A new week...

A fairly busy weekend just past.  Had a mate's bucks party down at Arthur's seat on Saturday night.  We turned out for dinner after the boys went for paintballing and it was clear they had no energy left for much else that night.  Where were teh goddamned strippers?  We ended up watching the Victorian election on TV, and a bad re-run of some Whoopi Goldberg movie.  It was so terrible I had to leave halfway through.  I maintain that paintballing is one of the worst ideas for a bucks, and Saturday night reinforces that view.  Sunday was spent at Mum's for lunch.

Back in the real world, Friday trading came and went.  Got further chopped up by the consolidation and suffered more losses bringing the weekly loss down to -8.0% of equity -- not a fantastic result.  This occured as a result of rigidly taking every single signal on the 10-box frame.  On the positive side, I captured the 2 major moves of the week, and I can say my first week of applying the point and figure technique was disciplined, and accordingly, good.  Also, my money management was pretty good -- I did get pretty angry mid-week from the growing losses but resisted the temptation of throwing on a revenge trade so well done.

Mainly, my significant losses resulted from were getting chopped from the Wed-Thurs-Friday consolidation taking the 10-box signals.  Am disturbed that I can end up -8% down on equity after hitting +3.5%. 

In hindsight the 20-box showed a bearish flag that was not evident on the 10-box.  Whether this would have encouraged me to take only sell-side signals and have a wider SL (based on the 20-box frame) is questionable, because the P&F technique does not incorporate a multi-box analysis.  However, the lesson here is that the 20-box act like a 1H or 4H time frame so it is important to be alert to it at all times.

The market is currently focused on 2 issues: Eurozone problems in Ireland, and the North/South Korean conflict.  Market gapped up this morning on news of an Irish bailout package, but we've now closed the gap.

2 shorts in cable and fibre still in play.

Volatility on the increase; VIX breaking out to the upside: