Happy Chinese New Year

This coming week is Chinese New Year. Many Asian markets will be closed. This in general leads to light volume trading in other markets as well, making it a good time to take a break to reflect on what happened in the past lunar year and decide what to do this coming one.

I posted a chart that forecast what may happen this year of the monkey. It is based on the 19-year lunar cycle and has shown interesting properties in the past. Wonder if it will give us useful clues like the past few years.

I mentioned that I need to figure out my priorities this year and have it finalized before mid February. Well, I exceeded all my trading goals for the first half of the year this week. Both trading for my clients and for myself have done exceptionally well thanks to the extreme volatility. To put it in perspective, instead of the normal 1 to 3 good intraday plays, we have been having 5 to 10 great swings within a trading session. This amplifies my trading performance significantly. However, this is not a good sign because well structured market environments do not last. The market environment can become even more chaotic than now and I can foresee my winning rate may drop drastically if sudden change happens in coming weeks.

Given the favourable situation, I am choosing to take a break from trading or just trading lightly the rest of this month. This way I can spend more time cleaning up the piles of incomplete projects I have on hand. Highest priority right now is to complete the several real-time tools related projects and articles. Next in line are the long awaited comprehensive trading model reports that many have been asking for.

I have decided to end the mentoring / coaching service for good by the end of this year or early next year. The time I have scheduled for mentoring has filled up quickly for this year. I will at most being able to accommodate one or two more traders in coming months and then I will close the program. For those who have worked with me already, I will always leave the door open when they need me because I know the current market environment is getting more challenging. The decision to close the program is a difficult one but as I said before I prefer a more personal approach which makes it difficult to accommodate too many people.

I was asked many times why I spend so much effort in developing the site. I used to have many answers to the question depending on my mood at the time. After many years being questioned on the same issue and reflected on my own, I actually have a very simple answer now. In short, somewhere deep down, I find that I love to explain things to others. Teaching others to learn complex ideas using concepts they can understand is something I am very good at. In this sense, I find satisfaction from my interactions with other traders and from helping out traders to breakthrough their trading obstacles.

There is also this pay it forward factor. We all know it takes perseverance in order to achieve trading success. If I gave up trading when I had my setbacks early in my trading career my life would not be the same. But I did not make it by myself. There were many good people who helped me through my difficult times. I hope I can do the same for others.

This coming week I will have quite a number of family gatherings to attend to. I will be in holiday mode all week and back to normal schedule after. Will kick back and relax a bit before throwing myself back to intense site development and research writing.

Happy Chinese New Year!

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