The Bull and the Bear Are Swapping Onesies Again. The Last Time I Saw This, It Was 2008.

Doing a shorter post today, it’s Friday and I want another early start into my own personal long weekend.

Tonight: a bull and a bear, seen leaving a fancy dress shop at 9:30 wearing each other’s clothes. Police are not looking for anyone else.

The bull and the bear seem to be having their own personal schizophrenic fun swapping bull and bear onesies with each other, or spinning a bull bear wheel of fortune wheel, or a merry-go-round, or simply both alternately spinning around in the bull bear turnstiles…

…and we are basically back to coin flipping every day or every other day.

Bull shakeout, shakedown, then bear shakeout, shakedown, both of them giggling to each other.

This type of price behaviour really reminds me of the pre 2008 crash, for several months, other than anyone with their eyes open for the prior 2 years. I mean you can’t just change 3x earnings mortgages to 25x earnings mortgages for people, or even give unemployed people $1 million mortgages, and not expect something to pop eventually.

Anyway, price behaviour in those prior two months…

…was just like this.

Multiple false breaks of intraday ranges, moves one way on what looks like a classic breakout, then flips direction later in the day, then flips direction again at the end of the day.

Big “This is it” moves, only to see those same moves disappear.

The cost was two (possibly more) months of constant pattern and breakout failures, questioning my sanity, to the point where I took a week to 10 days off to get my shit together. Conveniently it was just in time for the actual break, and then it was back to back to back gains.

I went from one of my worst trading periods to one of my best trading periods, even to this day, in a very short space of time.

As traders, you have to think about thinking. You have to change your mind when the world changes, or the world leaves you behind.

The greatest trick the bear ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

The Core Trick: Let the bulls and the bears fool themselves.

So while I have opinions that keep spinning me around and often could not be more wrong’er’er, the data and the strategy keep me sane.

Well, mostly sane.

Well OK, on the very edge of losing my mind.

I may just switch my brain off completely, like a mindless trading zombie* who has ran out of brains.

Less brain = more gain. Lol.

Here’s what the swing data is saying, and how long the bull gets to keep the onesie on. Scroll down.

*Film zombies want brains.
Trading zombies already sold theirs at the open, to someone who flipped them by lunch.

Market Snapshot

• S&P futures: 7,803.25, up 0.22%, about 94 points under the NATHs line at 7,897.50.
• Uncle Dow futures: 52,582, up 0.27%, still some 2,300 points under his NATHs line.
• NazQuack futures: 30,140.25, roughly flat, about 1,476 points under its NATHs line.
• Uncle Russ futures: 2,791.8, up 0.33%.
• Gold: 4,201.2, up 0.21%.
• Crude: 95.73, down 1.87%.
• VIX: 16.05, down 2.43%, back on the 16 line and squeezed inside the triangle.
• Bitcoin: 81,967.62, roughly flat.

SPX and RUT – Both have flagged up the bull and it’s currently running.

The data said the swings were bearish, and then later on back bullish. It’s possible we can swing back to bearish later on in the day on Friday, who knows.

Over on the SPX swing and RUT, both have flagged up the bull and it’s currently running…

Give it a minute or two, the week has not finished yet.

Crude Oil – Pushing out of the larger range but still inside the rising channel.

Crude is looking interesting, pushing out of the larger range but still inside the rising channel. Being a buyer around $95 on the channel lows makes sense, and then if we break below the channel, assess for the bear trip down to the larger range lows.

Bitcoin – At the same range lows we looked at yesterday.

BTC is at the same range lows we looked at yesterday, an attempted push lower and right back into the range, looking for a push to the upper range high…

Attempt number 2.