There's a new moderator in town named Cathy. She lives on a boat, and when she's on, my speakers sound like I'm in an aquarium. There are all differently murmuring sounds in her background. Boat motors or rotors. She said it was the air conditioner today. I think it was last week, her husband could be heard snoring. It's actually pretty entertaining stuff. Cathy completed the Woodie "Be a moderator in 90 days" online correspondent course. She's been doing the CCI since December, and look at her now!

Aside from the tranquil aquarium murmuring aura, her voice sounds very familiar. It's like Hazel. Remember Hazel? Cathy sounds like Shirley Booth in a fish tank. To make a less familiar reference, she also sounds like a New York City sports radio icon: Doris from Rego Park. It was a sad day in the Big Apple when Doris passed away, but with Cathy, it's like Doris is back from the grave and on the airwaves, in a fish tank. You'd think that would be quite the unappealing sound, but it's far from it. She's been a forthright, straight talking, no BSing mamajama. I've learned no CCI from her, but who cares.

I had my best winning percentage day ever (for this amount of trades) today, going 9-1-0 for +48 YM ticks. This is quite a shock, since I haven't gotten those kind of results even when replaying the same day's chart for the 5th time in a row. I even missed the entire 80 point decline in the late morning. How did I do it? Gotta admit it was price action. Just looking at the slope (color) of the 34 for trend, and looking at the 9 ema/30 wma for crossovers. Added one more thing, a nearly forgotten relic from WCCI past: the godly erGODic. That was a difference maker, my friends. How it works beyond today, god only knows.

I'm learning more and more that it's not about whether the CCI actually works or not. Clearly it works for some and doesn't for many more. It's a specific indicator set-up and used by Woodie in a specific way. It's just going to click for some folks, just as moving averages crossovers speak to others and macd/stoch divergences speak to others and fib clusters or ewaves speak to others or mars in retrograde speaks to others, etc. I think for most of us, there is no specific one thing that is the end-all and be-all. Nor is there a perfectly packaged system for us. That's why we have to learn different things, suffer, move on, learn something else, suffer, move on, backtrack and re-learn an old thing from 16 months ago, suffer again, yada yada yada, until we fiddle enough to take this from there and that from here and put it together into our "own hodge-podge system" using this thing as my main indicator, and other stuff as filters.

Anyway, I'm not talking "big" after a good day (for me). I'm talking small. I just want to reiterate I'm still lost in the middle of something, looking for something, possibly making headway into something. Things are blurry. A few details come into focus now and then. Something may have come into focus for me today. That's exciting. It makes me want to look at more charts and do some replays and get ready for the open tomorrow. So that's a good thing. That's all.

Hello, Mr. President! Yes Sir, I'll be meeting your mother, Mrs. Barbara Bush. Oh, is that right? The current issue of SFO? Hold on, Mr. President, let me check. Ah yes, you're right! There she is on the cover! Wonderful! Say what, Mr. President? An article inside about the CCI? Let's see.... hmmmmm. Holy shit, what the hell is this!? I've got to go. Later. Goddamn it!

Rejoice, Sierra/IB users!

No, we're not getting the Sidewinder.

The IB TWS has been updated this weekend, and it looks like we will finally be getting back data!:

With the release of the next beta version of TWS, API customers will be able to request back-fill market data for the current trading day.

In order to take advantage of all of our new TWS features, customers with the standalone version of TWS are encouraged to upgrade their software. The latest current production version is 842. As of April 30, 2005, those customers who have not upgraded to at least version 831 of the TWS will not be able to use their TWS.

Hot diggity dog, huh?

I also figured out today how to configger and rejigger Bracket Trader so it works with Sierra's new replay function. This is nice for me, because I'd abandoned using the two together awhile back. For some reason, BT was using 100% of my computer resources in the IBM/BTPB playback mode, which I didn't like. The full instructions on how to setup BT/Sierra are located here.

Gone for a couple days, but was happy to see I got my official invite to the WCCI National Conference in the mail. It's good to feel wanted.

We spent a couple days in Sin City: Lost Wages, Nevada. Luckily for me, I had no currently earned wages to lose. Couldn't even afford to sit next to the blue hairs and drop a few nickels in the slot machines or else we wouldn't have enough for the $2.99 buffets.

My old friend moved out there a couple years ago from here, so we stayed with him and his family. He was one of many who mistimed the top of the housing bubble here and sold early. He whined about that a bit, but his new home is apparently up 150% in value already, so I don't feel sorry for him. Actually I never felt sorry for him because he's always been well off and set for life from some mystery money from a mystery business that his mystery father had somewhere overseas. He lost a ton of money in the stock market. He fancied himself a professional daytrader like me. The fool. He stopped doing that and plunked his hobby money into a check cashing business that bored him, then he tried developing a strip mall with some shady characters who weren't getting anything done. So he figured as long as he wasn't really doing anything, he should move to Vegas. I told him I was thinking of moving back home to New Jersey, and he encouraged me to do so. "LA drains your soul and your brain," he told me. Hell, I knew that already.

I see the Big Cheese is ready to dump the CCI (didn't he get his official invite?). Things went ferociously downhill for him, or so that's what he wants us to believe, and I have no reason to doubt him. Seemed as his blog took off in popularity, his focus on trading slipped. A year of steadily plugging away at the YM the pure Woodie Way rapidly unravelled. Shit happens. I've been there, and I'm still there.

Cheese gave me and this blog a couple shouts last week (after I shouted to him about the lack of shouts to me). He called this the "Daytarder's Diary." I'm sure that was just a typo. I believe "Daytarder" was a double A-side single with "We Can Work It Out" in the winter of '65-'66.

Got a good reason/For taking this vegas trade long/Got a good reason/For taking this vegas trade long now/'Cuz I'm a Daaaaaayyyyyytarder/10 tick stoploss in/It took me sooooo long/To stop out/And I stopped out.

Can't get that song out of my head now.

Happy 84th Birthday to the late Abe Vigoda!

Abe Vigoda being dead has been a running joke for some time now. It's the same running joke my friends have about me blowing out my trading account years ago. It seems real. Even I believe it sometimes, but I keep logging in each day to my broker and they still let me trade, so I'm assuming everyone's wrong.

Anyway, for those that are keeping tabs on Mr Vigoda's real-time status, you can check it here. The man was Fish on "Barney Miller" and Tessio in "The Godfather." He's definitely worth keeping up with.

YM_022305.jpg

I can't give enough kudos to JoAnne for her PT primer. It's opened my eyes to a previously incomprehensible trade. After two days of trying to spot them, I'm hardly an expert. Actually, I'm still a PT bozo, but I think I'll be able to get it with more screentime on it. One thing I'm looking at now is a possible connection with good PT setups coinciding with the 5th CCI "warning bar" which signals the upcoming 6th bar change of trend. Just check out those red circles on the chart. The yellow bar is missing (I took them out, signifying that moment with the gray background bar) but maybe I'll put them back in. Nothing says "warning" like yellow, right?

There aren't guaranteed PTs at every yellow bar, and even if there is one, it may not be a good one depending on whatever nuance you're using with them. But it may be a good place to stay alert for one.

olmikey's shared his MACD on his blog. It showed a great divergence short this morning. I've applied the Sierra Zig Zag dll to the prices also. I suck at spotting at divergences, but they're a pretty handy weapon to have in the arsenal. If I still can't spot a diver with this bright green macd and bright green zig zag, then I just can't do them.

The Fisher Transform is something I've always had. It's a trend indicator that's basically my last look for help if I've become totally clueless. It can lag on you, but you'll never get hurt badly just trading in the same direction as the fish and avoiding going against it.

The 34 ema is basic stuff for all CCIers. I'm as guilty as anyone of not keying off it enough. A price chart with only the 34 ema might do me wonders. The 9/30 is a price action based x-over system by Mike Bruns detailed here. Using the 34 as the last line defense for the 9/30 looks helpful.

Lo and behold, the sun has finally appeared here. That's the observatory in Griffith Park. The one James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood hung out at in Rebel Without A Cause. I should add that movie to my favorites in my profile. Love that angst.

The King of Aroon, guavina, noted today that "a Wednesday without Gio is like a day without sunshine." Fuck that. I've seen too many days without sunshine, and today ain't one of them.

So where's gio today? I missed the memo again. Woodie filled in again in the morning. He's chatting a lot lately, filling in all the holes in the mod sched. It's like the old days on PalTalk. Hope he's not overdoing it.

My aftermkt observations will be delayed. It's nice outside, and we're going out after the close.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?

It was 25 years ago today that the US Olympic hockey team upset the evil Soviets. The Lake Placid Games are especially vivid in my childhood memories because our family had just bought our first color TV. We were always behind the times. At least my parents got a good TV. It was a Sony Trinitron which they kept and used until it finally crapped out a couple years ago.

The thought of those victorious underdogs brings a smile to my face now. I'm stuck in the underdog role tossing out my one contract (and once in a blue moon, two contracts) trades against the sea of big dogs. Sometimes it feels like it would take a miracle for all this stuff to finally "click" and work for me. Woodie says the CCI is getting me in one bar ahead of the rest of the world. Lots of times, if I get in long, the world is selling one bar later. If I go short, the world is buying one bar later. It really feels like a coin toss now as to whether these patterns work out. Still, there are people in chat who are seemingly banging out monster winning percentages. Is it all mental? There have been times I've been in the "zone" in life. Mostly in sports. Sometimes in academics. Just a feeling I couldn't be beaten by an opponent or the feeling I'll ace a test or course despite not putting in as much book and classtime as others.

There were just people like that. The ones who practiced more on the tennis court or basketball court or studied way harder than me, and I'd whip 'em. I knew I would, and I did. In trading, I'm the whipee. I feel like I'm the guy putting in the extra screentime and reading time and when it's showtime, they whip me. Can it be like that? Or will all the hard work pay off in the end?

This morning, my IB TWS was nutty. I logged in and it was red, giving me blank quotes. Then I logged in again and it was yellow, only updating stock quotes and last night's HSI closing price. Took about 10-15 minutes before it went green and all the futures data was coming in. That ever happen to anyone else? That lack of opening data messed me up for awhile, and with consumer confidence coming in too, I decided to sit on my hands.

I started monitoring this other $4995 system I was talking about. It uses a much shorter timeframe than my usual charts, so its charts were were filling in faster. It was a mistake trying to monitor this new system at the same time as I was watching my CCI charts. I wound up doing a bad job of watching both. My first trade was a bad trade with good results. The ER was waterfalling, so I got in my barrel and jumped for 15 ticks. That's a fantastic day for me right there. I should've quit, but there was plenty of time to go, so I decided to "play it smart" by switching to the "less dangerous" YM. In essence, I was playing prevent defense, and how many times do you see a team get burned by that? I frittered the day's profit down to $40 before shutting down BT.

WEEKEND UPDATE, pt 5

I know what you're thinking. Why the sudden colon blow of blog entries here on a dead President's Weekend? Well: 1) I was off for a week or so, so I've been blocked up, 2) we've got friggin' storms endlessly dumping Niagara Falls-like rain on us here, so we're stuck at home (I actually just came back from Ralph's to get a couple gallons of milk for the baby, and I got hit by a blinding sheet of hail), and 3) I've been putting in "screen-time."

I'm at another fork in the road of trading. Out of the blue, I got an email early last week from an old mirc trading buddy. He has always shared a passion with me of trying out new gurus and new systems. Between us, we've been through a slew, and spent a lot of money on them. Post-bubble, he's gone the Forex route while I've gone e-mini, but we stayed in touch and always shared whatever new piece of the grail we supposedly acquired. Last we spoke was in June or July, so it was quite a nice surprise to hear from him.

My buddy wrote me that he has now acquired a new system. One selling for $4995(!!!) for the eminis. Now, I'm an intelligent man. I KNOW a $4995 system isn't any better than a $49.95 system or even a free one. I know that. But hey, a $4995 system. That would get you twitching too, wouldn't it? Especially, if you're on the small bus on the CCI road and lucky to squeeze out some YM ticks every week.

So my friend says he's gotten this system from a different friend, and he'll share it with me on two conditions: (1) I don't disclose this system to anybody (that includes YOU), and (2) after I make my "gazillions" from this, I invite him over. He's been dreaming a long time of moving his family out of his native Western European nation. Cool, I'm game.

Thus far, I've only gotten a quickie .pdf document that seems to pretty much cover everything. It doesn't seem that complicated. No super duper obtuse indicators. Not too many "rules" to memorize. There's a more detailed paper manual that I'll be getting from him too one day. Maybe that'll complicate things rightly. Until then I'll be monitoring it and not trading it for real (unless I zing off some incredibly profitable paper days from it right off the bat). I'll keep the realtime ensconced in my unexciting CCI world.

Holy shit, after a 30 minute respite, it's suddenly turned dark yellow out there and the clouds have opened up again. This is ridiculous. The weatherman says we're up to 32 inches of rain this year (10 inches more than Seattle has had). The 120 year record is 38 inches and he's confident we'll break that before the rain season ends.

OK, that should wrap up the weekend blogging. Oh yeah, a couple more things. I've read JoAnne's PT document, and I have to give her a lot of credit for a very lucid and concise little primer. "Her" PT certainly makes more sense than the previously taught one. Maybe I can actually spot a few tomorrow.

And finally, Big Cheese, you can continue to pinch some stuff from me whenever you wish. It's no big deal. If you can take a thought from here and expose it to a bigger audience, that's cool. You get more hits everyday than I've gotten since starting this thing. I just hope you see fit to give me some props once in awhile. I've got a small ego, but it's an ego nonetheless. It stings a little to be ranked behind "Obie the Farmer" in your personal daily must-read blogs. :/

Night all.

WEEKEND UPDATE, pt 4 (Fear & Loathing in CCI land -- cya Hunter)

I hardly had time to mourn the expunging of Dax's streaming lecture on the PT trade, before a brand spanking new pdf document (click that if you want to download it) has appeared. The new PT guru is now somebody named JoAnne. Who is JoAnne? Beats the hell out of me. I don't even know most of the moderators anymore. The chatroom rotation and shakeup has been dizzying.

Anyway, back to the PT. It was an r7 creation, wasn't it? r7 is another curious character. He's the Sir-Links-Alot of the Club. He hangs around the periphery, floating between the "in-club" and the "outhouse." It all depends on how bitchy he feels at the moment about being the lone wolf on TradeMaven Island (which is absolutely, positively not a Woodie approved vendor). Dax somehow got involved in the PT/notch stuff, co-developing it with r7. Dax did the unveiling and big lecture about it. Unfortunately, since then, Dax has been sealed in the outhouse and thrown off a cliff.

So now the PT has fallen into JoAnne's lap. For her credit, she's taken the ball and run with it. It's all about "Traders helping traders," ya know. I'm going to read this document now. Nevermind the fact that I keep thinking of PT Barnum ("There's a sucker born every minute") when I see the plateau trade abbreviated as so. The PT is another CCI trade I can't do for shit and stay far away from.

WEEKEND UPDATE, pt 3

Woodie's unveiling a new WCCI logo for the big Anaheim National Conference + Trade-A-Long next month. Logos are a huge matter for corporations. Having the right logo and its savvy marketing placement can take the Club to the next level. Woodie and his Board are very aware of this, so they've had the design team in high gear for months. It's been a laborious process to come up with the logo that meets with Woodie's approval. You have to remember that Woodie is putting his name and reputation out there, so when these logos are slapped on baseball caps, t-shirts and mousepads that'll be sold at Anaheim and on the corporate webstore, it has to present a 1st class image.

Above are two logo proposals that didn't pass muster with Woodie for whatever reason. He's a finicky dude. Personally, I like the first one. It looks a lot like my usual charts. The second one definitely has trademark issues with the Ghostbusters guy. I'm sure the corporate legal team shot that one down. Nobody wants Dan Ackroyd laying heat on them.

As for whether I'm going to the Anaheim shindig... I'm planning on it. Three things are holding me back. First, the cost. I'm trying to negotiate the local rate sans hotel room and the homemade water kress sandwich. I'm offering $25 to just mingle, and hopefully will hear back from shaner this weekend. I don't need a laptop connection and won't hang around for any Robin Dayne sell-a-thon pitch. Second, I really wanted to meet and see gio in action. She's long surpassed Woodie as the most enticing personality in the Club. Her trading prowess has reached mythical proportions. How often do you get to meet a Goddess in your profession? I can't believe she's skipping out on the WCCI National Conference. She's the Condi Rice in this administration. Third, the other person I'd really love to meet is Ricky007. He's another local, and for sure, he claimed in chat that he'd be in Anaheim. Now he's disappeared. He lives 10 minutes away from me, though I'm not exactly sure where. I'm thinking of plastering his neighborhood with Wanted posters. Ricky is another larger-than-life trader personality. He's got that non-descript accent and chugs out pure adrenaline. I'm afraid he's become one of the Woodie veterans who just fades away.

WEEKEND UPDATE, pt 2

We've been having more torrential rainfall the past couple days. I just saw the 5 day forecast and it's all wet. The daily police car chases have been replaced on the news with sliding houses updates. Of course, that's what people get here for building their $2M houses on a pile of sand.

The best thing about these increasingly frequent rainy winters in SoCal (perhaps the only good thing from it) is that November to February showers bring March flowers. In particular, the California Poppy. There's nothing more breathtaking than being in the middle of an endless field of bright orange poppies. I took the photo above a couple years ago in 2003. That was a pretty solid poppy season. The best was following the 1998-99 El Nino. Unbelievable poppies that March-May in Antelope Valley. Just poppies as far as the eye could see. Last year looked like a good year, too, but then suddenly it shot up over 90 degrees for a week in February and scorched the buds. The rainfall so far this winter has been double the average over there, so it's shaping up well. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

And now for something completely different, I discovered a mighty odd thing. Somebody out there was reading a german translation of this blog. I think it's German anyway. I'm pretty sure this blog sucks worse in German than English, and that's hard to do.

WEEKEND UPDATE, pt 1

You should've been there. My wife was sworn in along with 4,800 other brand new US Citizens early last Friday. There had to have been over 10,000 guests there, too. It was actually a wonderful job of controlled chaos, and everything went off without a hitch. They repeated the whole thing and swore in another 4,800 in an afternoon session. I heard later that Alanis Morissette and Jane Seymour were also sworn in that day. No, I didn't see them. I didn't even see my wife. We were sitting 40 rows back in the gigantic hallway. We didn't see a thing.

We then celebrated with brunch at IHOP. The line to get in there was nearly as long as the line to get in the LA Convention Center. That must be a killer franchise to own.

The next day was my son's birthday party, and that seemed a lot like controlling chaos, too. My wife was the one dealing with the restaurant people, the bakery shop people and the balloon people, but I was there for everything, also dragging along the baby and Mom. Everything was set up in a hour prior to party time. Somehow that all went well, too. We had around 50 people there. I gave a loving speech, we ate Chinese food, sang Happy Birthday, had cake, then all the invited kids grabbed all the expensive balloons and went home. It was like a second LA riot with all the wild balloon looting happening. A giant valentine balloon display was ripped off the wall. Two big monkey balloons were squickly snatched. My poor son was stuck with crappy leftovers, but he got some gifts to make up for it. I don't know what the final money tally is. My wife guaranteed me we'd make a profit off this, but so far I've got big charges on my MasterCard and nothing to deposit in the bank.

Mom stayed until Tuesday. My folks are downsizing back East. They finally sold their main house and are moving into a smaller house which they've owned and rented for a long time. That's the house I grew up in during my Elementary/Junior High days, so I've got lots of memories there. It's got a big backyard where we played baseball and football. We had a great dog then too. Little pembroke welsh corgi and the best frisbee catcher in the world.

Mom hinted that we could move into the house with them. That'd be nice (if my parents weren't living there). There's a reason I'm 3000 miles away from them, and I'm reminded of it everytime they visit and we're together for a few days. Mom told me, "Your Dad says he's satisfied with his life and has had everything he could want... except to see YOU settled down." Nothing like being continually reminded I'm a shitty, good for nothing, going nowhere daytrader with a wife and baby. That's my wife's job. It's pretty much unbearable when I have to hear it in surround sound.

Of course, I do have a hidden fantasy of moving back in with my folks. "The house is paid off," my mom mentioned more than once. Yeah, saving money would be nice. The fantasy part, though, is we'd all daytrade together. Both are retired. They've stayed busy fixing up their house and putting it on the market. That took 2 agonizing years. They're old. They move slowly. Anyway, my parents are the buttwipes that got me interested in the stock market way back when, buying shares for me in horrendous OTC pennystocks and teaching me how to read the business section so I can watch it not move for 5 years before disappearing into thin air. Mom's got a lot of gio in her, believe it or not. She's a pretty smart cookie at following rules and moving up the corporate ladder, as she did at Chase Manhattan Bank for decades. I think she could be a moderator in 6 months.

No trading on Tuesday. As I said yesterday... did I mention it yesterday? Anyway, we're having a hectic week here and the madness started in earnest today. We're having the baby's 1st birthday party on Saturday. We've got a big room reserved at a restaurant. Part of the package was $400 for the birthday cake and balloon decorations. My wife thought that was hefty (sounds hefty to me, too) so she cancelled that and we went out to a balloon shop and cake shop to get a better deal. Well, after all that, we saved $30. Swell.

We also went to Michael's, which is some big crafts shop that apparently every woman in America knows about. So the baby and I were the only males in there. We killed time strolling up and down the aisles of yarn and thread and fake flowers and brightly colored paper and all things crafty, while the wife was buying yarn (she wants to knit the baby a sweater which will probably be finished in the summer) and buying cheap crap to make grab bags for all the kids coming to the party. So that used up the $30 we saved from before.

My Mom is flying in from the East Coast on Thursday morning for the party. Dad can't make it. He says he has to house-sit and cat-sit. That's Dad, and that's cool. He'll definitely be here in May. On Friday, my wife takes the oath and gets sworn in as a US Citizen, so that's very, very cool. We've been dealing with the INS since 1997, which is slow motion bureaucratic hell, so this will be one sweet day, and I'm very proud of her. Saturday afternoon is the baby's birthday party. Then that night, we're going to a party for my uncle's 70th birthday. So we've got a lot of stuff, and it's all good.

Best news right now is everybody here is finally healthy! We passed around the same flu and stomach bug 2 times each thus far in '05. Baby's diarrhea has finally dried up and he's back to that grey poupon consistency I like to see. Man, has this kid been happy the past few days. He's been in a great mood and hungry as hell. He's definitely making up for all the lost meals he had. He's guzzling formula non-stop. Babies are supposed to wean off it as they eat more solids. This guy gets his solids and keeps upping his formula intake, too. At one year, he's supposed to go cold turkey on the formula in a nipple bottle and make the switch to whole milk in a sippy cup. That's going to be interesting. But that's next week.

3 min YM - 3w, 2l, +17 ticks (will detail later - got some errands to run now)

All right, I'm back. We've got a ton of offline stuff happening over here this week, including my son's first birthday party on Saturday. My trading time is going to be sporadic (like today), but hopefully my results are sporadic (like today).

Things started out swell. 34 ema was at a sweet green angle from the get-go, so the plan was to grab a ZLR long off a 34 bounce. In the first hour or so, I wheeled off 3 straight winners.

1) ZLR long off the 34 ema. I was watching the bline stoch also (the blue line) for a 50 cross. Got my targeted 10 ticks.

2) Same deal. +10 ticks.

3) Very steep angle, but it was a gb tlb long. 34 angle was still beautiful. The stoch crossed the 50. Bang. +10

Ah, I thought, so this is what it feels like to be in the "the zone." Just sit there and bang out winners like you're shooting down ships in Space Invaders. It was nice while it lasted, but then my wife had to get ready and go out to meet some friends in a bank she formerly worked at, to hand out invitations to the baby's party. That gave me about a 2 hour break to feed, play and watch Sesame Street with the baby. I returned to the charts around 12:30pm EST. The 34 was now sloping down red. A long trendline held the CCI down for nearly the entire time I was gone, giving a good couple ZLR short sigs.

4) The down trendline was broken but it still looked like another ZLR short was setting up (doesn't Woodie warn about the 3rd straight ZLR being suspect?), especially with price reaching up to tag the down sloping 34. So I went short and it stalled after a couple ticks in my direction. One worry was the blue stoch didn't reject at the 50 line and go back down. It broke up by a hair and just hung above it sideways. The fisher was clearly going up. I got out with a -3 and was happy I reacted and accepted a smaller loss instead of taking the full 10 tick stop that've plagued me before and ruined the win column totals and my morale.

Next pattern I saw was a ghost short. I passed. This time the blue stoch did cross the 50 down. That was good. The 34 was still green at that point though (as it turned out, not for much longer), and the biggest warning flag in my head was that the turbo was so far ahead of the 14 CCI, that it just felt like it would sling back in my face if I took the countertrend ghost. The ghost worked anyway, followed by a ZLR short that I also passed on. I didn't see it until afterwards. Must've stepped away.

5) A 3rd successful pattern tlb/vt long worked out, making it 3 straight winners I missed. So you know what happens when you miss a bunch of trades. I made up my mind to take the next one no matter what. It was a still a good day, and there was no reason I couldn't make it a better day. I took a ZLR short once the price bar passed up through the red 34 and back down. The blue stoch was coming down, but nowhere near the 50. The fisher was clearly up. This one went against me immediately, and this time I didn't react and get out early. I took the 10 tick stop loss. I called it a day.

So all in all, a hodgepodge day. The YM didn't have a super range today, but still plenty of opps to grab ticks both ways.

Daddy, how much money did you make today?

When I was a kid, first thing I said to my Mom when she returned home from work was "you got the newspaper?" I was a New York Post junkie. Little kid like me didn't know it was a fishwrap tabloid, just that it had a pretty good sports section. My mom would always get the Final Edition too so it had all the late boxscores from the West Coast, plus partial boxscores of today's afternoon games. That was cool.

Before my Mom handed the paper over to me, she'd always give me the "is that how you greet me?" treatment. "No 'Hi Mom! I love you, Mom! How was your day, Mom?'????"

Many years later, I started getting the same treatment from my wife. Every evening, she would ask, "How much money did you make today?" No "Hi honey, how was your day? What do you want for dinner?"

Then when she found out what time the markets closed in the afternoon, she'd call me up from her office to ask. It got pretty aggravating as you can imagine. I got her to change the question to "how many ticks did you make today?" That was a bit less stressful for a couple weeks. Then finally I got her to just ask my how my week went at Friday's close. And that's the game we are currently playing. So now I only have to lie once a week.

My baby is starting some hardcore babbling now. He's stringing syllables like they're going out of style, and adding intonation and everything. It's only a matter of time before he starts asking how much money I made today.

Here's my Barbara underwater background chart. Gonna run a replay on this after the game ends. I slapped on thefed's CCI-Bollinger Bands creation. Here's an example of his. The basic premise behind it (as I understand it to be) is that the CCI zeroline is not really stationary, therefore we see now a moving zeroline with some bollinger calculated bands around it. thefed does not use Woodie's 14 CCI on his chart, but I am for testing purposes. I'm also overlaying it on my regular CCI setup.

One thing to expect is that this CCI-BB thing will "float." That's the same thing seen with some other fed ideas I've come across including the detrend oscillator on top of the CCI and the 3 wma. It's not much of a problem in realtime (most of the time), but it does mean that what you are looking at on an EOD chart will not correspond to what was actually seen during the day. So any picture perfect band rejections or middle line CCI zlr's that can be seen on the chart above probably didn't appear that way in realtime.

Another week has come and gone, and again, I've barely anything to show for it. Second "scratch" week in a row. The year started out so promising, too. I even changed my background color again to match Barbara's underwater aquamarine look. Underwater isn't a good connotation in trading, is it? Well, I'll get a chart up over the weekend.

And now onto the good stuff...

Woodie announced yet more mysterious chatroom mitosis. A new "anything goes - no holds barred" room has been spun off. Perhaps it's Dax's old commodities room with a fresh coat of paint and the furniture moved around. I forget the name of it, but I'll be sure to check it out, I guess. I'm wondering... is this new room in response to the growing popularity of the Cheese blog (hey, thanks for visiting the other day, Cheesy) and the splinter TeddysCCIRoom website? There is a Teddy chat on PalTalk. You can find it in the miscellaneous section, I believe. Not the financial area. I sat in the corner two times this week, half paying attention in the half-ass way I do everything. The room seems to have a good number of folks there, and more than a few of the old crew from Woodie's room have either dropped in for a visit or they've established residence there.

I'm also wondering... is this new Woodie room a trap to identify and brand all the disgruntled folks? Is this a cheese trap to snap some tails off? Maybe that other blog is rubbing off on me too much.

I still visit HC daily, too. Shit, I've got 200 days left on my subscription, and I'm sure I can squeeze out some good learning from it. The Teddy room was very good though. No voice mods, but traders take the mic from time to time, especially the oldies afterhours to reminisce, shoot the shit, and share stuff. Of course, it's PalTalk, which seems to be the most popular internet tool for al qaeda and the middle eastern world, so a dozen or so of these folks will also pop in during the day. That always seemed to invoke comments about "camels" and "rugs" from the Teddy peeps. Okay, so it's not the most enlightened PC crowd around.

Woodie again mentioned his 28 min chart today, and how he's always looking for ways to stay ahead of the crowd. This brings up the issue of his possibly "frontrunning" the rest of the room. Something again in my head from some Cheese comments yesterday or the day before. Somebody there said something nearly identical to something I wrote here on October 13, 2004. Coincidentally, that was the first appearance of Woodie's Fib-CCI and I put up his chart of it. The frontrunning idea comes from Woodie saying that he had developed a "better CCI" giving him faster signals. It was an interesting thing to admit, and something I definitely wanted to make note of that day. I haven't thought of it since, until this notion cropped up again, so there you have it. My thoughts remain the same. I wouldn't blame Woodie for using a better CCI. I don't know the legality of it, but he's got disclaimers up the ying-yang to shield him from stuff, I guess. No real speculation or accusations here. Actually I don't care much. Just sharing what I wrote and thought about it then and now.

YM 2 min - 1 trade/+8 ticks

Big doings in chartland. Switched the background to green again. The grey was getting to be a drab winter downer. Catchers and pitchers report to spring training in just two weeks. Can you smell the grass? Not that kind of grass, Cheech. Got rid of the green and red LSMA dots on the CCI zero line after the close today, too. I've been getting nuanced up the ass. I already removed the 25 LSMA off the price chart long ago, and as for price action, I'm keying in on the 8 and 34 EMA, plus that CCI-Fib middleline (has Woodie abandoned this new contraption already?). That's enough shit to eyeball during ZLRs. There's no sidewinder for the Sierra, and frankly, I could care less about it anymore. I think looking at my MAs and their slope is more than enough.

Sooooo, only one trade today. I don't know if that's an r7 "notch" trade (are there such things as a notch trade?), but I took it as a ZLR long with a decent bline sling. Traded two contracts and got all in and all out at +8 ticks. Trading multi-contracts should be easier than one, but I'm not ready for it. I lost my comcrap connection for 15-20 minutes after that. That crap always makes you hesitant to play with real money for the rest of the day.

Oh, saw a WTF thing in Woodie's chat today. This was just mentioned in the Cheese's wonderful Cheese & Whine Blog but I saw it with my own eyes and wanted to give it a mention here. This afternoon Woodie announced a YM ZLR/TLB long on the 28 min chart. This was, in his own words, to get in one bar ahead of the 30 min chart folks. Wow. I think that long was in the red from the get-go, but that's neither here nor there.

So what the hell is going on with Woodie and his room? I'm only a casual visitor to the main room now. Since the room mitosis I've also been parking myself in the calm of the students room to breathe the fresh air and listen to the quiet, peaceful chirping within. The main room has gone through some changes. One of the new moderators, Samson, was on this morning going on and on about some more changes. Something about how the mods will not be calling out entries and exits anymore. They won't be doing this, they won't be doing that. It's all for our protection. The SEC is watching. A few rotten apples have spoiled the bunch. It's better this way. Yada yada yada. Half of his talking was going over the stuff he wouldn't be talking about. Then another of the new mods, Paul, takes over for the afternoon shift, and he's calling out his entries and exits, which I can only assume meant he wasn't protecting us at all from the people and official agencies we need protecting from. I have no idea what's going on. It sounded like Marshall Law was being enforced, but nobody cared or understood what was happening. Everyone must be oblivious like me.