302 into the 87 Ranger

The latest project. Maybe Ill document the progress here! (or not).

Let it snow

Yes.

CiloGear Pack

Just ordered a new pack from CiloGear. I have been eyeballing these things for a year now.

On another note I have made the switch to Firefox and am using ScribeFire now. As I always say I might update more often now. (yeah right).

Im headed to Old Hyndman peak this weekend. Should be a fun climb.

I wanna go camping and climbing!

Elk Butte, ID
Hells Canyon, ID
Hells Canyon, ID
Post Falls, ID
Elk Butte, ID
Dog Park: Moscow, ID
Post Falls, ID
Lake Coeur d'Alene, ID
Heyburn State Park, ID
Spring Valley Resevoir, ID

NWCCC 2008

Well I put on my last collegiate bike race ever. Ive been promoting a NWCCC race for 5 years, 4 of which has been the conference championship race. Sadly I think this years race was the least organized overall. It was dificult to do with all the distractions of graduation, working, and buying a house. Oh well. It still went pretty well and race days were a lot easier this year since I had a great team working with me. I even got a chance to get out and race the Fixie Crit...
And best of all the dogs had a blast.

This is what a money tree looks like

...Ill sell you all you want!!!! I love Iron Condors.

Spring!

You know Spring is here when you see this....

I love cropdusters!!!!

(Video taken from my driveway)

Procrastinating...

...thought Id take a few pics today of the play room since I cleaned it up a bit...
...and I still want more gear...

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

So how does one turn an awesome planned out weekend...where all the plans fall through...into a great weekend with all new plans? Simple: Go outside and play! I thought Id start off by taking the dogs for a little exploring Friday. I decided to get off the beaten path on Moscow Mountain and scout out some boulders I have seen in the distance....and man was I glad I did that. They were awesome! Beautiful, moss and snow covered, with fresh snow melt running under them.

...later that night went down to Granite Point for some rock climbing...did 1 route and decided it was too damn cold so came back home, and along the way decided to stop by the bears at Wazzu. I havent stopped and seen these Griz since they were quite a bit smaller.
And Saturday...decided to finally hike up Kamiak Butte...something Ive been thinking of doing ever since I lived in the area. I was expecting the weather to be really bad today, but it turned out great. The dogs and I hit two geocaches out in this neck of the woods as well, saw some great scenery, and overall it was a fun relaxing day.


So its now Sunday...Im about to go to bed...thinking tomorrow is going to be filled with homework. Id like to hit Moscow mountain tomorrow morning bright and early. Its freezing up tonight and I wouldnt mind getting a little bit of a workout with my crampons and axe in some of the gulleys if the remaining snow firms up a bit....that is if my feet can handle it. Fridays hike I didnt wear my boot liners with my heavy boots...and my feet paid for it. Dumb idea. Oh well...thats why I keep moleskin around.

Senioritis...

I have the worst case of senioritis...I am so ready to graduate!

...I really want to get outside and play too...Im spending far too much time inside.

Fed Prob Update

Inflation is here!

This next fed meeting should be interesting. I am leaning more towards 0 - 25Bp cut now...and the market is getting more conservative as you can see as well. Interesting thing to note..I was digging around on the Bloomberg terminal yesterday and at the current inflation levels that just came in is at the same levels that the fed started raising interest rates during the last cycle...

...the stagflation theory I was throwing around 6 months ago doesnt sound so bizarre anymore does it? Lets hope unemployment stays tame for the health of the economy....otherwise lets trade the fall!

Speaking of fall...here is the current consolidation in the S&P. Nice little funnel. 1350 is a good mental point to consolidate about. Which way do we break? I think down. Before we go any higher we need to retest that low in the start of january. Not sure if we will go all the way down to the bottom of the whick, but atleast to the 1280-1260 level. From there...is anybody's guess? My crystal ball sucks.

Trading UI Money

Well I get my funded UI trading account tomorrow...this should be fun. We'll see how it goes. I have approval to trade SSO, SDS, QID, and QLD (Ultra S&Ps and Ultra NASDAQ).

The Fed Funds trade is still cranking away...came within 9 ticks of my stop last night on the jobs numbers but rallied right back during the day to where I was yesterday. Im a little worried about the lack of volume...it wouldnt take much capital to push this market one direction and hit some stops.

Its working

Up 400 bucks on the trade on 5 contracts! Thats a return of 12.3% on the day...not bad. Ill take it! The goal is around 2k return on this baby which would make it a return of around 66%...Hope for bad economic news tomorrow morning!

March FOMC Trading Idea...

Last 30 day FF March Contract trade was 97.345, or an implied interest rate of 2.655%. We are at 3% now so that would be a cut of 34.5 BP. Cleveland Fed implied probabilities show an EV of 57.75 BP Cut. Im considering Buying up a few of these contracts...thus far the EV has proven to be highly accurate in determining the Fed Move...but do they dare cut 50 again!?

XC Skiing

I picked up some skis on Friday and went up to Moscow Mountain and it was a blast! Here are a few pics from the Mountain. I started over by the Headwaters side and went around the west side and up on the ridge road. I cant wait to go again.

Trading the FOMC rate cut...if there is a cut.

FOMC announce tomorrow at 11:15am Pacific Time. Based on Cleveland Fed probabilities I calculated the market expected value as you can see its about 45 BP. This is up from about 42 or so a few days ago, even though the likelyhood of a 75BP cut has dropped significantly.
So how do you trade the event? ...Or how am I going to trade the event.

This Fed gives the market what it wants. This means tomorrow's cut is going to be 50BP. The market will have a small rally since the EV is 44.75 BP. I believe the FED should cut 25BP, but they wont. If they do cut 25BP the DOW will drop a couple hundred, Financials will drop about 10%, and the next few weeks will test the lows set last Monday/Tuesday.

No matter what we are moving tomorrow. For this reason I put several straddles on XLF since the financials will be moved the most by the cut. Today's consolidation allowed for the perfect opportunity to put these and limit my directional risk from an overnight rally and a pull back tomorrow. If we see the 25BP cut the market is going to move big. For this reason I also purchased a few puts on XLF. This give my expected payout a bit of a bearish wait, but as long as the market moves tomorrow...I make money....A bearish straddle if you want to name it...

Ill be trading some E-minis and Ultras tomorrow as well on the swings and maybe take a directional position with a tight stop going into the meeting if the opportunity presents itself.

On the currency side I went long the AUD/JPY. Im hoping to hold this position for a few weeks and get some good interest and hopefully a short continuation of the carry trade.

Let the markets move.

I need to cut back on the caffeine.

The market did stuff last week. I did some trading. It was okay. I may trade next week again. I might also start a circus. We'll see which one materializes. Oh yeah. Rock climbing is fun. The black cliffs in Boise are slippery though. That's the most intelligent sentence you will get out of me tonight. Goodnight all.

Consolidation

Consolidation was in fact the key of today. Mixed markets made it a dificult trading day. I attempted to throw a coupld small trades in and got stopped out on the volatility in all of them, but luckily they were all small. The price went straight down the funnel and broke out lower. We It then hit a support level around 99.60 and is currently testing this level. I would not be suprised to see this level fall as Asian markets open. After this the next support is around 98.000 as shown below.
My game plan is to watch to see what happens with this support and in Asia. S&P futures are up from the market close right now which is favorable for tomorrow. Im hoping for the pullback tonight to the 98.000 range and that S&P futures continue to trend up. If this is the case Ill go in pretty heavy and set a stop around the 95.500 level. I suspect the bull run should continue for the rest of the month once it gets going and I want on! Watch the spiders close! There is an upward sloping support trend forming. It was penetrated a bit in August but that was when there was the problem with computer routing on the orders that caused the dagger of a candle. There also could be a morphed head and shoulders forming as well. The highlighted area is of particular concern. If we are going to make another run at the market it better cross that resistance level of 156.00. Upon breaking that we should break 157.50 and have another good leg up into January. Failure to break 156.00 (perhaps a retracement upon reching 152.50) will definately push this into a bear market at the turn of the year.

BUY BUY BUY

AUD/JPY Long is kicking ass today...which is great after the frustrations of yesterday. Yesterday was in fact the bottom of the market but the volatility knocked me out and cost me about 100 pips of profit. Last night around 10:00pm PST I jumped back in on my 50:1 account and then followed about 15 minutes later with my 30:1 account. The 50:1 account is up 120% in under 24 hours and the 30:1 is up over 70%. I have doubled down on the positions upon confirmation of a strong Asian Market opening up tonight.



Tonight's chart shows the clear uptrend developing. The bottom was around 2pm yesterday and the trend took off. I have drawn in what I would consider the uptrend support line. There was a test of this line from 8am until 12pm today during the US market open. I consider this test to be nominal due to the increased volatility often observable during US market hours. A small support developed at 99.850 tonight around 5:30. That is the horizontal yellow line on the chart. I have my stops set at the vertical line with my small double position is taken out where this vertical line crosses the uptrend and my main position is set to be stopped out a bit lower than that to allow for a bit more volatility. Im trading the 50:1 and 30:1 similarily with a bit tighter stops on the 50:1 (this chart is the 30:1).


Several key economic numbers come out tomorrow which have me a bit concerned. S&P futures are currently trading flat after being a few points down earlier in the evening. I plan on setting tight stops tonight and securing today's profit. Im expecting a fair amount of consolidation in the next few days with 100 pip swings up and down throughout the day. Ill probably sit these out and hope the bull trend continues next week and try to double my money again.

Carry Trade Unwinding

The AUD/JPY carry trade has unwound heavily this week. We are currently trading at about 97.045 Yen per Austrailian Dollar. We touched off of a low of just above 96.000 around the US stock market open at 6:30am. This is due to a strong positive correlation of the Yen strength relative to the US dollar's strength since the Japanesse economy is heavily based upon exports to the US. The US stock market has been trading positive the last few hours and I have re-entered the carry trade. I placed my first postion at 8:00am at 96.257 with a S/L of 95.900. There appears to be a fair amount of resistance around the 96.000 level on the daily chart and I am allowing myself 10 pips of volatility around this resistance level. An initial attempt to average in another 350 units in had my stop hit as the stock market pulled back around 10:40am.

The below chart shows the relative correlation of SPY to the AUD/JPY pair. The USD/JPY shows this same correlation. 109.000 represents a solid support level of the Yen and fundamnetally it should hold at the level and begin to weaken again.
I am currently waiting for SPY to hit 146.00 to leg in another 350 units. I suspect that if the US markets close on positive gains then the Nikkei should have a solid day tonight and the Carry trade should hopefully get some upward momentum. Tight stops are the key right now.