Month: February 2012

Had dinner with Lydia Idem last night who many of you know as @FaithMight on StockTwits.

She is a great follow – one of the best FX traders on the stream who calmy takes pips out of the market with discipline.

We were talking about Greece and she laid it out plainly.

“I’m done with Greece and don’t pay attention to it. I don’t care. Its in the market. It has been in the market. You can see it in equity prices. They don’t care either.”

I love this because the news is filled with Greece and every smallest twitch or leak is reported with urgency.  Meanwhile, the consensus is and has been that they will eventually default.

By the time a story has been hashed, rehashed and obsessed over, it is likely noise. This is especially true when price no longer responds.

Further, if consensus is already worst case then where is the downside?

There are a bunch of young traders out there who are not aware of Brett Steenbarger and his peerless contributions to trading psychology and trader education.

Dr. Brett stopped posting a year and a half ago but his blog is still on the web and is filled with hundreds of timeless and valuable entries great for perusing.

On StockTwits, we have created a stream called @SteenbargerClassics that curates his blog posts and tweets one great post a day.

If you are hungry to learn about markets and trading, this stream is a great follow.

If you are looking to read one of Dr. Brett’s books, I would start with this one.

Playing with Storify last night and created a List of some of my favorite Facebook ($FB) tweets from StockTwits after the S1 was filed. Very cool application  Check it out:

Eghosa is one of the smartest guys I know in this space. He sat down with The Street Signs Crew to discuss Facebook’s ($FB) prospects and provides real value.

Back on October 31, I published a piece pointing to the Six Month Switching Strategy via The Stock Trader’s Almanac which highlights the bullish half of the year from November 1 to April 30.

At the time, the mood of the market was not so bullish having fallen over 100 SP500 points from the year’s highs while careening through a not so fun house of jagged troughs and fleeting peaks.

Well, here we are halfway through the best six months and the $SPX looks 5% higher. Not bad for 3 months work.

One point of immediate term caution. February is historically the worst of the best six months and the second worst month of the year.

Over the past 40 years, February has returned an average of -.19% while the average monthly return for the 12 months has been .64%. Only September has been worse with an average return of -.77%.

So if history is our guide, this month may see a rest or pull back from these recent highs.

Chart Courtesy of squirrelers.com

The Best Six Months of the Year Begins Tomorrow