The demise of newspapers

Maybe I got out of the newspaper industry at just the right time. Local papers used to be the pillars of the community when they provided important information and uncovered stories that would otherwise have been swept under the rug. Now, they're nothing more than online sideshows in the age of blogs and Twitter.

Case in point: The Post-Gazette is promoting a live webcam video of Xante, a Golden Retriever puppy spending his weekdays in the newsroom. I wasted about 15 seconds watching Xante wag his tail this afternoon before moving on to more interesting things like washing my clothes. Is this P-G Puppy Cam really what Pittsburgh's top newspaper should be focusing its attention on?

Things seemed to devolve even more when the Observer-Reporter launched a contest today asking people to guess the mystery location where several Peeps marshmallows were staged for a photo. This seems to undermine the O-R's journalistic credibility by publishing something so trivial next to hard news. And with only two full-time photographers left on the payroll, why are they wasting anyone's time shooting a photo of marshmallows dressed up in baseball uniforms?

What really concerns me, though, is whether people find this more interesting than feature stories about people doing good and/or hard-hitting news articles that expose sleazy politicians. If so, then that makes me glad I'm a former newsman.

Take Me Home, Country Roads

Onward we march to the dance! So in honor of the West Virginia Mountaineers defeating Georgetown to win the Big East Tourney...

Maths in Oz - DDStop

I want set out the stop loss policy I have in this and other posts as there seems to be some clarification needed.

Firstly, for me a "trade" is a multiple of 3 contracts.  Kiki and I trade in multiples of 3 contracts. This is to allow us to scale out but also to go all in and all out if the situation calls for it.

I have a concept called "drop dead stop" (DDStop) which is the most I will want to lose on any one trade ( a trade being 3 contracts).

The usual DDStop is about the length of two range bars of the market I am trading.

For the ES,  I trade 5 tick range bars. So two range bars is 10 ticks. That is $125 per contract or $375 per trade.

For the DowEuro50 its also 5 tick range bars but the maths becomes 300 Euro per contract due to its tick value of 10 Euro.

I adjust this DDStop for each trade to fit the context of the trade. I also do not use the DDStop as an exit mechanism. I usually do not allow my stops to be hit but rather exit on the market's dynamics during the trade. My entries are usually so correct in terms of order flow and momentum, I will bail if I see I read the market wrong, a long time before the stop is hit. New traders need to be wary of this as they can easily be chopped up. The SIM trading is designed to take care of this and you will have learned how to do this because I don't think you can get to CP without it.

Getting in on the conversation

Char Jeggle, of Shadyside, second from the left, talks about the essence of man, good vs. evil, during a conversation salon at Upper St. Clair Public Library. Photo by Jasmine Goldband/Tribune-Review

By Michael Jones
For the Tribune-Review
March 11, 2010

Even as human contact migrates to the Web, the Allegheny County Library Association is getting people together to talk -- face to face.

Conversation salons, where philosophical and newsworthy topics are broached and everyone has a say, have become a hit locally and across the country in the age of Facebook.

"We're all on computers now, and we don't have as much personal involvement with each other," said Lee Boyd, a salon organizer at Upper St. Clair Library. "I think we need more of that. It's nice to meet people in the community with wisdom on issues."

Conversation salons date back hundreds of years ago to The Enlightenment, when people discussed philosophy and new scientific discoveries. They first returned to Western Pennsylvania about nine years ago as a way to get retirees interacting on a regular basis.

Now, 10 area libraries hold monthly salons with attendance ranging from a few to up to 20 people.

"We didn't have to work at all to drag people in or entice them," said Norm Wien, who helped promote the early salons. "There's this subset of people who like to converse in a polite and respectful way, and it caught on right away."

A group of 17 people met last week in the Mt. Lebanon Public Library, with the chairs positioned in a circle so all could be included.

"If it gets bigger than that, they don't get their dibs in," Wien said. "If it gets too small, then you lack the diversity of the viewpoint."

Most people in this particular group are from Mt. Lebanon, but a few are from other South Hills communities. Joe Meltzer, the group's facilitator -- or referee -- got the conversation started.

"The first topic is immigration," Meltzer said before throwing his arms up in the air. "Go!"

Read more...

Couldn't Sleep

I couldn't sleep Thursday night (Oz time). Won't trade Hang Seng Friday. Looks like my body is still on European time. I just love this ES. It really trades well for my methodology. This is the ES for Thursday night, OZ time.

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Down the Yellow Brick Road to CP Part 2

After looking at the markets for a couple of days from the Oz point of view, I remembered again why I left here in the early 1980's to trade the U.S. markets from Europe.

For me, it's just a lot easier to make money trading the U.S.and European markets which are more mature and have higher volume. Asia is still the tail and it's not wagging the dog. China is a powerhouse that will eventually show its strength but not yet. The consumers here don't have the same strength as the U.S. and European consumers and it's the consumer who rules. It's not that you can't make money in Asian markets because you can, and lots of it. It's just that I don't think I would make as much as I consistently do back in the Euro/ U.S. world. Even on a quiet day back there I can usually make my minimum without really taking on much extra risk. That's not the case in Asian markets. When it gets quieter in Asia you have to take on considerably more risk to make yout daily nut. But if it's your only game in town then you need to set your risk/reward parameters in your trading plan and trade accordingly. I think that it just means that for every dollar of capital you will earn less here than in Euro or US land. I guess its also the style of the markets.

You then need to firm up your setups. You can do this in either of at least two ways: You can create them from scratch after doing all the reading and looking at my trades, or, you can reverse engineer my trades.

To do the reverse engineering, print out all the charts and then sort and mark the trades that have a lot in common. I would look for as many trades as I could find and categorise them in a broad way. Then go over each winning trade and look what happened when the entry was made. Once you have done this on 40 or 50 trades you will come to a conclusion on what makes a good entry. Write this down for each type of trade, separately for longs and shorts. You now have a basic setup.

Next, SIM trade the setups using the first logical scale out point for an all out exit. You will then probably see that your "rules" need tweaking. Make those changes and test them again in SIM, Keep doing this until you are happy with the result. Being happy with the result means that you can go over a chart and with HINDSIGHT you ARE CONSISTENTLY PROFITABLE using your rules.

Now, you need to develop that "muscle memory" in SIM using replay, very slow at first. Painfully slow, bar by bar. Then go to normal speed or faster. When you are CP on replay you can graduate yourself to real time SIM. This is where you perfect your skills at reading what is going on. This will not be a short process. Keep going until you are CP.

Todays Hang Seng trades had a bit more volatility and follow through. That lunchtime break is not my favourite thing.

C

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"A census taker once tried to test me..."

Although that classic line by Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs" is bone-chilling, it isn't enough to deter me from working as a census enumerator this spring. The U.S. Census Bureau contacted me this week to hire me for the part-time job that offers a lifeline in this economic abyss. At $15.25 per hour for up to 30 hours each week, it's a nice gig if you can get it. This part-time job also should replace unemployment compensation during the eight weeks the feds need me to knock on doors counting heads.

I'm excited to begin my training in a couple weeks, but am somewhat concerned that people will shy away from this constitutionally mandated count because the federal government is held in such low esteem. Now, I'm not so much worried about who might be on the other side of the door (I've been to plenty of funky neighborhoods as a newspaper reporter) but I do wonder if people will actually answer my questions when I come knocking. There is no need to worry about privacy, though, because it will be 72 years before your basic answers are released. And those answers become fascinating reference points for future generations interested in genealogy.

Not to sound like a PR shill, but the census is important because it decides how federal money is directed and helps to shape our state legislative and congressional districts. And after watching the cluster that has become our state/federal governments, do we really want our local communities on the short end of this legislative mess?

So do us all a favor and mail in your census forms when you get them this month. Otherwise, I might be searching for you in the coming weeks, although I promise not to be too testy.