but the fact that on Fox news three analysts just declared this to be so and that the top was put in Friday before last makes me wonder how far this can go before rolling over... Ravun's cuadruple resistance points just might come into play (great video, by the way, thanks).

Michael, what really gives me pause for thought is sentiment. In Singapore, where my family is, stories are already circulating about people who have doubled their accounts by putting everything in near the March bottom (never mind that they were 60% down at the bottom). Euphoria and hope is in the air, from looking for opportunities to short they are now looking to add to longs. Nobody wants to hear about taking profits or setting stops. This is just not the stuff of a bottom. When I hear that NO ONE will touch another stock again is when I will buy hand over fist...

A strong advance on waning volume, plus investor complacency does not usually characterize a new bull market. Just sets things up for another fall. If we are to go by how bear markets have bottomed historically we need to see investors despair. Not panic from a crash, but despair at the idea that stocks can ever be a valid investment again. John Hussman has expressed it better than I:

Green shoots over thin ice

Interactive Brokers. Thay are also market makers and usually have shares to short.

$RUT now below 20MA. Let's see how we close.

Yes, thanks. I kept an eye on it and got in at the retest of the 20MA.

Yep.

U.TO

Problem is, on a day like this what IS the trend, LOL?

No, no I am an optimistic about life in general but my views of mankind are pretty dim... I believe in doing what we can in our own corner of Earth to better our lives and those around us.

By the way, you just expressed a very pessimistic view about the general public waking up

Unfortunately I am of the pessimistic opinion that nothing can be done.

Reminds of the old joke: Planet earth meets up w/ an old pal (another planet) who asks Earth, how are you doing? Earth replies, "not so good, I have a bad case of homosapiens". To which the other planet says,"Oh that, not to worry, it goes away by itself after a while".

Sorry, slow day.

Re: in the SPYs being hard to borrow, the blog Zero Hedge has quite alot to offer on the subject.

Comment from another blog:

GS is what, 10% of the NYSE trades? Zerohedge says that they are PL stop running the short quants. I’m hearing all over that SPY, XLF, and other incredibly liquid ETFs are getting hard to find short shares on. Nevermind that the gov is calling physical possession of all its financial and capital injection shares to make them harder to short. The move off the Mar lows was a gov-orchestrated short squeeze but this is squeezing ordinary liquidity out of the markets. We all remember what happened post short-ban. Started seeing no-bid pop up on the weak financial names. If the gov converts preferreds to common and calls those shares too, a lot of names are going to be unshortable. The risk then is high of a complete crash

Re: the video, Saturn...

over dramatic and it's "mandatory" but...

It happened in my country: in Singapore the new public order bill requires a permit for even a "one-man assembly" for the following activities:

"Those that demonstrate support for or against views or actions of any person, group of persons or any government; those that publicize a cause or campaign; and those that mark or commemorate any event. "

So, you go out by yourself to celebrate your birthday and you need a permit....

There is a swing system for SRS using the same time frame and MAs (9/39) using a 10.5% stoploss and 21% profit target. You hold until the next crossover or until either targets are reached.

Wow. 21% profit target reached. I covered at 27.15.

Well NT requires an external data feed. I get that from my broker, IB. Someone mentioned bestfreecharts.com for free, real time intraday data but I am not sure that you may get historical data from here.

Utterly agree w/ you.  You have summarized the basis of the efficiency of the mech. systems perfectly (relentlessly taking every trade). This is why I posted the warning about applying an external rule to the system. It would just not produce the same results. Which is not to say that an alternate system incorporating the trade restiction could not be produced. Just that it would have to be backtested and optimized. IMHO it would be worth paying someone to write the code for either TS or NT if one were not up to doing it him/herself.

Ninja Trader is free  if you do not use it as a trading platform. You can prolly backtest the 3trade/5day rule using NT and optimize the system as well to incorporate the rule. However I am no expert on using NT to backtest, perhaps another member can help.

I am glad that is working out for you, however what you described is not purely mechanical. The triggers may be the crossovers but the stop loss exits and decisions as to which trades are swing or day trade etc. are discretionary. Does not sound like it can be automated fully.

I would like to point out that playing the systems with trade restrictions could conceivably make a huge difference to the profit factor of the systems considering that they were backtested and optimized for all the trades to be taken. Not wanting to put a damper on things just a FWIW. Perhaps you could backtest to see how the systems work with the 3 trades/5 days rule.

Thanks for the article/speech. I enjoyed it and found it enlightening.