NAVIGATING BROKEN MARKETS

 

“Just keep walking, everything is fine! … is there a problem!?”

Markets [a/k/a “financial derivative slot machines”], as you've come to know

them, are completely broken … loss of volumes, and even bigger losses of

liquidity, have turned financial markets into a form of roulette … “speed of light

… crickets” moves engineered by manipulators and their BFF scumbag LP

banks and/or HFT’s, have turned the entire world into one gigantic casino,

where all that matters is fading the order flow of the trapped … forget reversals,

they happen so often it’s not even worth mentioning … double, triple, and who

knows how many more reversals are becoming the norm, as trapped

traders / investors find themselves outside looking in, and wondering WTF

just happened?

And if that’s not bad enough, we have to fight “tooth and nail” with scumbag

bank and/or HFT LP’s, whose only job is to screw us blind, while at the same

time making us think it’s “natural” … you know, the “DUH!, market conditions,

DUH!” horseshit defense they parade out for every crime they commit … and if

it’s pennies they steal, nobody cares, simply cuz market volatility will make up

for that, and most traders realize it’s simply a “cost of doing business” … but

when they go out of their way to screw us with sharply expanded spreads in

milliseconds, and horrific slippage on top of that, it ain’t pennies any more

… and the message is undeniably clear … “you ain’t scalping to pick us off cuz

we won’t let you … the only scalp on the floor will be yours!” … but, but, what

about that “liquidity provider” role you’re supposed to be playing? … screw that,

that’s just a ruse for Chumps to chew on … we’re here to make money off of you,

and the more the merrier!

Then against that backdrop, we got central bank manipulators who view markets

as “policy tools” for their own screwed up ideas … throw in the “skim” LP’s

shuffle off to their offshore illegal prop accounts, that get distributed to POLS,

Apparatchiks, & regulators, and it should come as no surprise why shitbag,

criminal outfits like JP Morgan are still in business … no bigger crooks in the

precious metals market than these scumbags, where their chief trader just got

busted and found guilty of market manipulation of gold futures … no biggee,

just a fine, move along Sheeple, nothing to see here except rampant criminality

… JPM, a complete metaphor of everything that is wrong with U.S. finance.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a phenomenon that just happened overnight … this

has been going on for decades, all the way back into the 70’s and 80’s, during the

exchange “cocaine cowboy” heyday of “scumbaggery & fuckery” that would

make the Clinton Crime Family blush with envy … “where do you think Cankles

got the idea for her “Cattlegate” payoff from Red Bone of REFCO? "… just another

payoff for the POLS, Apparatchiks, & regulators … again, nothing special here, it

happened all the time … only now, it happens at the speed of light, comes out of

nowhere, is instigated by scumbag banks, backed by central banks if they need

more money, and at the end of the day when the specs are fleeced, time to split

the “skim” up and get ready for tomorrow … EXIT QUESTION: “with all of the

hundreds of trillions of dollars washing around daily, how come no bank ever

gets into trouble any more via their trades? … EASY PEEZEE ANSWER: they

don’t take positions AND THEY DON’T TRADE, they simply front run and skim

order flow and become flat by the end of the day … in other words, they simply

steal money, and when that’s your biz model, it’s kinda hard to get into trouble!”

File this under “SNAFU” … the “Chuckleheads”, along with Mrs. Watanabe & Gal

Pals, FOMO panic buy gold into the Asian close, where it gets promptly faded like

a cheap suit in sunshine … and there goes some good “buy fuel”, used up by a

bunch of perennial loser specs who have no clue … some things never change

… gold working on 7 days in a row lower, and I’d still like to see a “flush of the

toilet” in terms of price getting slapped lower “el mucho quicko” … we haven’t

seen it yet, and usually the last long holdouts are the ones to puke, so we’ll see

what transpires … everything looking rather dull at the moment, but it’s early yet.

I’M AFRAID GOLD ISN’T GONNA WORK for us … it’s got nothing to do with

going straight down or straight up, it’s being mugged, robbed, and raped by

Turnkey’s LP’s, whoever they are … I’ve analyzed it 6 ways from Sunday in real

time, and here are the major problems … 1) the spread is CONSISTENTLY higher

than other houses by at least 10 - 15 cents per OZ. … 2) slippage is terrible if not

horrific more than 50%+ of the time … 3) the speed of light in changes in the

bid / offer, sometimes quite sizeable lead to horrific fills … and 4) INABILITY TO

DO SIZE WITHOUT GETTING KILLED … wanna trade 5 OZ, then great, but now

try 500 OZ. and see what happens next … and today highlights the problems in

spades with this market … gold an absolute horror show of ZERO liquidity.

So what now? … well, I got no choice but to go back to FX, however I’m not

going to trade either YEN or EUR, but CABLE [GBPUSD] … I switched over to

Cable during the melt up after the U.S. global PMI crashed “unexpectedly” … at

least we got high probability opportunities, warts, pimples and all, and I don’t

have an aversion to being short either … and volume size isn’t an issue like in

gold … not trying to play “Whack-A-Mole”, but the reality of the situation is what

it is and can’t be ignored, and that reality is gold is not a good market to trade at

Turnkey … it borders on “rip off” status, sorry to say … you might as well be

playing roulette in Las Vegas, you’d have better odds than what Turnkey gives

you … sorry, it is what it is.

Lately, even with Cable tanking to new 20+ year lows [not counting the

October 1, 2016 “flash crash” which was total bullshit], the trade both long or

short has been pretty good … pick your poison, you will get your shots … and

while pure scalping remains elusive in FX cuz of the LP’s and their penchant for

preventing us from doing it, extend your time horizon just a tad, and you’ll get

what you want … it just takes a hair longer to play out … and while FX pairs can

get “sticky” sometimes with funky price moves, especially on news, I’d rather

get stuck being wrong in Cable than being stuck wrong in gold any day of the

week … the vast majority of the time, you won’t get the horrific slippage gold

sees, and quite frankly gold is just getting worse, not better … at least at Turnkey,

it’s a horror show, and I don’t need any of that!

Historically, Cable has been the VIX leader among dollar pairs … however, with

the idiocy of the BOJ, we now got the Japanese Peso taking center stage, and

that pair has almost destroyed itself with bullshit moves, much higher bid/offer

spreads, and horrific slippage that would make Vito Corleone blush with envy

… recall my 7 PIP screw job slippage infested fill the last time I traded YEN

… and while EURUSD looks appealing on the surface, changes in that pairs

bid/offer spread from second to second leaves a lot to be desired, right along

with the complete illusion that Turnkey is offering it with a 1 or 2 tenths PIP

spread … that’s bullshit, cuz it’s more like 6 tenths to a full PIP … bottom line

then, there isn’t any advantage there like it looks like it should be.

A little “oomph” into the London Fix, where the debate going forward is, which

horse in the dog food factory is best, cuz they are all shit … it’s almost as if

every central bank wants their currency to go to ZERO … who can outdo who

on the hit parade of terrible economic stats? … well, at least that leads to some

kind of trading!

I did get one GBPUSD algorithm buy signal before the London Fix … TURNKEY

PAMM UP FRACTIONALLY … and no, we’re not the “up slightly” fund … as I’ve

stated before, finding the right market or group of markets to trade is a real issue,

especially when the scumbag LP’s are gunning for you any which way they can

… and if you’re being mistreated with a shit spread, bad slippage far too often,

then you gotta walk away … otherwise they’ll simply grind you down … volume

size is very important, and that’s a real problem in gold, but not at all in Cable

… quite frankly, I can do anything I want in Cable “no problemo” … do a 5 lot in

gold and let me know what happens next! … as long as we’re treated “fairly” in

Cable, I’ll stay in Cable … I’m not looking for any favors, cuz they don’t exist,

just fair fills without mugging, robbing, and raping the orders … and that’s the

problem in “Stock Bellies”, crude oil, AND gold … they just can’t stay consistent

and fair, always the “bait & switch” followed by nightmare fills … well, at least

so far today, both latency and fills were fine in Cable, so it’s a good start … and

if they keep it like this, I’ll be backing the Brinks truck up to the loading dock!

For most of the day, the “Trading Ratio” [TR] in Cable moving between 5 - 7,

assuming a 1 PIP total cost, which is excellent … still at around 4.5 - 5, even

after the Fix and into the New York afternoon, most days will see a falloff once

the Fix is over and done with … but, not every day and this is one of those days

… quite frankly, and I’ll say again … “IF” … “IF we can get treated fairly on orders,

Cable will outperform gold hands down most days" … that’s cuz of the trading

nature of Cable versus gold, and the fact that anybody can do a Helluva lot

bigger orders in Cable than they can in gold without getting “skunked” by some

scumbag bullion dealer LP … latency in Cable TWICE AS FAST AS IN GOLD,

which makes ZERO SENSE, but it is what it is, and I got ZERO SLIPPAGE. 

Quite frankly, I don’t have a problem with slippage if it’s minimal, but when you

take me by the hand and hustle me out back and shoot me in the head, and then

try and tell me I slipped on a rock and got a head injury?… well, yea I get

somewhat pissed off! … give the PAMM what we got today and you won’t ever

hear from me ever again! … fair is all anybody can ask.

I’m not looking for Cable to regain its moniker from back in the pit trading days

of “The Widow Maker” … quite frankly, those days are ancient history and we

ain’t goin’ back to 300 - 500 PIP ranges anytime soon [I don’t think], nor do I think

anybody really wants to see that … current 20 Day Range MA for Cable is

approximately 138 PIPS, which is adequate to be sure … like other markets, it

all boils down to what happens in the Asian session, and then what’s left for

Europe and the U.S. … lately it’s been OK, so the opportunity is there … I realize

the “commodity era” is beckoning, but it ain’t gonna do us much good in gold or

crude oil if we can’t get fair & equitable treatment from the scumbags that run

those CFD markets … too often gold has disappointed at crunch time, and the

“bait & switch” just too frequent … crude a different story, and I’ll have some

thoughts on crude come tomorrow cuz when you look at the cost to trade crude

oil, it’s fairly priced as a percentage of its 20 Day Range MA … cuz even if Cable

works out fine for us, we always need a “Plan B” … onto tomorrow!

… OUTTA HERE … “The future’s so bright I need 2 pairs of  sunglasses 😎😎,

and my own Brinks armored truck” 💓!! … Onward & Upward!!

-vegas

“MEAT GRINDER” MARKETS

 

“Avoid smacks to the face … markets or women, what’s the difference!?”

Welcome to “meat grinder” August, where market narratives change quicker

than a woman changing shoes … now that the bogus CPI official narrative is in,

look for 1) FED PIE HOLES continuing to “blah blah, yada yada” rate hikes while

nobody cares, and 2) 3 steps up and 2 back for every market that frustrates the

living shit out of both longs and shorts, with the obligatory spikes from Hell [up &

down] that go nowhere but clean out the order books … in other words, scumbag

LP bank heaven, where they can “spoof” futures to their heart’s content, all the

while front running orders with their ILLEGAL OFFSHORE PROP ACCOUNTS

cleaning up … natch, according to the banks, the “natural order of things”.

Overnight very slow and non eventful … “Trading Ratios” [TR] coming into the

New York session here at sunup EST, not even 3, but scraping the bottom of the

barrel in the low 2’s for both gold & DOW30 … hopefully, things pick up, but you

simply can’t trade any market with TR’s this low and expect to make money, cuz

it ain’t happening … PPI on the docket for today at 08:30 AM EST, but does

anybody care? … unless it’s a huge sigma miss to the upside [not likely], it’ll be

ignored cuz the “peak inflation” narrative has taken over for the time being, and

markets got to be shoved higher … and the “pain trade” continues unabated

… how many more ZH articles from the likes of Squid & JPM, to name just a few,

hollering that their clients are frustrated to the MAX cuz they can’t get back into

“Stonks” without buying the top, convinced that once they do the bear market

continues and leaves them holding the proverbial bag of high priced dog poo,

and it convinces them they are the biggest “Chumps” [a/k/a “Muppets”] the

world has ever seen? … and so the “grind” higher, helped along by the usual

suspects that make it even more painful when they come to screw with your

account … quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see ATH’s in the

“Stock Bellies” by Christmas!

Can we ever get away from this horseshit of “speed of light … crickets”? … is it

just my imagination, or are we getting this almost every single day? … again

today, with the PPI, just completely bat shit crazy [BSC], and you’d think inflation

was ZERO given the FOMO panic to buy anything that’s a “Stonk” … spikes from

Hell [up & down] now a “du jour” occurrence, with many easily exceeding 40+

index points in microseconds … and that’s a clear recipe for 100%

“scumbaggery & fuckery” from the scumbag LP’s, where they use the

“plausible deniability” of market conditions to screw anybody who pushes a

button on the order ticket … this isn’t trading, this is simply roulette … “oh, so

sorry for your loss … please come again!”

Meanwhile over in gold, that market doing a great impersonation of life inside

the county morgue … in other words, DEAD! … quite frankly until the narrative

of “peak inflation” changes, gold is gonna find it tough sledding, IMHO, breaking

through 1800 with any conviction … the bullion dealers are quite content to see

you bang your head against the wall buying when it’s going nowhere fast … they

just wait you out, and then when the buying dries up, be the first to offer it lower

where you’ll sell it to them … in other words, the “Comex Con Game” … gold will

have its moments, but right now ain’t one of ‘em … drifting lower now, and rallies

have no “oomph” to them at all … looks like the 1770’s [or lower] here we come.

And now that the London Fix is out of the way and Europe is closed for the day,

time for another “screw job” from the virus scum on Wall Street, where almost to

the second after the Fix was finished, the DOW30 headed lower in earnest

… having sucked in every CTA [Commodity Trading Advisor] & FOMO spec on

the planet with their respective buy signals getting hit off, now comes the

“awakening” of what happens to positioned Longs when SHTF after a way over

extended runup … “yes Skippy, you bought the top … congrats!”

And as I have said before repeatedly, it isn’t the gains in the DOW30 that’s the

problem, it’s the red spikes down … you simply got no idea where they are

headed, and if you have to sell on a red spike lower, I’ll be hearing your scream

over the horizon as it hits the Caribbean … and you won’t at all like the fill from

the scumbag LP, where the dirty little secret is they can fill you wherever they

want, they don’t have to be “on the market”, and quite frankly aren’t! … and when

you get this “speed of light … crickets” bullshit, it invites spikes from Hell as a

matter of course, cuz everybody is scared to death of selling a big red spike

down, so in effect it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy … and so far today just in

the morning of New York, there have been a boatload of spikes OVER 30+ index

points in literally microseconds … how’s that for slippage Skippy? … 4 seconds

later it’s 20+ lower and now what? … and it starts with these BSC “lightning

strikes” and proceeds from there … well, now that everybody in the positioned

world is long “Stock Bellies” going into the New York afternoon with the

criminals at Squid, JPM, and the other assorted virus scum of Wall Street, it

could get a little dicey if price starts to leak water from the 33,450 level on the

DOW30 … sell stops galore, which a few hours earlier nobody thought it was

possible they would be in play, now suddenly are in play … gosh, those nice

fellas at JPM surely wouldn’t go after sell stops this afternoon would they?

… Bwahahaha! … of course, given the chance, I guarantee they will lead

the charge!

And since the London Fix, DOW30 rallies have suddenly become vastly muted

in scope and duration … just another “coincidence” I’m sure … no “oomph” to

buy signals, the HULL 100EMA sloped lower, and it looks for now like longs could

be in for some trouble going forward to the close … we’ll see, but when the HULL

100EMA is sloping lower, you have got to be really careful about buy signals in

the DOW30, cuz the turn back lower can be fast and vicious, easily wiping out

any gains within literal seconds … and after this runup over the last 2 - 3 weeks,

the sell stops at lower levels could get very mean and nasty in the days ahead

… not predictin’, just sayin’! … and if the ball gets rollin’ lower after 2:30 PM EST

today, the potential for “look out below” becomes greater and greater as longs

panic to GTFO.

And while we hang here at the 33450 - 33500 level in the DOW30, you have to

understand the mindset of those wanting to see price lower … if they take it lower

too quickly, the BTFD’ers will come in, but if they wait until the last 90 minutes to

the close, or even closer than that like the last hour, the BTFD’ers won’t come in

cuz there’s no time left in the day … the logistics right now here at about 1 PM

EST, simply stink for a higher price … meanwhile gold is DEAD … “stick a fork

in it Jim, it’s DEAD!”

Anybody else notice how “Stock Bellies” price action simply evaporates once

Europe closes, where once again it’s mindless drift run by the Wall Street bank

scammers? … BSC to “snoozefest” so fast it takes my breath away, and

anybody caught in any of these C-4 price explosions from earlier, has nowhere

to go … if I didn’t know better, I’d say it was preplanned, but gosh I don’t want to

elevate “conspiracy theories” against scumbag banks who are known criminals

for their precious metals shenanigans … oh wait, the link below.

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/jpmorgan-precious-metal-traders-

found-guilty-spoofing-had-power-manipulate-global-price

Again, like previous days, cuz of the “speed of light … crickets” bullshit we have

to deal with that robs markets of proper functioning, today only sees one decent

algorithm buy signal in the DOW30 … TURNKEY PAMM UP FRACTIONALLY

… nothing like getting bent over a railing out back and getting robbed, mugged,

and then raped by some scumbag LP Turnkey uses … with the usual 3 index

point spread, entry got tagged an additional 3 index points of slippage, and after

the market had rallied to 22 [on it’s way UP to 26], my liquidation fill ON A GREEN

SPIKE UP, got filled at 14, for a nice 8 index point thrashing on pure bullshit

thievery … and therefore a halfway decent scalp turned to dog shit, thank you

very much crooks & thieves … blistering Turnkey’s ears, they could care less

… and so once again, after seeing this, I’m not in the mood to entertain further

scalps given these conditions … why would anybody in their right mind agree

to this, and/or think this is normal? … sure, I’m here to make money and trade

for the PAMM, but WTF is anybody supposed to do when you get held up at

gunpoint? …come back for more? … umm no, wait for better conditions, at a

minimum where this horseshit of “speed of light … crickets” is absent … and

that sure as Hell ain’t today … and sure, gold is an option, but it’s playing DEAD

today, so there isn’t anything to be gained over in that market.

Put the “big girl panties” on and hold to discipline & patience, is all that can be

properly done … not every day is like this bullshit … too many to be sure lately,

what with central banks, NFP idiocy, and now inflation numbers, but that’s what

is required to deal with in the “Stock Bellies” paradigm … water under the

bridge, onto tomorrow.

… outta here … “The future’s so bright I need 2 pairs of sunglasses 😎😎, and

my own Brinks armored truck” 💓!! … Onward & Upward!!

-vegas