell I’m still steaming over yesterday’s fills and action?], but for the most part I don’t give money back to the market.

Have a good day everyone.

-vegas