Short Term Trading Week Starting: 3 December 2018, page-69

Hi traders,

ESZ18 E-mini futures just opened and fell around 50 points. They had managed to get back up to 2718.25 in Tuesday night's electronic session, this adding a bit of weight to the single print stretch of 2698-2717 from last Wednesday. What that portends I don't know but it's worth keeping in mind going into tonight's electronic trade and Thursday's regular session. Will post a chart when I think that its worth taking up more space, I guess thumbnails are no longer available. You don't want to see sprawling representations every day, do you?

I spent most of yesterday with the futures profile and options market, because at such times I try to tune out noise and get down to cold hard alphanumeric representations of the crazy reality in which we find ourselves. Of course I couldn't help notice abject silence across trading/social media spectrum. Seeing so many traders speechless is rare. There was disbelief and frustration. The other thing I noticed was that no one with a vested interest in their long term reputation claimed to know why ES fell through the bottom of the gap around 2765. There are obviously opinions as to general direction, but as for a telegraphed representation of yesterday's intraday action, I see none. Just news driven?

Opinion

A few points…some think that T man is interested in things beyond his personal orbit or that feed the ego, be they the China problem or the rush of pushing the markets around...well, it's a family thread so I'll stop there. Lets just say that methods for the statistical diagnosis of personality disorders has been widely disseminated since WWII; read them at your leisure, you'll find the spot. We don't even need proper training and clinical experience to recognize at least the basic spectrum. What about the sound minded helpers, you ask? After all, this is not just about Tariff Man, he is merely a symptom of a larger, collective and primal desire for satisfaction via primacy. Well then, I guess it's down to them. There are a few sober minds in the administration but many have left. I am not naive to the idea that an amoral actor or "businessman" is thought by many to be the antidote to business as usual. I get that, too. But a binary choice between business as usual and bat s crazy is probably not necessary.

I mentioned several times recently that when these trade architects manage to engineer or allow a bump in the indices, they view it as an opportunity to double down. I don't know the precise margins they require but I do believe that little by little, their study of the futures market has emboldened their range of rhetorical choices. We also discussed the question of honesty...which combines with the state of mind in which many view a leader as an amoral vehicle for the furtherance of their grievances; they claim that character does not matter, as long as the job gets done. If that's good enough for some traders; if they would prefer trash talk to closed diplomatic channels with clear margins and rules, then more power to them. Not that the two states of being are mutually exclusive, but something tells me that the smack constitutes the bulk of these 'negotiations'.

Most of us would like to have a basic idea of what's going on. I know, I know, that's his style. I get it. And never let it be said that I don't appreciate the meaning of clandestine doings...but what satisfies Manhattan real estate protocols - such as they are - isn't always trustworthy on a world stage. Big D couldn't survive as a pale faced member of the Cosa Nostra. He gets to play this game of pretend gangsta because we live in a cushioned, well funded bubble provided us by men and women who actually did respect honesty and general integrity. The flaws in human integrity were only recognizable by people who were constantly striving for the higher ethical ground. Unfortunately, that very bubble also made us so lazy and gives us a sense of security that precludes the motivation to spot the archetypes of the past that those same men and women sought to contain. We have become lazy and spoilt. We simply don't know any better.