The Student Loan Ranger

That's a week without a post. Been papering the markets past few days, doing quite well. Tending to trade gold and crude futures and a lot of JPM, POT, RIG, USD/JPY, EUR/USD and a couple of random stocks like KFT and TYC. Basically just typing in random tickers and taking it from there, it's quite fruitful as my eye is really in at the moment so I can tell quickly if there is a trade on or not. Setting a lot of alerts and using limit orders to scale in is working quite nicely too.

RIG is a powerhouse at the moment, has done nothing but climb all day as crude formed a nice base earlier. If it takes out $63 it will look pretty decent on the daily. This trade has been a long time in the making but there have been countless entry signals over all the timeframes I check out.

Current range for RIG at the moment is $63-$55. Looking for a break over this consolidation range a solid supportive base to form around $63.


Chart looks promising with a pullback today to the crossing moving averages. Hopefully we keep going.

Being in scalp mode for the past few weeks has really sharpened my brain up, and I'm doing a good job of keeping my profit loss ratio per trade at around $5:$1.

Also this week I got a BlackBerry Storm. They are highly recommended and I I'll maybe buy some RIMM soon. It does almost anything. I was gonna buy a new iPod, always wanted SatNav and everything else that goes with it. Free unlimited texts and mobile internet at £5 less per month than my current pay as you go rate. Value.

This period was when the credit crunch really took effect on the markets and the volatility was just insane. This was a horrifically difficult period to trade, especially for a newcomer like me. A more experienced trader would have interpreted what I was thinking as a very easy hint to take all their money out of the market, or open shorts all over the place.

Credit crunch era

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/06/trading-breakdowns.html harmless post on meltdowns, i should have realised that this was the ‘credit crisis’ really beginning to kick in here in mid June. I had closed my III account around this time on the back of some ridiculous let downs. If I was a more experienced trader, I would have pulled all my money from the market here – or shorted SPY long term. I wasn’t and I didn’t.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzIWoubkbpoe1PG99iYjutUiCYIPutJMCkGFk55eoCdWRspkCENeDRuuJ5VnSCgGcuYqb8pNCjh5EJjwTaiBVRWFN44iPbEpG1DbSWakviRS1MALB5Ehvb6zMtEnO9XxivMTTEwhJkNsc/s400/cball2.gif crystal balling logo first used mid June.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/06/weekly-round-up_20.html things really starting to meltdown in a post where the round up logo was first used.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/06/crystal-balling-june-23rd-27th.html Judging by this post, I would say that the credit crisis officially and very suddenly took effect on the short term markets between June 15th-23rd.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/06/crystal-balling-june-30th-july-4th.html this post was the first to feature an alert section for stocks of a lesser quality setup, and involves the first stock rotation programme on my watchlist.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/07/intra-day-action_09.html credit crisis affects markets so much I stop trading for a week, reliability of setups was non existant at this point and I was frequently stopped out of trades very quickly. It was in this week that I began my relationship with cmc.

Not much time watching today, a few quickies. Making the paper money on FX today.

Check this for a bull flag on EURUSD!

Hitting the gym this afternoon. US market is gonna get humped today I think. SP given up 800, huge gaps across the board.

Who's turn is it to go bust next?

This week features a classic period in the TSLR blog when charts were clean, and swing setups were 'safe' - The Vintage TA era.

At this point in time, stocks were breaking out to the upside. It was April-June 2008 and the credit crisis was yet to show it’s true hand. The setups were very very clean, and would go either way quite predictably after triggering certain price levels.

I would give breakout/breakdown figures, measured moves, explanations of the entire trade right down to the pence to take profit or to cut losses. Judging by my records and a few of the posts, I estimate my success rate of calls during this period at over 75% based on trigger points.

I was really struggling to put the trades on though, which made me miss a huge amount of money making opportunities due to me lacking the mental edge in trading. These remain the most in depth and accurate posts since I became The Student Loan Ranger.

This eye of the storm period didn't last long but I got some great trades from it.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/weekly-round-up_17.html one of many highly accurate weekly roundup posts.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/crystal-balling-may-27th-30th.html HELLS YES

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/weekly-round-up_30.html first roundup to really analyse my market calls. I was ridiculously good at making the calls in this market, but i really struggled to trade them. A glimpse into my success rate at that time.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/crystal-balling-june-2nd-6th.html I used to have so much time to do this! This post marks the exact point I started tracking US stocks. I tracked CIEN anticipating a long, but with stops and shorts at 29.15. CIEN was trading at under $20 a few weeks later, and went as low as $5 in December.

RIG continuing to move as expected. After a nice lower volume pullback it's bounced off the 50EMA on a double day, double bottom. Confirming the breakout on the intra-day was a nice wedge then triangle breakout. I would really like to see this get to +$70 as I predicted a last week. Hopefully we get some good volume today with continuation on monday.



POT moving in similar fashion to RIG. Broke an intra-day ascending triangle today and the daily looks nice at the moves off $80 yesterday. Can't remember if I mentioned this or not the other day but the setup was a nice bull flag into a golden cross and support area - strong bull entry at $80 would've been great.



I said MOS looked extended at $45 and it was, but check this out for a prime entry yesterday. Setup is a 123 with golden cross supporting on declining volume pullback. Nice!



Paper traded my TOS account yesterday and did well to get $71 out of RIG, $100 on X, $180 on AUD/USD and 2 very small losers in AA and AAPL. I also traded the /ESH9 futures and was stopped out for like -$200 in 60 seconds. That was on 2 contracts, I dare say I have a lot to read up on when it comes to futures and the risk management involved therein.

Gonna watch the markets for a bit longer today, would like to see a move on RIG off $60.

Nice jump off the 50EMA on RIG today. Market sold off into some support ranges for some of the stocks I'm watching. X and MOS selling off as predicted.

Started watching gold and crude futures. Interestingly oil is at new lows, but the price at the pump has been rising slowly the past few weeks - let's see a correction please. Gold formed a nice long bullflag consolidation range which I traded on the paper account. $940 support going into close.

I have college Wed/Thu/Fri in the afternoons which will hamper my trading and watching so I'll be looking to trade the rallies that happen around 6pm my time.

I've spent a lot of time watching RIG today, and it continued nicely along it's merry way today, despite some resistance in the $62 region. A nice jump up on the morning let to an inevitable pullback to yesterdays high of $60 which provided yet another entry point.


RIG and the market as a whole closed some way off their highs today, and after 4 straight days on buyers in RIG, I have to anticipate some kind of pull back. If $60 holds, great - but more realistically I am still checking out $58. I'm not entirely sure I like this candlestick, kind of a shooting star with sellers really taking control into the close. Hopefully RIG can show some relative strength and suffer only a slight pull back into either $58 or the 50EMA. I anticipate a golden cross in the 20/50EMAs and some movement north for Transocean.

I don't really check V out but it caught my eye today. Lately there have been two gap ups on good volume into an overhead resistance range. Today we saw some definitive overhead resistance on the intra-day chart at about $56.20 which led to V closing with a spinning top.


I think if this takes out todays low tomorrow ($54.50) then we can expect a small volume drop to the 20/50EMA range which looks pretty good right now.

In a bad day for metals, X hit the 50ema and medium term downward trendline and sold off into another spinning top. I was surprised at the rally here last week, as steel stocks for me just ain't gonna cut it in a recession. Whether or not this consolidates here and forms a flag with support at the 20EMA remains to be seen, but I am bearish.


Just checked out MOS too, looks very extended at $45 and I would like to buy this at $40.

BONUS PULLOUT CENTRE FOLD - Broker Blowups!

A slightly smaller installment in the series as I take time out from chronological order and focus on my battles with brokers, data feeds and software.

Anyone who is based in the UK that trades without a US broker, data feed or US standard charting package will know the difficulties involved in getting good, reliable, malleable data. To any would be traders sitting in the snow in Wigan thinking "You know what, I'm gonna start trading" - let me burst your bubble. Don't bother with the UK. Ever. I say it nearly every post at the moment.. just don't even waste your time.

The UK market is a joke. Anything that is a joke can't be taken seriously. You want UK based charting software? No. You want free level 2 data? No. You want direct access software? No. You want a reliable broker who executes your order quickly and at your price? No. You want cheap commissions? No. You want to pay 0.5% stamp duty on every share purchase? Yes!

Anyway. I've gone through 2 brokers and 2 different data sources and software packages. And both are a big old pile of

By reading this short post you can clearly see the pain and anguish I went through dealing with anything even remotely linked to Britain and trading. Note to reader: UK and trading don't mix. It is not in our mentality to be successful - which is barely the surface of the problem with the UK stock market.

Enjoy the blow-ups because I didn't!

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http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-hate-iii.html First rant at unreliability of broker and UK market data.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/06/end-of-iiicouk.html First broker ‘blow-up’. Apparently limit orders don't exist with UK brokers!

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/06/oh-come-on-this-is-getting-ridiculous.html Second ‘blow-up’ shortly after featuring the infamous ‘soldier gunning iii’ photo that remains on the blog today. I closed the account shortly after this ‘third strike’. This post still makes me laugh.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/08/raging.html A policy change from CMC meant I was now being charged commissions without notice, which cost me a heap. Start of the long and painful downfall of CMC. I remember I was absolutely livid with them.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/10/here.html beginning to lose faith in CMC by September

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2009/01/horror-and-humour.html A very funny montage of pain after being intentionally locked out of a forex trade begins a 24 period of anger towards CMC. I closed the account that night as CMC, like III before it, ‘third striked’ me.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2009/01/more-pain.html The account with CMC is closed after 2 weeks of the ‘new wave’ of trading. Despite losing maybe only 1.5% of the account value in this period, their crapness could no longer be tolerated, and they join III in the pile of doom.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtbDo6_-AwiP7TaepJs2CdZ8oeMtIk6peIIlRpwiG8-Nd81tnVXItxy6mb1oQkeKKEjuoiiaU2YMCtk0EEHOR2ykzJtMk32-5a7HQMUSpmEDQQ0KuaAqQQVsJdjXqAOx0W6Z5j3zKtKec/s400/lol.png This poster severs all links with the UK market and UK based financial information/brokerage companies as I sign up for think or swim. All data and execution is now stateside.

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Post-script thoughts;

Let me just mention something here about US/UK companies, products etc related to trading.

UK companies/services

iii.co.uk - £10 commission each way plus stamp duty. Delayed data on delayed portfolio. No software. No limit orders. Stop losses never closed at price. Atrocious/Horrendous/Badword dealing team.

CMC markets - bucket shop, intentionally closed out of platform. Unreliable. Awful customer service. Terrible charting. No deal from charts. Problems getting money out, no problem getting it in. Posh clueless idiot on other end of phone all the time.

Quotestream L2 service. This was basically just market depth. The charting was not at all interactive. No line drawing ability, no studies, could not even change moving averages. £20 a month. Unversatile and unreliable sh*t.

ADVFN L2 service. Bit more in depth. Web based java platform. Only time and sales (delayed too) for US stocks. Forums full of UK trading newbs and idiots. £35 a month! Crap charting. You also had to cancel 2 months in advance otherwise they charged for part month and the next too.

US companies/services

Prorealtime charting package. Free end of day downloadable java based program with all the studies you could ever want. Although pricey for real time data, it's better than anything to come out of Britain. Yes I'll say again, it's free.

Quotetracker. Excellent and free charting package (requires data feed). Interestingly they cite ADVFN UK as a compatible source - but ADVFN are unaware of this and recommend using their own java charts lol. I would be saying "hell yes you can use our feed" given that QT is the number one port of call for beginner chartists. They would make a fortune of UK traders signing up for their feed solely for QT. But no... they're idiots.

IQFeed data source. Account set up instantly. $30 for NYSE, NASDAQ, CME live data - equities, internals, etfs etc. Remarkably reliable, efficient and high quality data service. Cancelled this because I don't need it. Email response within an hour saying it wasn't a problem, and no more payments will be taken from me and I get to use it for another 3 weeks. Customer service and product quality were obviously what they were going for. Money is what a UK company goes for, and they sure make it obvious.

Think or Swim brokerage and platform. Although not full set up, the application process was simple and quick and the software is absolutely superb. We're talking $1 or $2 commission total in/out, FREE live real time data including ETFs, indices, equities, futures, options, forex, internals etc. Can more or less deal direct from charts and platform includes an absolute raft of extras and order types. Good customer service so far too.

Now after reading that - can you tell the difference in quality? Everything UK based is garbage because there is no competition. If I programmed a charting package that could link to xyz (I don't even know any UK brokerages anymore) I would dominate that market like nobodies business, except My Own Ltd.

Level 2/TA era still poisoned with fundamentals and trading errors

This part links to a series of posts I made beginning with me just learning about technical analysis. At this point I was trading UK stocks on a swing basis, but still favoured fundamental approaches to my stock picking rather than purely TA. This period lasted about 6 weeks as I developed the new skills and there was a good mix of wins and losses. After that and to the back section of this post I got quite good at making calls based on technical analysis and my trading picked up.

This era also saw the start of my weekly Crystal Balling and Roundup posts and also the introduction of some sort of risk management to my trading. At around this point I began to lower my risk tolerance after some heavy blows at the start of my career.

Towards the end of this I had my first big win trading SOLA. After that (and in the next section) I went on a nice run of swing trades in a series of stocks I don't care about any more.

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“I do like TA but I just think it has to back it up with either strong balance sheets, good products, contract wins or a booming sector” Not anymore, I don't even care what the name of the company is lol.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/t.html first post about TA – BLVN was a blatant bearish wedge in retrospect.

“I watched quite a lot of videos last night on technical analysis - mostly from informedtrades.com and alphatrades.net. They were very interesting and insightful, and at the moment I'm a little shocked at my earlier trading tactics” NOW we’re talking! I remember this period, and was puzzled at why it took me so long to find technical analysis. I got really into it about here.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/down-like-clown.html The start of what would then become “crystal balling”

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/house-rules.html developed first set of trading rules but also features a potential dangerous love affair with CFDs. I can’t really remember if I stuck to these rules or not. I think I cut my loss on SEO around this point.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/crystal-balling-april-14th-18th.html first official crystal balling post featured TATA, BGC, LONM.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/afternoon-nap.html first intra-day action post with an early indication I was wearing thin of trading the uk market

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/disciplinary.html first post realising the mental demands of trading, in particular discipline and insight into overtrading. This was a bit of a wake up call.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/fridays-bell-end-of-week.html Applying TA to some stocks, but clearly lacking the skills and knowledge about risk:reward, entry and exit, measured moves, volume analysis, sector analysis. I hadn’t learned enough about the game to be making the kind of trades I was calling.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/weekly-round-up.html first weekly roundup post and beginning of excel programming relationship. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxkyYnHmBtyHBkLcX8RMj4yNL7_4qHgI2fgVtrRWaBGvTBOFXZLG6b0_7CisMNuIwFpP2v07musWZnIyCzfIxjPx66dqQm-TYpqtrKUJDwEtIFBhhjdsDnhWADoNMazmYYQKlu0cp2_Us/s1600-h/port.bmp not bad for week one really.

Funniest part of that post “BKG is a strong buy for me at the moment, nuff said” The chart imploded and crashed a few days later.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/crystal-balling-21st-to-25th-april.html stellar call on AAL. Amazingly accurate on BP too. The very first glimpse of risk management with the statement “but I would use some very very tight stops at about 457 just in case it doesn't want to reverse”. I should have looked into this sentence a lot more carefully, it’s simple but says so much about risk management.


http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/weekly-round-up_26.html ridiculously prophetic calls on bottoming price levels of NG. and ADM. Beginning to become very consistant at calling trade entries and TA.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/crystal-balling-april-28th-may-2nd.html for the first time, crystal balling includes specific details on the trade entries, with target prices. However, at this time stops were not included.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/04/midweek-wrap_30.html Anti Britian and the change in perception towards the UK market is confirmed in this post. I still believe every part of this rant.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/pattern-spotting.html me excelling at TA and developing new ideas. This pattern was pretty predominant for a while, though I haven’t seen it lately. I am unaware if this pattern exists in any textbook or is well known.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/crystal-balling-may-6th-may-9th.html crystal balling finally features stop loss limits. All analysis on this post was superb, with all targets hit. WTN was one of the biggest moves I ever anticipated, moving nearly 140% in the next 2 weeks.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/crystal-balling-may-12th-may-17th.html i am beginning to incorporate measured moves into my stock analysis. This post really shows the start of my love affair with SOLA, the best stock ever! Looking back I was really beginning to get great at TA, however it was mostly due to the charts at the time. Swing trading TA is significantly harder these days, given that most charts look like Victoria falls dropping into a sea of blood.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpfvIwXhsjnDZFCQJPYIehYSkVMo36_7HCd-Ag8_CnwUB-oWaf2ZkZHnB7JJaURs_cGuoqDrdrDFN8hT9H9mCskYJ9OIUT3AKwIJMxOAv9m69iasgJ2d1TMfi3oZINbQcXDHz4sZBfqZU/s400/sola.gif Is this not laughable? This is the standard of charting you can expect to find in the UK. No interaction, no adjusting timescale, no dealing from charts, no indicators or studies. I used to pay £20 a month for this garbage! Now I get a service about 100 times better for nothing!

From time to time I notice I get visitors coming to my blog from google, having searched for “ADVFN versus QuoteStream”. If you have come here after typing that and have come across this post; here is my advice: Do not sign up for Quotestream or ADVFN – both are utter garbage and a complete waste of time. Do not trade the UK markets full stop. Spent some time learning TA, get some money together (>£3500) and open a US broker account with ‘Interactive Brokers’ or ‘Think or Swim’. You get this information for free and trust me, it’s at least 100 times better.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/05/intra-day-action.html perfect trading of SOLA and my first big win.

Breakout on RIG today after a great day yesterday. Exercise caution in this market as the bottom could fall out at any point. My targets are still as per my post a few days ago >~$70.

RIG DAILY


RIG 30MIN PAST 2 AND A BIT DAYS

Note the buying here. $60 a sticky point at the moment, looking for a pullback into close and support at $58 for a great entry price.

Might as well watch some charts today to alleviate the boredom.

From my post the other day, $57 looks like the level RIG needs to break. $57.25 to be exact. It bounced hard off this price (which was the 50EMA on the daily) as predicted. However there was a decent amount of buying yesterday so watch RIG today to see what happens. I would like to see it hold $54.50 today.

I also cite the 3rd major wave of fear in the past year here, with a total meltdown on BAC in the last few days.

Internals at the bell are extremely bearish with $DECN at 1500 and $ADVN at 590. $TRIN over 1.4. Let's see some selling.

Update 15mins into session:
RIG dropped $54.50, market not too healthy and is predictably going for the 09:50 reversal. Watching for some action here and support on RIG at 20EMA daily chart at $53.25

Update 17:10 (12:10 US)
RIG on the RUN today. Very nice intra-day chart with a couple of good entry points. She's sitting at $57 again right now so I'm waiting to see what happens here. Also at the 50EMA on the daily again. Lots of buyers today after a poor opening.

This is part 1 of a year in the life of a beginner trader. Look for updates every week until TSLR celebrates a year at the helm of this blog. This is just too funny, I can't believe how stupid I was when I started doing this..

I can do nothing here but cut and paste a section of my first post. Anything highlighted, in bold or in large text represents a ridiculous statement that makes me cringe. This period lasted about 4-5 weeks and I lost a significant amount on just 2 trades. My first trade was a winner though!

"Have you read the report man!?" TSLRs Fundamental Analysis Era.


“Trade 1
Severfield-rowen UK
Absolute rock solid fundamentals, and just had a huge crash for no real reason except profits are a slight below expectations. Decent dividends too but haven’t decided on whether to keep going on that. I bought 315 shares at 2.932. I was going to buy at 2.652 but my broker account wasn’t open :( boo hoo etc

That red dot is where I got in. My target price for a £100 profit is 330p, but with it’s current momentum and rises despite small volumes, I expect this stock to see little to no resistance until the 400p mark, when it hits 400 I will make £321 (34%) profit. However the timeline for this could be long and I have some exciting prospects on my watchlist such as Coal of Africa, Desire Petroleum and Rift Oil. This share was a great value buy and it could go back up to 500 longer term for £636 profit, but holding too long isn’t what I want with the bulk of my loan.

I purchased 115 shares in The Royal Bank of Scotland at 400p. Reasons being that this is one hell of a company. They’re about to announce record profits, Qatari investment rumours and a decent dividend date in the not too distant future. The banking sector took a huge kick in the nuts, well, the whole FTSE took a huge kick in the nuts in Jan so this was a great opporchancity to snap up a solid company with good ratios on the cheap.

It was on my watch list with SFR and BARC for my first pick but opted for SFR looking for money gain over percentage which sounds crazy but hey. I intend to hold this long long term so don’t expect much news on this. Anyway my target for this is 550p for £164 profit within the year, but I may hold until I’m an old man. My SFR money etc is for the real gains.”

“RBS on the other hand announced £10 billion profits up 10% on last year and a sizable dividend increase – but it closed down -1.26%. Funny old world. “ The earliest sign the banking sector was in serious trouble.

“US markets down again on Friedegg so some pessimism surrounding the opening bell on Monday, particularly for RBS. That’s the general consensus, but in my opinion RBS will bounce back up over 4. I hope. Either that or it will find support at 360. But hey, ex-div on Wednesday so that’ll be £25 into the profits for the year.”
If the market was bearish and RBS looked bad, then why did I keep holding it? Also I was exposing myself to 40p downside for 10p upside. That dividend was worth SFA!

“I’m expecting SFR to really rally this next week. I am extremely tempted to sell out at my original target of 330p, but targets are for losers. “
This remains possibly the dumbest thing I have ever said in my life.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/03/media-and-market.html
Why did I not see the global financial crisis while writing this post!?

“SFR is a bee-in-bonnet scenario. It just climbs all day, hits 315 then closes at just over 304.”
Somehow I did not realise that this concept was support and resistance.

http://thestudentloanranger.blogspot.com/2008/03/road-to-recovery.html
Beginning to question the trades i’ve made, but remain in love with first big loser SEO

“SEOs results were out on Friday - no positive movement on the share price though - it's gone down quite a bit. However, looking at the final years results and the interims from last year, their position has significantly changed for the better and it looks like a solid long term investment “
This is the classic beginner mistake, initially a short term trade, SEO is now part of my “long term strategy”. OMG I was bad.

“Excellent surges on Wednesday and Thursday (18%/22%). At it's peak it kissed .9 which represented a decent opportunity to get out for a loss of around £300 - half of what is was on Tuesday.”
This is about the SEO trade, gaining 50% on a position that is already a monster loss is an absolute god send. Why did I not take this!?

Chart evidence

There are too many lessons in this portion of text to digest in one paragraph. I don't even know where to start so I won't even bother. But anyone who has ever traded will know exactly what I mean!

Next week: L2 TA III era.

Well that's just great. Another day off college, this snow is just insane. The snow was more or less melted, then for a 2 hour spell this morning there was a huge covering of snow that has made it even more unsafe to drive than yesterday.

This webcam is about 3 miles from my place so check out the conditions here: Deeside gliding strip web cam.

No doubt I'll make the first post in my story so far today..

Well we've got over a foot of snow here today I reckon, and my much anticipated return to college has been put off for another day. I am so bored it's unreal. No college, all mates at work, no trading, crap weather, gym closed, nothing on TV, watched all my DVDs and I've read all my books. The Mens Health I just bought distracted me for all of an hour.

And here is some analysis on an interesting looking stock, RIG.

Yes the World is in recession and the price of oil has slumped dramatically in the past few months. However, in a market that shows consecutive bear signals on nearly every chart, RIG has 3 very bullish signals interlinked with each other over the past 4 months.

First off is a the beat down, which became a falling wedge. These wedges are bullish and often lead to a substantial rally (I see these all the time on 15mins). It is also a reversal pattern. Another reversal pattern is the inverse head and shoulders, the top of which forms the most recent low in RIG at $41.95. A reversal pattern in a bear market, followed by what could turn out to be a continuation pattern in the form of an ascending triangle.

There are a few key prices to watch here, most notably the $57-$58 mark, which is serving as overhead resistance for the ascending triangle. Also, $50 in the shorter term acting as support. The next low would ideally be above $48. Any breakout of $58 on a re-test would be a good long signal, proving it also breaks above and is then supported by the 50EMA which is currently pinning RIG down.

I would like to see this consolidation over the past few days get tighter and then I'll watch for some volume coming in.

Measured moves:

Wedge ~ $83
Triangle ~ $72
IH&S ~$75
200EMA currently at $71.2

I will watch these levels if RIG breaks out.

However, given that this is a market in which many TA patterns simply fail, it is wise to exercise caution here. The price of oil is certainly a lot more stable at the moment, but that is reducing the underlying profits of companies like RIG. The likes of Noble have fallen to prices where the outlying stock is worth less than the actual company for example, and there's no reason why this can't happen to other companies.

Anyway, with good risk measurement in place, I think RIG is a great long on the breakout with stops around $54.

Things to look out for (break signals and entry points):

1. Moves up off the 20EMA consolidation for a bull flag type setup
2. Clear break above $58
3. Volume on the break
4. Strong bullish candlesticks
5. A pullback on declining volume to $58 or the 50EMA for entry
6. Initial targets around $70-$75
7. Continuation patterns forming after potential run to $70
   
8. $85+ targets medium - long term

Post-script edit:
I just realised I'm a month away from my 1 year anniversary as a blogger and market follower. To celebrate this momentous occasion I'm going to feature the most ridiculous things I ever said about the stock market in a series of quotes and chart montages, and a few lessons I've learned along the way. The third paragraph of my first post is possibly the most dumbest naive thing I think I have ever read! I have come a long long way since then.

Edit for later:
OK well I had nothing else on so I wrote an article type post about my year in trading so far. Obviously I can't comment on the coming month, so I will be releasing my chronicles in part issues every Sunday until the 1 year birthday at the start of March.

There are 8 sections (2 a week) and one bonus section (special anniversary pulloutl) that serve as a history of my trading. From the most ridiculous statement I ever made about trading, to my series of broker-blowups - all tales are featured in this candid tell-all biography of The Student Loan Ranger! Loan Ranger... Hoooooooohh! (to Thundercats intro voice).