We all slip up sometimes, which is fine.

I like helping people I care about, and people I care about have needed me to be a bit more hands on these last several months.  At some point, about when the heat dialed up into the mid-80s, I stopped putting my best effort into the Sunday Strategy sessions, skipped a bunch of morning trading reports, and also broke away from several other wellness routines (exercise, diet, etc).  Again, this is fine.

All of these mechanisms, or routines if we’re humanizing it, were established over the years to check me before I do something selfish like emotionally trade.

I have lost so many US Federal Reserve notes to emotional trading, mostly during my hot-headed 20s, when I was more than a little obsessed with making money.  Wanting something so bad and forcing it usually doesn’t go well, ask me how I know.

Anyways, it doesn’t feel good to break routine.  Its like when you’re full of pizza, but you enjoy the taste of it some much that you ram another piece down and then you’re sick for the next 18 hours.  I feel the same sick kind of way when I break routine, and that tells me to be cautious on all fronts—with relationships, with business decisions—everything.

I don’t trade when my research doesn’t feel good or when I plum skip it, I can’t afford to waste my resources anymore.  Truthfully, I couldn’t back in my 20s either but that lesson took some pain to really take root.

So hopefully this week I can dial back in.  I’m not sure yet, but temperatures are on track to drift down to more comfortable levels, and the people I care about are getting back on their feet.  But who knows what sort of fuckery lies ahead.  So, as always, TBD, and we’ll be taking it one day at a time here on the old RAUL blog.

Raul Santos, July 22nd, 2019

Exodus members, the 244th edition of Strategy Session is live.  I think the NASDAQ Transportation index paints an interesting picture, plus there is little else to go on, algorithmic or trading model-wise, so it’s about all we’ve got in terms of observable bias.

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Listen lads, it is finally summer up here in the murder mitten and it has all the trimming of a maddening one.  There has been a major uptick in the amount of neck tattoos listlessly wandering through Trump county, their brain tissues inflamed by the same histamines responsible for their itchy noses and bloodshot eyes.  They pose little risk, inebriated by the oppressive sun heat and their own choices, they’re just a clear indication it’s summer in July.

There was a hostage situation a few blocks down from Mothership, with some crazed lunatic locking himself and ‘lover’ in his basement, barricaded in with a wide array of assault weapons.  Again, not caring so much, more signs of the summer.

Up north word got out through various social media channels that the place to inebriate was a small state park beach in an otherwise hokey small town.  Authorities in the area claimed they’ve never seen anything like it, youths  by the 100s descending like gulls, beer bongs and injection needles in tote.  The beach was eventually shut down, and as the police chased away the flock, an image emerged of a wonderfully bleak field of unconscious party fiends littered across the sand—some from opiates others from chaotic brawling.  I really do not care, these are all signs of summer up here in the murder mitten.

I took solace in the city, which has been receiving isolated rainstorms.  The usual crazies haven’t been filing into their desk jobs.  The highways are nearly empty.  The sidewalks don’t have their usual confetti of adderall pills and extinguished cigarettes.  I’d imagine most of those loons took time away from the mortgage servicing complex to go up north.  Only the hardened locals are left; calmer loons, content with the groceried-cart lifestyle.

From my small garden oasis it all seems rather meaningless, except a few things:

• the urgency to acquire gratuitous sums of wealth via independent pursuit
• placing two middle fingers firmly in the faces of outside investors/vultures
• keeping my best cards in my own hand
• playing them when the time is right
• spinning all these plates while I dig holes

On Monday, the quant strategy I use to diversify fiat american dollars into stocks made its quarterly adjustment.  It picked ridiculous stocks. I’m hands off, stock picking is a robots job, not mine. I can only pick real investments like TSLA or TWTR or MTCH, and build massive 10-year holds, but quarterly stock picking?  Or even shorter time frames? For the robots.  Are you a simulation or a human?  What makes you so sure?  Even if I wanted to pick stocks, I don’t have the mental bandwidth right now, it’s hotter than Haiti, and I am busy playing offense while all these jacked asses fart around on pontoon boats.

The roaring ’20s kicks off in six short months.  Will you let your little start-up project sit on the back burner until then?  Back to work.

RAUL SANTOS, July 7th, 2019

Exodus members, the 242nd edition of strategy session is live.  Semiconductors are starting to tell a story here, see Section IV.  At a minimum, log in and read the executive summary so this week’s events don’t catch you flat footed.

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I was just-on-time sitting down at my trading terminal, only I forgot I had to reboot and load September contract onto my charts.

Then sellers didn’t show up and drive lower off the open, so I knew I had time to do a morning lap around town, handling a variety of municipal matters before traffic ticked up.  It also offered me a solid distraction instead of engaging the short side of the tape Monday morning after two weeks of bullish action.

However, as anyone who read last Sunday’s strategy session knows, IndexModel signaled Rose Colored Sunglasses, which is a bearish bias.  Per the rules of my trading plan, I am only allowed to trade the short side of $nq_f and at some point, ideally before the FOMC press conference, initiate a position in SQQQ, effectively making a leveraged bet against the stock market.

I was feeling a bit anxious to sit down and tease apart the market profiles going back to late-April, which was the last time we were up hear near all-time highs.  “All-time highs,” that’s also a phrase [fact] that is not so bearish.

But the system is the system is the system and by golly if it signals Rose Colored Sunglasses, then I need to find good places to start working the short side of this tape.  Splitting the profiles to find key working levels, preparing a few hypothetical scenarios, and reviewing the latest information coming out of the stock market is like taking an animal tranquilizer.  As I worked through the charts, I felt my breath starting to slow, now I am writing an afternoon plan, soon it will be time to focus back on the task at hand.

Raul Santos, June 17th, 2019

________________

NASDAQ future came into Monday gap up after an overnight session featuring elevated range on elevated volume (note: volume metrics are skewed this week, as some active traders are still trading the June contract, despite the majority moving to September).  Price was balanced overnight, forming a tight distribution along last Friday’s high.  As we  approached cash open price was hovering along Friday’s high.

After a brief, two-way open auction buyers stepped in and drove price higher, trading up through last Thursday’s high.  At 10am NAHB hosing market index data came out below expectations.  Buyers worked a bit higher, taking $nq_f range extension up before finding a responsive bid near last Wednesday’s upper quadrant.

At 11:30am 3- and 6-month T-bill auctions took place.  Some selling pressure occurred around that time, but buyers became initiative up ahead of the daily midpoint.

Also on the economic calendar today we have long-term TIC flows at 4pm.

Last week markets came gap up into Monday then spent the rest of the week in a volatile chop.  The Russell demonstrated divergent strength throughout the week, a signal of healthy risk tolerance.  The last week performance of every major index is shown below:

On Friday the NASDAQ printed a normal variation up.  The day began with a gap down and after a brief two way auction buyers stepped in.  They were unable to reclaim the Thursday low.  Instead we spent the most of the session chopping along the low.  There was a late-day ramp, but it was sold back down to the midpoint before cash markets closed for the weekend.

Heading into this afternoon, my primary expectation is for buyers to make a new high of day, taking out 7577.50 to set up a move to target 7600 before two way trade ensues.

Hypo 2 sellers work price down to the daily midpoint 7548, buyers defend here and two-way trade ensues.

Hypo 3 sellers press down through daily mid 7548, setting up a move to target 7500 before two way trade ensues.

Levels:

Volume profiles, gaps, and measured moves:

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A few years ago I had to be honest with the information I was receiving in the form of huge losses trading stock options.  I wasn’t able to stick to my system.  I didn’t lacked the mental fortitude to wake up five days a week with 15 cannons pointed at me ready to blow of the hands, feet, and groin of my trading account.  I have nothing against option traders, but I learned that my skill set is not suited for a system that only wins 10-20% of the time.

I went back into the lab, looked at which trades I did best, and tripled-down on the process of doing those trades well.  I also went to work establishing other forms of cash flow outside of trading.  Then I carefully pressed weights up-and-down for four years, and weeded gardens, and dug lots of holes, and wheelbarrow-d sand around like an immigrant.

Anyways, last week I booked about equal the gains as I’ve had so far in all of 2019 combined, effectively doubling my profits for the year.  Basically I waited six months for the proverbial deck to stack and then aggressively executed my trades.

I superimposed the last two executive summaries from the Sunday Strategy Session onto this chart.  Each forecasted five day’s worth of price action with uncanny accuracy:

There are a handful of people who use Exodus every day to enhance their approach to investing and trading.  The rest of the subscribers are wanton degenerates, ferreting about our tool shed with no intent.  I’d like to see all these jokers leave and never come back.  They don’t have the right ingredients to be a trader.

The only difference between both types of Exodus subs and yours truly, is I am trading better than all of you, all whilst putting on a live seminar on the art of trading.

If you want an internet sewing circle to sit around all day and gossip about the latest news bit, go tweet—daddy needs Twitter’s users active.  My massive TWTR holding needs to hit all-time high or zero so I can move on with my life.

As for Exodus, I’d like to see it populated only by ruthless traders, scoundrels who would just as soon pluck my eyeballs out if given the chance.  People with no sworn allegiance, dead-set on pirating about the financial markets capturing fiat american dollars, gyarr.

That’s all I have to say about any of this except for one more thing:

June is RAUL’S MONTH.

 

-Raul Santos, June 16th 2019

Exodus members, the 239th edition of Strategy Session will be live in about two hours (around 2pm New York).  I haven’t written it yet, so I do not know which section will be most interesting.  Bonus points if you go back to the 06/10-06/14 report and revisit the talk about NASDAQ transports.  They were THE TELL to hold on during last week’s little selling bout.  Had you, for whatever reason, been sweating the mid-week selling, this contextual piece could have provided you solace.  Instead of seeking it from another person, like a mentor or Elon Musk aka DAD.

PS – “Happy Father’s Day”

 

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I love the Chinese mentality right now.  It could maybe make me sad that when I travel outside the United States, other world citizens will identify me alongside the ideologies of my President, but let’s just not talk about it.  The whole idea of nations is a flimsy social construct.  Some rules written on pieces of paper.  The only human fantasy worth associating with are the public markets.  If it weren’t for electronic futures, like if we re-enter the Cold War only this time everyone ignites their new bombs and these bombs knock electronic futures offline alongside all other computer stuff—hell I’ll take to trading alpacas and pirated diesel fuel.  I don’t care.

Put me anywhere and I will do my best to create a market in-and-around something.  “You want to buy? I have this for you today only, best price.  Oh, you meant to sell?  Let me know about how’d much you’re thinking to charge okay maybe I buy.”

China is playing long-term like thirty human generations out and we’re still trying to keep the baby boomers afloat.  My China correspondent, ROBERTO BREGANTE, informed me that this is the message being parroted by top executives from the Far East:

Chinese economy like sea, not a pond…when the storm comes the pond disappear, but when the storm leaves, the sea is calm and eternal.

Don’t bet against companies, religions, people, nations, who have proven an ability to think long-term and execute their vision.  Companies like Tesla and Google come to mind.  Religions like Scientology and Jehovah Witness.  People like Elon Musk or Genghis Khan.  No nation comes to mind.  It’s a flimsy construct.  But does any of this really matter?

No, not really.  The andromeda galaxy will collide with ours soon no matter how big any person or cognitive bias grows.

I suppose all that matters is enjoying your blip of time here on Spaceship Earth, taking a shot at intergalactic travel if you have the opportunity, and being kind.

That’s it, and remember, JUNE IS RAUL’S MONTH.

Raul Santos, June 9th, 2019

PS – still bullish

 

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How very nice of May to end on a Friday, capping off the quarter very cleanly.

Bears really cut loose on equities last week after sort of just playing with their food for most of the month.

The model lads, the one that guides every decision I make, is signalling BUNKER BUSTER.  This signal calls for an acceleration to the downside followed by a sharp formation of an excess low—a low that holds for many many weeks.

This one maybe hold for all of June, once it comes.

The last set of Bunker Busters hit on 12/9 and 12/23 of 2018.  I think we all remember how that played out ::insert gif of The Rock rolling eyes::

I made a promise to myself that I would not attempt to trade the Bunker Buster after the last one was too darn stressful.  Instead I will begin an accumulation campaign that will likely continue throughout the entire month of June.

Starting with the rebalance of my motif quant and an allotment to that scheme.  Also I will likely buy more of the best companies: TSLA, TWTR, WMT, MTCH first then maybe dribble down to AMZN and GOOGL if I’m not completely cash poor.

People talk about their fad diets and how they’ve sheathed off 20 pounds in a flash.  I find it vile and impulsive.  If you want to be lean buy five to twenty acres of land and work it until your legs give out.  Pair that with a commitment to long term investment strategies and you have the recipe for starvation and nice, tight muscles.

I came into the end of Q1 real lean.  I’ve grinded through Q2 on a war path. And now it is June, and everyone knows June is RAUL’S MONTH.

Raul Santos, June 2nd, 2019

Exodus members, the 237th edition of Strategy Session is live.  This is a key report make sure you give it a read.

 

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Summer officially hit the north last Thursday.  It greeted us with a sunrise thunderstorm featuring long and ominous rumbles interspersed by quick flashes of light that would make a more primitive man think he’d upset the gods.

I’ve spent part of the Memorial weekend taking a walk through the underbelly of Detroit, dancing with the freaks and outcasts in a swampy pit underneath the train tracks.  I’ve seen real happiness, and much to the surprise of most, it doesn’t require exchanging little green pieces of paper for shiny things.  Often, at least here, it can be achieved by listening to loud, repetitive music that sounds quite like an assembly line.

It has always seemed like robotics have a way of hypnotizing man.  They offer relief from monotony, but at what price?  Less and less ‘work’ to sustain is done by hand, and we’re left with a growing population of disenfranchised shitposters lingering around on Facebook and 4chan sharing racist memes.  These people need to be kept busy, hypnotized, sat in front of a machine for eight hours (with a one hour union break) then sent to a home where nature is constantly attempting to overtake them.

The suburban yard is a menacing beast if left untamed.  The bloody grass can grow nearly a foot a week and since none of us keep livestock, this property is a useless and high maintenence ornament.

There’s a subculture taking shape right now in Detroit, in areas still forgotten by the financiers and their banker money.  A place where nobody is plopping ‘modern’ condominiums. I hope these pirates manage to claim a decent chunk of property before its all made to look like suburban hell, what with the bleak strip malls and big box retailers.

The king of Detroit real estate had a stroke Sunday morning.  There is uncertainty in the air.  I do wish him health and safety and hope he makes a full recovery.  But the shark in me also senses change in the air.  If not an objective opportunist, then what good is it that I spend every day sharpening my speculative knife?  I intend to gain as much wealth as possible during my brief stay in this sack of mortal fluid on a rock orbiting an old star.  Real wealth.  Land. Machinery.  By means of capital gains and providing liquidity to the NASDAQ 100.

As for the markets, I expect buyers to engage early on then more chop into month-end.  Then it’s June, and as we all know, June is RAUL’S MONTH.

Now I am off to dance to loud repetitive techno beats for 12 hours.  Check out my instragram for some looks along the way @vincalim.

Exodus members, the 236th edition of Strategy Session is live, go check it out.

 

 

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Good morning.  Quick note.  I just published the Exodus Strategy Session that normally airs on Sunday.  The model is neutral after six consecutive bullish weeks.  I think there may be a signal developing when the model goes bullish that many weeks in a row, but for now, that is simply an observation.

Models are calling for volatile chop until we hear earnings out of NVIDIA and Walmart Thursday afternoon.  We also have Alibaba Wednesday morning, which is an interesting barometer of China amid all this tariff nonsense talk.

Tariffs are not nonsense it’s just that macroeconomics are not actionable no matter how smart we sound when we talk about them.

Trump tweets are actionable if you are at the turrets when they hit and you trade the reaction.

Regarding last week’s selling.  I am of the belife that the selling pressure seen last week has nothing to do with geopolitics. It is more a factor of basic market mechanics.  The rich private equity goons of the west coast are unloading billion’s worth of equity supply onto the markets.  Participants are doing their best to absorb it, but only so much money is funneled into the equity complex every pay period from W-2 chumps.  This is causing imbalance.

Pair that with the CME launching a wildly successful new set of index futures, and you have a nice recipie for volatility.

Ignore the noise.  Focus on the auction.

I have to attend to a few non-stock-market-related matters then I will be back to assess the state of the market after the big boys duke it out.

PRO GAP DOWN

Trade’em well.

Raul Santos, May 13th 2o19

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But feel free to go away.

In general, we would do well to forget about our investments and let them work for us while we build more important things, like our character.

I work hard every Sunday to identify the key elements of the stock market to watch in the upcoming week.  Then I define those factors as clearly as possible with pictures and words.  It may seem like an odd public service of sorts, and it can be, but it’s also what has taken me to consistent profitability as a futures trader.

Last Sunday it was clear we needed to watch the Russell, and I tweeted as much:

Russell 2000 will tell the story into month-end $RTY_F will it breakout or head back down through its range? $RUT pic.twitter.com/ine4G73X0F

— RAUL (@IndexModel) April 28, 2019

Index Model is included in the Strategy Session every Sunday.  The model attempts to predict market direction five days into the future, hence it needing to be updated every Sunday.  The predictive portion of the model is useful, but it offers something much greater—context.

When the markets started moving fast mid-week, I had to reduce the number of futures contracts I follow because my analytical computer starts to lag.  Since I had done my Sunday homework, I knew what was non-essential; the Dow, S&P, SOX, and TRANX.X. All I needed was the Russell and what I actually trade, the NASDAQ.

At that point, while popular traders were passing around the popular, “Sell in May, go away” mantra, I was simply watching the Russell bounce along its lower ATR band.  Why else do you think I was able to add to my Tesla investment with near-perfect precision?  An Elon Musk tweet?  Please.  I am a slave to no man’s word. Take a look at the last five days of trade on the Russell 2000, separated into 15 minute candles with volume profiles (volume at price) for each 24 hour day:

That’s all I wanted to reflect on for a moment.  If you’ve ever thought about trading index futures but haven’t been able to sufficiently capitalize an account to handle the notional value of index futures contracts, you’re in luck.  Beginning Monday, the CME is launching micro futures on the Dow, S&P, NASDAQ, and Russell.  I think every trader should pick one of these markets and trade it exclusively for a few years.  It will develop you much further than ferreting from one degenerate stock to the next.

Chop wood and carry water.  We cannot just stop doing the things that brought us to where we are.  Sunday research, highly concentrated tweets, compassion for others, and pulling lots of weeds.

This isn’t the kind of May to go away from trading.  From fussing with your long-term investments?  Yes.  Do that now and thank me in four years.

I’ll still be here.

Raul Santos, May 5th, 2019

Exodus members, the 233rd edition of Strategy Session will be live by like noon eastern time.  Be sure to check it out and for gods’ sake, if you have have questions ask.

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I was in a spirited mood overnight, satisfied that the stock market had validated my fresh allotment of Tesla intraday by rallying up-and-away from my buy point.  Having enjoyed a glass of George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila with my chief scientist whilst watching District 9, I took to ‘the Twitter’ in my altered state and was, of course, fed tweets about Tesla because the algos know what daddy likes to interact with.

You can imagine how lively the troglodytes over at $TSLAQ were yesterday, who’ve been emboldened of late by the normal way $TSLA shares have oscillated from the top of their WELL ESTABLISHED RANGE to the bottom.  These people do not understand what Tesla has achieved as a company, yet alone how an auction works.

Auctions spend most of their time in balance.  Just when you think a stock is going to breakout, or break down for this matter, it most often doesn’t.  Instead it reverses course, and takes another trip back through the range.  That is, unless, a major new piece of information sways enough participants to abandon a generally accepted value in search of a new one.

Anyways, here’s what happened.  One of these accounts called TSLA shareholders and stakeholders ‘bimbos’.  I cannot pinpoint which of the following accounts, because I was forced to delete my response to start a 12 hour timer on my Twitter suspension:

@stockspotify

@RichardKeppler1

@DReed67

@QTRResearch

Actually, now that I have typed out these handles, my memory has been jostled loose.  It was DReed67.  I am going to go out on a limb and assume DREED was born in 1967.  Therefore it is likely he has called many a woman a bimbo in his time, and he’s probably, in general, a real misogynistic piece of shit.

Anyways, my response was mean.  I’ll be the first to admit it.  I replyed, “bimbo, you sound like white trash.”

Which was wrong.  And if @jack is reading on a fluke, I am sorry.  I am.  That was not a nice thing to respond with.  And if any of the above accounts, especially the one who reported me, ever wants to come to Detroit, I would be happy to show you around.

Henceforth, let it be know RAUL cannot tweet again from his Twitter handle @IndexModel until 7:50pm EDT.  Please show your support for me during this hard time by sharing this post and my upcoming trading report to Twitter.  There are little buttons below to assist you in doing so.  You know I still love you, even if you don’t share, and LONG LIVE TELSA, LONG LIVE ELON (PRAISE!), THANK YOU @JACK FOR TWITTER.

Also a special thank you to Master Fly for creating this wonderful playground, IBANKCOIN, a bastion of free speech in the battle for financial gains. Hallelujah.

Raul Santos, May 3rd, 2019

My stream of conscious thought can be also be followed on Stocktwits where, as of now, I am currently not suspended: http://stocktwits.com/indexmodel

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