Jack Heald

Hope this helps.

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For those of you asking yourselves, “should I buy gold”, the answer is pretty simple – YES. For those of you wondering, “should I buy gold now that it is over $1900, or should I wait?”, the answer is – THAT DEPENDS. Gold continues to push higher because of fundamentals – it is a commodity and all commodities are going to be rising in dollar terms for as long as central banks try to inflate their way out of debt.

If you want a little “better” price on your gold purchases, (and gold is technically overbought at the moment, which implies a coming correction), a good entry point is on any pullback to a prior support level. At this date, we had a brief pullback two weeks ago to the mid $1700′s before rocketing back up to near $1900. If you want to find a good entry point, select price levels that appear to provide support.

There are two kinds of support – absolute price support and relative chart support. Absolute price support means that a particular price point – say for example $1700 – has historically provided support. The simplest way to identify absolute price support is to look at a chart. Wherever you see the price chart fall down to a particular point and then reverse back up – that’s support. The support is stronger if the reversal has happened on more than one occasion.

The other kind of support – chart support – is more ambiguous. This kind of support can be seen with technical indicators like moving averages or price bands. (Here’s an example from 2008.) There is no “right” moving average and no “right” price band – these are purely subjective indicators, but – in spite of their subjective nature, can still provide fairly reliable entry points. If you look at a chart of gold over the last ten years, you’ll see it’s general trend is up, but that it is marked by pullbacks. Often, those “support” levels you see on the chart will coincide with moving averages. Try looking at a 20day, 50day and 200 day moving average of Gold’s price and you’ll like see support. (There is nothing magic about these levels, by the way. You can pick any number you want – try a 14 day, 37 day and 83 day moving average just for grins and giggles.)

Whatever your entry point, you should find a way to buy gold because the fundamentals support it: central banks are destroying the value of their currencies, and that action in turn means that all commodities will rise in value relative to those currencies.

Finally, a word about the various ways to own gold.  Buy physical gold, not an ETF such as GLD. If you buy futures contracts, take physical delivery. Buy one ounce coins or tenth-ounce coins or even kilo bars, but buy physical.

Seriously.

But I’m not writing about that yet. I’m just making myself a note to read as much literature in the field of behavioural economics as I can. Found a good list to start with, though I suspect Mises’s Human Action is still better than any others.

Thanks to all of you who read and commented on my Earth Day post.

…the only regulation that will ever work is failure… Businesses should fail, that’s the way the system was designed.

Rick Santelli in an interview on King World News

Two years ago, Congress had a chance to keep the economy from tanking. All they had to do was let the banks fail. They didn’t do it because the criminal class, a.k.a. Wall Street Bankers and their minions, ([cough] Paulson, Bernanke, Summers & Geithner [cough]), convinced them that if they let the banks fail, the economy would tank. So Congress gave the bankers roughly nine hundred gazillion dollars so that the economy wouldn’t tank. The bankers got big bonuses, and the economy tanked anyway.

Failure is a good thing. It is God’s/Nature’s/The Universe’s way of saying “You’re doing it wrong”.

It sates itself on the life-blood
of fated men,
paints red the powers’ homes
with crimson gore.
Black become the sun’s beams
in the summers that follow,
weathers all treacherous.
Do you still seek to know? And what?
Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
sisters’ children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age (and the sun rises)
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another

Völuspá

Back in November 2009 I made the decision to stop trading. I had been working at it for over 2 years, and had managed to lose a boatload over that time period. It was time to stop, time to regroup, time to rethink. It was a painful decision because trading – in so many ways – is a perfect “job” for me. It fits me in a thousand vital ways. But it wasn’t fitting me in one very important way – making a living.

I stayed away as long as I could – over 3 months. But I have decided it is time to get back on that pony. This time, I am a lot wiser. I learned a lot in those first two years, but the main thing I learned is that I was not being a professional trader. So what am I going to do differently this time?

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One of the behaviors I am working on with my clients to is to train them to take a Goal/Strategy/Tactic approach to running their businesses. A Goal is the end state of whatever you are trying to achieve. A Strategy defines how you will accomplish that goal, and a Tactic is a specific step you will take to execute that strategy. For most of my clients, the goals are clearly defined, but the strategies are not, and for those who have good strategies, few have clearly defined tactics. Without clear goals, strategies and tactics, it is much harder to achieve what you want to achieve. Hard work is no substitute for clearly defined goals, strategies and tactics.

With that introduction, I turn to Brett Steenbarger who (once again) points us to a way to assess the mood of the market daily. One of my continuing failures as a trader has been not recognizing the mood of the market, and trading contrary to the mood. It is a continual struggle for me to find the “sweet spot” between “looking at too much data” and “not looking at enough data”, and in that struggle I often lose sight of what the market is trying to tell me. Dr. Brett helps to point the way towards recognizing the data that matters and the data that doesn’t.

Now that I have identified that particular weakness of mine, I need a plan to overcome it. My goal is to execute trades that are consistent with the market’s sentiment. If I am satisfied with that goal, (and I am), then my next job is to refine my strategies for identifying the market sentiment. With appropriate strategies, then and only then am I ready to define my tactics for executing those strategies.

I know the GST approach doesn’t work for everyone, but for those – like me – who need an ordered approach to accomplishing anything, it is a worthwhile model for to follow.