One of the arguments people use against natural gas is that it could aggravate the greenhouse effect, and concerns about climate change might be holding back its mass consumption. Apparently methane is about twenty times worst than carbon dioxide once in the atmosphere, so leaks would be a problem.

However I don't really buy that argument. The problem is only with direct leaks, and I don't think gas leaks are any worst than oil tankers leaking into the ocean. Wind and solar energy are interesting alternatives to oil, but they will clearly never be able to supply more than a small fraction of our energy needs. Natural gas seems like a great solution right now. Probably we will need to see another bubble in oil prices and fears about consumption being greater than supply before we start using more gas.

Three of Canada's big banks have increased their five-year mortgage rates by six-tenths of a per cent, to 5.85 per cent from 5.25 per cent:

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The Bank of Canada governor has already hinted that interest rates may go up sooner than expected:

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Interesting charts. I personally know a few people who have recently bought houses. Some of them are students with very little income. Another guy had huge debt already, and he upgraded to a house that's worth twice as much. Most of them are buying within a day or two. Everybody thinks they're making a great decision because they're buying while the rates are still low and they can still get the tax credits. "Yeah I can get a $750 tax credit! Well then I don't mind paying 20% more for this house." I think the market is sure to cool down once the rates go up, but I wonder if the worst will only come later when people have to renew their mortgages in 4-5 years.

I've been following the real estate market in Ottawa for the last couple years now. It's true that there's still high demand here and it is very much a seller's market. However, I wonder how much of it is being driven by low interest rates. The fact is supply is growing at an accelerated pace, and I can't imagine demand will keep up once the rates increase. For now the market seems fine, but I have enough reasons for concern to keep renting until things are more stable. The average price for a condo in Ottawa has gone up 30% in the last year.

Elliot wave analysis changes as fast as the market. Use it for some extra information if you wish, but don't use it as your main tool to pick your trades.

From the views expressed on this blog I don't think you're the only one who's losing money these past months... I find the analysis to be topnotch and both Steve and Matt do a great job to help us, but technical analysis isn't always the best way to trade I guess. I think there's a lot of very experienced day-traders here who can always find good setups, but it's difficult for the swing trader like myself just looking for longer term advice.

I'm in my 20s and I just started trading last year when I saw the markets crash. All I knew about investing was to buy low / sell high, buy good profitable companies and to diversify. I started studying a lot about investing to build a portfolio in early 2009, and that's when I started listening to advice and got into technical analysis. Of course after that I was hesitant to buy too much. I did end up buying some stocks in Feb-March which made some nice profits until June. Then I was scared of all the Primary Wave 3 talk, so I sold everything and started going short here and there. Since then I lost all my profits and a bit more.

After a year of trading I think I learned just how the basic rules are important. Maybe technical analysis should be left to the experts... Luckily for me I'm still young so I have lots of time to learn and make profits, I'm just not sure it will be with TA.

BTW this isn't a jab on the quality of this site. This is clearly the best TA site I've found and I still think it's worth the subscription.

How about Canada vs. USSR in 1972, with Paul Henderson's winning goal in game 8!

Sunday's game has to be the biggest game I've ever seen. The US had a great team with Miller playing his best. It wasn't easy but in the end Canada is #1 as we should be! Great Olympics altogether.

Thanks for your input. I bought some at 8.55 and gave it some room to slide a little more.

Is anybody trading UNG lately? I know it has its problems, but I'm considering entering a swing long since 8.50 seems to be acting as good support and the MACD is showing some positive divergence on a 30min chart.

That's clearly the trend for these last earnings reports. That sell off could be enough to break the 1115 support, and then we ride all the way down to 1085!

Looking forward to the update tonight.

Thanks matt!

On the 60min chart it looks like the market moved up just enough to tag that uptrend line from the July lows, and then turned down hard at that support turned resistance.

What are the next important support levels for the S&P?

The market also consolidated for several months before the advance, that was not the case with this rally. If we do get some long consolidation and another move up I agree that we should then be very careful with shorting the market.

Great job Matt! I started to scale in to some swing trade shorts when we broke that trendline. The impulsive move down seems to be confirmed. Now I'll wait to see if your long term indicators trigger before I move in to some more shorts. Keep up the good work guys!

I'm a swing trader looking to scale in to some inverse etfs. I would appreciate some updates if you see some negative divergence on a 5 min or 15 min chart, especially if we get to that 1060 level. Thanks.

I've also been looking into this and I found that you need to use a combination of tools. One option would be to use the TradeStation software and their brokerage services but some people have reported problems with execution of trade orders through them. The option I'm considering is to use eSignal Premier ($125 monthly) as the graphing software where the systems will be setup. eSignal can generate the alerts when moving averages cross, but it can't send orders directly to your broker. You need to use another software such as TradeBullet Ultra ($50 monthly) which will get the alerts from eSignal and send the trade orders to your broker. Interactive Brokers supports TradeBullet.

Please keep me posted if you use those tools or find anything better.

I know Matt has talked about adding this functionality and he told me the service will eventually be available at an extra cost. However, I don't know how close they are to having it setup. If it's going to be sooner than later I would opt to just wait for their service.

For me an alert system is necessary to use the mechanical trading systems. I work full time and I'm often away from my computer, so I would need the alerts on my mobile. Having the alerts directly from BPT would definitely be a great service for me. I would be the first one to subscribe ;)

Can somebody recommend a site or software to generate sms alerts whenever there's a MA crossover? I wanted to use Timetotrade.eu but it doesn't seem to work very well. I'm not getting the signals at the correct time. I think ProRealTime.com would work well but it's fairly expensive. Any other suggestions? Thanks.