After earnings, the stock price went from $220 to under $190, which represented a 14% drop. Since any stocks’ move is comprised roughly 49% of the broader market move and 31% of the stock’s sector move reason for the Apple’s drop was the DOW’s 800 point move to the downside. Nevertheless, algos and hedge fund managers saw price hitting the 200 moving average and that’s when price caught the bids. That’s also when the Smart Money bought an astounding 48,000 call options with a strike price at $200 that expire today.
Now the price at which those options as I write this post are sitting at $.70 or $70 per contract,
but prior to the Market close yesterday those contracts were at $300 / contract.
This represents a return of 254% for the Smart Money. Why do I say they made a profit, because they sold out of their positions yesterday? How do I know this, because the the 48,000 contracts, the volume in this case on Tues, would of shown up as open interest on Wednesday. Open interest indicates the total number of option contracts that are currently open or held. Unlike options trading volume, open interest is not updated during the trading day. So the Smart Money sold their options between Wednesday and Thursday, because the open interest going into the trading day Friday only shows a bit over 1500 contracts.
Another example of why I only follow the Smart Money…plain and simple, they have information that simple isn’t accessible to anyone else.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
The New Zealand dollar is known in the forex world after its national icon, the flightless bird called the Kiwi, which is also pictured on the country’s $1 coin.
The Kiwi remains under pressure as lingering U.S.-China trade tensions continue to weigh on sentiment. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has already cut interests rate twice this year and Bearish traders were betting on another ¼ point cut this earlier this week. But the news that came out this week, even shock the Bears.
The New Zealand Dollar was crushed Wednesday after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) slashed its interest rate further than markets expected and gave guidance that was more ‘dovish’ than anticipated, but analysts say there’s more losses ahead because the bank is likely to cut again before long.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut its interest rate by 50 basis points to a new record low of 1.25% Wednesday when financial markets had looked for only a 25 basis point reduction, taking the market by surprise and prompting traders to dump the Kiwi currency by the bucketload.
Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr hinted at further easing by any means necessary in order to hit their inflation rate targets. Based on where I think the global economy is headed over the coming 12-24 months, I’m personally bearish as well on the Kiwi.
On the monthly chart, there is a nice head and shoulder pattern.
So based on a measured move, price could go sub .5000, which is an extreme.
So I will settle for distance that is half the measured move, but at the moment, on a smaller time frame, I can find a level to enter to go short.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
In Elliott Wave terms, Algorand began a wave one advance on August 1. The red wave one (blue sub-waves i-ii-iii-iv-v) finished on August 2, and the red wave two (blue sub-waves a-b-c) correction ended on August 8. If this wave count is correct, Algorand should be heading next towards the August 2 peak in the red wave three.
Algorand is a public, permissionless, pure proof of stake blockchain that ensures full participation, protection and speed within a truly decentralized network. Boxmining covered the project earlier this week.
The refinery was the largest and oldest on the East Coast went up in flames, removing 25% of the refining capacity in the Northeast in the process.
The chart suggests if gasoline can rise a bit higher to short (due to gasoline supply concern) price at the daily supply at $2.015.
In the article I talked indirectly about gasoline being a derivative of oil, which means that if oil rises/falls, gasoline will follow suit.
Retail gasoline prices tend to rise in the spring and peak in the Summer when people drive more frequently. So the set-up had the seasonality going for it as well since the accident was a month past Memorial Day.
Needless to say price hit the daily supply at $2.015 and fell.
According to AAA, the national average is about $2.69 per gallon now, down from a couple of cents from last week. I anticipate retail gasoline prices continue to decline in the coming months. The gasoline futures’ chart suggests price is heading down to $1.4500
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Just spent time scanning through the charts looking for a top 50 coin to buy on a trade. Struggled to find anything that was giving me a buy single – UGH.
Indecision and selling pressure
Bitcoin has pushed higher of late and the alts have not followed at all. However, I’m not buying bitcoin after it ripped 2,000 points the past week.
I do like the consolidation it is doing now, as if it actually wants to leg up again. I’ll believe it when I see it and for now will just hold my long-term bag. I buy coin on pullbacks for the most part.
LTC and ETH – nothing says buy at the moment
As you can see litecoin looks rather indecisive after retreating from that head and shoulders topping pattern. I like that it is atleast hanging on here in the middle of the range as that is less bearish, but price action certainly isn’t bullish.
Ethereum looks like it just failed at the 230 level again so not a time to get long. Ideally we see some unexpected buying and it pushes through that level, but that is just a gamble.
And I could continue on. EOS doesn’t look much different nor many other coins. There is some strength here and there, such as BNB past couple days, but that trade entry is long gone.
I’m sitting on my long-term bag with my active trading capital idle on the sidelines for now.
The only channel I seldom have on is either CNBC or Bloomberg. While the financial talking heads are talking about the 800 point decline in the DOW, the 10 yr and 30 yr interest rate hitting multi-year lows, the VIX and the impending currency war, nobody is talking about Dr. Copper.
The term Doctor Copper is market lingo for the copper’s ability to predict turning points in the global economy. Rising copper prices imply demand or a growing global economy and declining copper prices imply lack of demand or a slowing global economy.
The focus is increasingly on the damage caused by the havoc of a trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies. The broad applications for copper mean it’s particularly vulnerable to the synchronized tailspin being seen in everything from car-making and earth-moving equipment to commercial property and advanced electronic components.
“What the hard data is telling us is that end-use demand is slow and in many places getting kicked quite hard,” Oliver Nugent, a metals strategist at Citigroup Inc., said by phone from London. “China’s commodity-intensive economy is as weak as it’s been in recent history.”
From a macro perspective, copper stalled out in Jan of 2018 and when trade tariff became a huge topic of discussion, the momentum in copper turned which was confirmed by the trendline break.
Fast forward almost two years later and trade talk is still being discussed and in recent days it’s a matter of who has the bigger stick. However, what’s different today is Germany is pretty much in a recession, global interest rates are at multi year lows and the US just cut rates for the first time in 10 years. Thus, copper is at a level that I’m deeming, “the line in the sand.”
If copper closes below 2.5000 on the monthly chart, look for copper to make its way down to 2.0000.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Arthur D. Cashin, Jr. is a managing director of UBS Financial Services Inc. and the Director of Floor Operations for UBS Financial Services at the New York Stock Exchange is a well-respected figure on Wall Street.
Traders are trying to remain positive as stocks came off their sharp morning lows, veteran trader Art Cashin told CNBC on Wednesday.
“If we rolled over here and violated the morning lows, then it would really begin to be a problem,” said Cashin, UBS director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange. “For now, everybody is kind of crossing their fingers and whistling past the graveyard, saying, ‘OK, we tested Monday’s lows,’” he added, around midmorning as the worst of the sell-off was abating.
“The S&P held, so I guess we can be in good shape,” said Cashin, who predicted rocky markets for the next few weeks as global trade tensions mount. “I think volatility is here to stay.”
However, there is one reason and one reason only why the US equity markets are off the Monday lows.
The moving average is the most ubiquitous and simplest technical analysis tool used by discretionary and system traders, market analysts and those pestering algos. The 200 moving average, the king of moving averages is used on a daily chart to determining the overall long-term market trend over the last 40 weeks.
Discretionary and system traders, market analysts and those pestering algos also use moving averages for support and resistance. For example, in February and April of 2018, the 200 moving avg. (yellow line) served as support for the Market.
In October of 2018, the same thing happened.
And again this week,
Whether you trade cryptos, stocks, forex, but don’t have the 200 moving average on your daily chart, consider plotting it on your daily chart as it might offer you an additional edge to accompany your trading strategy.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Well it looks like Binance KYC information is all over the internet.
I couldn’t possibly provide links to all the articles I’ve read about it, because they are a dime a dozen. In case you somehow missed them all, here is one, just as an example: https://www.coindesk.com/binance-kyc-issue
Let’s get one thing very clear from the beginning: I’m not anti-Binance. As you can clearly see from my previous blog posts and Tweets, I’m actually a big fan of Binance and of CZ. My only real problem with them is their overly agnostic stance towards cryptocurrencies, even the dreaded Libra.
This is also not one of the (many) posts telling you to panic because your data has been compromised. Panic is stupid and never helps anything. It’s far better to remain calm and find a solution to the problem. It would help if Binance was a little more responsive/open about this issue – take note Binance: rapid and truthful PR is essential in such cases. People don’t panic when they know the truth, they panic when they don’t know what’s going on or when they find out that they were lied to.
This post is a reminder of what I warned you about previously, the evils of KYC.
“Try to give you warning, but everyone ignores me. Told you everything loud and clear, but nobody’s listening. Call to you so clearly, but you don’t want to hear me. Told you everything loud and clear, but nobody’s listening.”
~ Nobody’s Listening – Linkin Park (R.I.P. Chester Bennington)
I will be the first to admit that public dissemination of your KYC data was not (and still is not) first and foremost on my list of KYC-related concerns. But: I did warn you about KYC in general, and proclaimed it to be a bad thing, a bad thing which is being done in an even worse way.
I have big issues with KYC. How many of you remember this article?
I wrote it a little over two months ago. Do you remember some of the things which I said in there?
“KYC IS BAD FOR CRYPTO”
“KYC obviously stands against some of the very principles that crypto is built on!
The ability to transact with anyone, anywhere, anonymously is a core concept built into the crypto way of doing business. The matter of asking someone for their identity before agreeing to carry out crypto transactions with them should never even be raised!”
“Crypto was based on a zero-trust model which uses cryptographic methods to ensure trust. IT DOES NOT NEED INDIVIDUAL IDENTITIES IN ORDER TO FUNCTION!”
“A crypto system which demands the identities of its participants is a self-destructive system. It unbalances crypto as a whole and works against the principles on which crypto is built.”
I think that the truth behind my warnings is now starting to become apparent. It doesn’t really matter how or why your KYC data was compromised, or even who did it. What matters is that your data was able to be compromised in the first place! Fact: there is no such thing as a foolproof system. This is especially true in crypto, the cryptospace is still new and many loopholes have yet to be found. This will not be the last such incident! We need to eradicate the procedures which leave us vulnerable!
If Binance had not had any KYC data, then there would have been nothing to leak! Yes, I DO understand regulatory need for KYC / AML etc, we’ll get to that later. But first, let’s look at more of what I had to say in my anti-KYC article:
“…if I need to identify myself in order to make a crypto transaction, why would I not just use a fiat one instead? Either way I’m going to have to comply with regulations. Either way I’m going to end up paying taxes on it. Either way my identity will be known. What KYC does is to strip the usefulness away from crypto, thereby undermining its value and making it not worthwhile investing in!”
…and leading on from that…
“If my crypto has no benefit to me, then my crypto has no value to me. Then it’s just another unbacked, regulated means of exchange. I have no need for another one of those, I have enough trouble with fiat money as it is.”
Now this is where regulations and centralised exchanges really start to come into it:
“I DON’T agree with KYC procedures which exist to placate the demands of centralised entities, but I do agree with identification procedures that are required to carry out basic business transactions.”
“Centralised crypto exchanges in particular are starting to look more and more like banks (as mentioned by Heidi in her Monday “Crypto tips” video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91f-QNSmzrA&t= ). Let’s be very clear here: an exchange does NOT require your name or phone number to change one coin into another!“
“Dealing in crypto is not the same as dealing with fiat based assets, crypto is not linked to government assets and governments have absolutely no right to attempt to regulate it. One of the greatest attractions of crypto is that is is beyond the reach of regulations, if crypto is to succeed then it needs to remain that way! Don’t let your own government fool you into thinking that you have to play crypto by their rules, you don’t. Find a way around the rules. Crypto is decentralised, it is designed to to able to avoid such regulations! Giving in to regulations and supporting them is akin to driving a knife into crypto’s back, get out of the crypto space if you want to be like that, it’s counter-productive and will devalue the very asset which you are investing in.”
“KYC is part of the slippery slope to crypto regulation. I stand strongly against it.”
“Show me the government argument in favour of KYC and crypto regulation, and I will show you the counter argument that disproves it.”
A great opportunity which remains a missed opportunity in the cryptoverse, is that crypto projects are failing to leverage the utility that they can provide for one another. I have spoken harshly against projects which insist on using their own KYC procedures and which are not utilising specialist cryptocurrencies designed for that role:
“We have an array of already working and under development Identity Verification cryptocurrencies available to us: Civic, THEKEY, SelfKey, Worbli, NEO ID etc. We as crypto users need to put pressure on crypto companies to use these services. We need to support those who already use these services and demand that the others do the same.“
I have taken such crypto projects on in several private emails and occasional public Tweets – such as this one:
From twitter.com
There are exchanges and wallets which I refuse to use because they refuse to use other crypto projects. I know that in a way this looks like cutting off my nose to spite my face, but if we – the crypto community – don’t take a stand to support ID verification projects and stop the endless and unnecessary KYC procedures, who will?
I also know that some of my favourite exchanges require KYC – some at various levels, depending on what you want from them. Binance, KuCoin, even Nash – all exchanges which I highly recommend – have such requirements. I’m not suggesting that you avoid pro-KYC entities completely, but rather that you start moving in the right direction. For instance: Nash is more decentralised than most exchanges (an exchange is not simply “centralised” or “decentralised”: CEXs and DEXs lie at two ends of a continuum, and most exchanges lie somewhere between those two points), so I will be using it a lot after its August 23 launch and will slowly scale down on using the more centralised ones. Similarly, if given the option (in terms of trading pairs), I choose to use Binance DEX over traditional Binance. As seen in the Tweet above, when an exchange like IDEX takes such a bold move in the wrong direction, then I cut it off completely.
I also included quite a few original Satoshi Nakamoto quotes in my anti-KYC post. People need to be reminded of these regularly! People need to remember Satoshi’s vision!
Satoshi quotes:
“Participants can be anonymous.”
“…privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone.”
“We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.”
Conclusion
I don’t give a damn that governments want KYC. If you are a large crypto company, and local government regulations are making it hard for you to operate – then MOVE! Don’t try to block users, leave that up to the governments who want to do the regulating. Let people discover the power of the TOR network, VPNs etc. And for crying out loud – stop demanding KYC information! This won’t end well for you or your users!
Let the governments who don’t want crypto seal their own fates. The future of global finance lies in decentralised crypto. If they don’t want to be a part of that future – so be it.
We were lucky with the latest Binance KYC leak, it could have been much worse. Consider this a small taste of what is to come if we continue down the dark path of government-enforced crypto regulation.
To the crypto service providers: I ask you again, with tears in my baby-blue eyes – Use the ID verification projects! Let me login using e.g. Civic. Let me control which information I share with each company. Let me not spread 100 different photos of myself and my identification documents all around the internet!
Simple systems engineering principles are at play here people: you are introducing multiple points of failure – AND THEY ARE FAILING!
Let the KYC we know today die the death that it deserves. It does not matter about government concerns re money laundering, purchases of illegal goods etc. When criminals are selling drugs or guns on your streets, taking away money is not the answer! Yes, without money you can’t buy drugs and guns, but you also can’t buy food, clothing, fuel… The government arguments that crypto transactions are largely in criminal hands are fallacious. FAR more drugs are sold using fiat. FAR more money is laundered using fiat! FORGET ABOUT WHAT GOVERNMENT WANTS! What’s the worst that could happen? They ban crypto? Remind me again how well the drug bans are working after all these years…
Yours in crypto
Bit Brain
“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first”
~ Mark Twain
“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful”
In Elliott Wave terms, Huobi Token began a wave one advance in November 2018. The red wave one (blue sub-waves i-ii-iii-iv-v) finished in April this year, and the red wave two (blue sub-waves a-b-c) correction ended in June. If this wave count is correct, Huobi Token should be heading next towards the April peak in the red wave three.
Silver prices on surged more than 4% on Wednesday, this highest one day return in three years and in the process breached the key psychological $17 level.
although I’m very bullish on Gold,
but I think the red headed step child, Silver will perform better than Gold over the next several years. The gold/silver ratio is simply the amount of silver it takes to purchase one ounce of gold. And when this ratio hits 80, it reverses.
Since the mid-1990s, the ration has hit 80 four times. And when it reversed, silver outperformed gold over the next several years.
The Smart Money is recognizing what’s going on. They just bought over 85, 000 of the September call options, $17 strike price in SLV.
SLV is the iShares Silver Trust which seeks to reflect the performance of the price of silver. However, I think SLV is just beginning.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
