Journalist are generally reporting the history not the future

A turkish journal is telling that it is an optimal point to buy gold again. But I do not think that it will go higher. lets wait and see what will happen.

Causes of price movement

Company 20% -> Company 80%                        

Market 31%  -> Market 10%

Sector 49% -> Sector 10%

Quotes from Napoleon Hill

A goal is a dream with a deadline.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

Don't wait. The time will never be just right.

Edison failed 10, 000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win - essential to success.

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

It is always your next move.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.

Money without brains is always dangerous.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

One must marry one's feelings to one's beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one's life.

Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

The battle is all over except the "shouting" when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.

The starting point of all achievement is desire.

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

Think and grow rich.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.

You give before you get.

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.

Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.

Gold Prices and Inflation

Gold prices are generally seen as inflation hedge. If inflation is increase, gold prices will increase. But that is not always the case. McClellan has analysed this in his web site.

You have probably heard the idea that gold acts as a hedge against inflation, but this is not quite the right description. An up move in gold prices signals a coming up move in the inflation rate about 14-15 months later. So if you believe that inflation is going to pick up and want to protect yourself, then the best course of action is to buy gold 14 months ago.[1]

Gold is a crisis hedge(=insurance) not really an inflation hedge[2].If there is an anticipation of a greate bull market no one needs an insurance. There is no need to keep gold[3]. When the gold prices are declining this is generally bullish for the stocks. Falling dollar is also bullish for gold.

[1] http://www.mcoscillator.com
[2] http://www.inflationdata.com
[3] Intermarket Analysis: Profiting from Global Market Relationships, page 123

Analysing Oil Prices

I found different methods to confirm the trend of the oil features. The first method is from a briefing quote.

Ideally, near-term futures prices would be below longer-term prices. That relationship is described as a contango market and it reflects a more natural order of things whereby prices are higher the further out one looks because of the greater sense of uncertainty that exists with respect to the supply situation over the long haul.

This contango relationship is not unlike interest rates.

A typical yield curve is an upward-sloping one where short-term rates are lower than long-term rates because there is less risk of default in the shorter borrowing period.

In essence, the futures market can be considered to have an inverted curve. Buyers are paying a premium to ensure immediate delivery because of heightened concerns about supplies being inadequate, notwithstanding OPEC's more complacent view of things.

The second method is from John Murphy(www.stockcharts.com) Market messages. He is telling that the oil stock prices must confirm the price of the oil. If there is a divergence something is going wrong. When oil stocks and crude oil move in the same direction it confirms the validity of the trend.

[1]http://www.briefing.com/
[2]http://www.stockcharts.com

Money : Making sense of so much market data on a given day

Click To Play

ADVISES TO INVESTORS OR TRADERS

1. BE CONSISTENT:

Do not be a fundamentalist one week and technician next week. If you are a fundamentalist do not use one ratio on week and next the next week. If you are technician do not use one pattern or indicator one week and the next pattern next week.

2. LEARN WHAT MOST INVESTORS NEVER DO:

You can not make money by reading today's fundamentals in the newspaper. What you read from the textbooks are only one aspect and very known aspect of investing. Technicians can see what the biggest and most informed investors (e.g. institutions) are duing by looking at the trading volume.

Fundamental or technical analysis are not a crsytal ball to the financial independenc. Markets are very complex it is not possible to make proper fundamental forecast by collectioning all the information. Technical analysis provides a simple way in comparision to fundamental analysis. But do not forget that markets are not simple to understand. You can make failures. It is ok to make failures. If you have a system with positive expantancy you can make money even if you are less than 50% of the time right.

3. TRADING IS NOT ABOUT KNOWING, IT IS ABOUT DOING 

Trading is not about knowing it. It is all about doing. All the trades know higher highs, higher lows. And such strategies. But trading is all about doing. Trading is a verb not a noun. "being a good trader is not about making money(paper trading). Making money is about being a good trader(real trading=doing)."[1]

[1] The Kirk Report : http://www.thekirkreport.com/2007/03/learning_how_to.html

RISK-RETURN RATIO

Take trades if your risk return ratio is high. e.g. greater than 1.

Emotions affect the market behaviour

Stock picking by using SPDRs

Click to play 

You can also use other methods to screen or pick stocks. Charles Kirk made a list of stock screeners on his web site Kirk Report 

[1] http://www.thekirkreport.com/2007/01/stock_screeners.html

Three important trends (Dow theory)

Price, Volume and open interest

Benefits of monitoring volume:

• it is possible to see if the volume and price are in agreement.
• if they are not in agreement it indicates that the trend is not strong
  

Markets are speaking with to vocabularies. They are volume and price.

Rising prices and falling volume indicates an abnormal situation and weak trend. this activitiy is associated with a primary bear market. It can be used as a bear market indicator.[3]

Dr.Elder defines the volume in connection with trendlines.

If volume expands when prices move in the direction of a trendline, it confirms that trendline; if volume shrinks when prices pull back to a trendline, it also confirms the trendlines. If volume expands when prices return to a trendline, it warns of potential break; if volume shrinks when prices pull away from a trendline, it warns that the trendline is in danger.[1]

There are more bull markets than the bear markets. Volume give different massages in bull and bear markets. In bull markets, if prices do not increase at the top of the movement and high volume appears, it indicates that distribution is taking place. In the bear markets, if prices do not fall appreciably and high volume appears at the bottom, it signifies that accumulation has been completed and the turn is near[2].

Resources:
[1] Trading for a living, Dr. Elder, p.88-92
[2] Oriline, D.Foster Ticker Technique (1935)
[3] Technical analysis explained, Martin Pring,p.397-404

Value or Growth investing?

Investors favours sometimes value stocks sometimes growth stocks.  As it can be seen from the image below, a trader might think of trading value or growth stocks depending on their trend.