Odds Czar: Simple Biases in the Futures Markets 2007

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 19.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.

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The euro certainly paints a pretty sell-side picture. It's not refuted by the related markets. The bond complex also looks to be a good short for Friday.

 

[syswizard]

Quote from Art Collins:

Art's futures biases for Jan 19.


The euro certainly paints a pretty sell-side picture. It's not refuted by the related markets. The bond complex also looks to be a good short for Friday.

Nice to see your indications properly correlated....as bonds down and USD up is expected.....most of the time.

 

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 22.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.

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There is no question this has been an unusual January for the stock market. The obvious difference is that the market tends to rise right out of the gun, whereas 2007 saw weakness the first few trading days. It has obviously not been a straight down move, and the most likely next significant move is to the upside. For one thing, the day-of-month indicator will switch to the long side on Tuesday. Since these tendencies are not diamond-cutter exact, we may see follow-through strength immediately.

For Monday, though, we don’t have definitive index signals. You’d be better off following the short indicators in both the other two complexes, particularly in the 30-year bond and euro.

 

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 23.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.

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You couldn’t get a more negative signal in the euro. The other currencies concur.

The indexes are still tricky for Tuesday. I’m expecting an up-move within two or three days based mainly on the bullish overlap of the day-of-month and month-of-year calendar indicators. Perhaps we’ll see it tomorrow, but I can’t advise that as we’re seeing contrary flashes elsewhere.

 

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 24.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.

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There are no non-conflicted signals for Wednesday. I am, however, noting something interesting in the 30-year bonds. The three-day support/resistance indicator has flashed a sell signal for five days in a row. That means for a total of 8 days, the distance between the highest and lowest three days highs has been 20 percent or less of the entire 3 day high-to-low. That suggests a pretty formidable upside wall of resistance. You can see it if you plot a daily bar chart. Make sure you use regular pit hours only: 7:20 am-2pm Central Standard Time.

I’m not sure what this means for Wednesday, given that other indicators are bullish in the bond complex. Anyone deciding to short the 30-year, however, would have a pretty natural buyback stop above the last few highs ranging from 111 01 to 111 17. The 02 level has held for the last four days.

 

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 25.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.

 

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 26.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.

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The week of selling in the bond complex could reverse direction on Friday. Both signal groups are flashing buys across all three markets.

 

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 29.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.


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The CzarCharts are saying that Friday’s small open-to-close rally in the bonds could be followed by further advances on Monday.

The indexes are mixed, but leaning more toward the buy side. Considering the two –day sell-off, the majority opinion might be worth respecting for Monday. The best buy candidate would probably be the S&Ps.

 

[syswizard]

Good stuff Art...keep up the good work !

 

[Art Collins]

Art's futures biases for Jan 30.

A "1" means bullish bias. A "-1" means bearish bias. The total is the sum of biases. A positive sum will be long bias. A negative sum will be a short bias. A sum of zero will be a neutral bias.



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Sometimes you can view one trade environment as a metaphor for another.

January has been a tough month for me. Although I’m up a modest amount of money by virtue of my longer-term ideas, each profit has been a hard-won struggle while many of the losses have been ridiculously close-to the-wire and extremely irksome. Part of the reason can be found in the lack of follow-through. Up and down days seem to be alternating to an unusual degree which translates into the CzarChart readings. There have been a lot of times where strong signals have flipped almost instantaneously from strong to weak and back again, or as we see in Tuesday’s readings, are just flat-out neutral.

I’ve been using different day systems for the last few weeks. One sets profit targets one-an-a half times as far as the stop-loss. For the last five months of 06, that system had a 500 win/loss ratio—an obvious winning methodology under the circumstances. This year, (after doubling my size, naturally), I have booked one full winner and about 11 losses. The number of times one tick has sabotaged near wins/ just-ticked losses has been beyond belief. Twice last week I was stopped out to the tick. In one case, the market moved to where I would have booked a full-blown profit, in the other, it would have been a slightly better than break-even. Today, I came one tick shy of ringing the cash resister in the Russell. The market broke to my stop-loss with a mere two ticks to spare.

If you trade long enough, you’ll see every anomaly. Still, with an average of 100 ticks spanning the distance from my profit to the loss targets, I’d say the odds of just missing/just hitting the one tick three times out of six trading days is something approaching a million to one.

I guess the moral to all this venting is, January has been aggravating on an near-unprecedented level. Is anybody else perceiving anything similar?