Winter made it to Texas.

I don't remember when I posted last, but I can imagine it was a while ago.

I pretty much convinced myself that my PC had a failed motherboard. Something must have been wrong with the power system somewhere because it's killed three hard drives this year and I barely scraped data off of the fourth. It was pretty demoralizing.

So I got a new one.

I found a guy in North Austin who basically lives right by Fry's and just pieces new computers together. It's almost as fast as the other one and, with the RAM, is probably a little faster. I finally made the switch from PATA to SATA and... now I'm caught up with the times. I'm happy and hopefully it will last for a few years.

So, I've obviously been screwing around with computer stuff too much... getting it all set up and such. I finally figured out how to broadcast video using VLC, Flash Media Encoder and... a virtual cable :D It's good. I've been showing movies for friends and family on jtv.

Otherwise, the power... dealy... on my tablet died. I'll have to send it out for repair... again.

Thanksgiving. I hadn't been out of the ZIP code for about two years so a break was definitely in order.

I went with my sister over to the East Texas woods. My dad's ladyfriend basically has a house on the grounds of an old lumber mill. I've never seen pine trees so big. They seriously were over 100 feet tall and I couldn't wrap my arms around the trunks. They were massive.

So we hung out with Dad and the other family and ate and drank a bit too much. I ate and drank so much. By the end of it, I just sorta felt like a fat, stupid grape.

The food was spectacular and the company was fantastic. I even got to ride a horse for the first time :) I spent about two hours on a gentle giant named Dude. We wandered through the woods and just sorta enjoyed eachother. Well, I'm sure by the end of it he was no longer enjoying me. But I sure am happy he put up as with me as long as he did. I had no idea how to steer him starting out, so his patience was hugely appreciated.

Lemme try to explain the area a little better. It's 80 acres wayyyy back in the woods with a private lake, horses and a sprawling 8 bedroom, one-story house with a fireplace that was built for heat. It was picturesque.

I played guitar for everybody right after Thanksgiving dinner and although my motor skills were questionable at best, everyone seemed to enjoy it. Two of the 8-person audience actually fell asleep... which might or might not be a good thing.

Most of the weekend was spent listening to the wind brush through the trees overhead with the occasional woodpecker screaming about bugs in the distance. It was pretty perfect.

I'm back to work now and am pacing myself with trading through December and probably the first half of January. It seizes along and finally drops back into gear in the middle of January. Everybody just dumps positions in all different directions around Christmas and then it just drops off until the third or fourth of January. You might think, "It's a market. It's either gonna go up or down, right?" Wrong. Around the holidays, people just start doing stupid things... inexplicable things. The market starts to move topwise and inside out. I'm only going to trade during these first two weeks and sit out until around the 10th or 12th of January.

I'm being pretty conservative right now. This Friday are the monthly unemployment reports and I've seen the FX market move completely unpredictably up to 48 hours before the release. I passed a great trade yesterday that would have been kind to me. I generally only take reaaaally good setups on Mondays because they can be either half-hearted moves or just fake altogether. My intuition was correct and the market did what I thought it would. That was satisfaction enough. Not taking a trade can be a very valuable trading decision.

I traded tonight. Gbpjpy made solid gains yesterday and maintained the level through the afternoon hours. There was no retracement and jpy seemed to be equally as weak on the other pairs with a pennant forming on a few. I entered half of my position and held for about an hour through some drawdown. The bulls stepped up and returned the price to the danger zone, within striking distance from yesterday's high. A support line was holding and I could see the 21 ma active on several jpy pairs on the 15m charts. That's all I needed. Someone was trying to make the market move just before the Asian traders left for lunch. I entered the other half and waited and watched the price peek through and then break out. I exited both positions 45 minutes later for +5.25%. I'll take that on any NFP week.

Here's some insight into NFP and news in general in the Forex market. Some people live and die by the news releases in FX. People generally react when the news is released and the market moves a lot in a small amount of time. While this is generally an exciting prospect, the duality of the market can crush you in an equal amount of time. The Non-Farm Payrolls are widely considered to be the most important economic indicator and it's released monthly. I actually don't pay attention to any other reports. In truth, there aren't really any meaningful reports released during the Asian session. I'm not able to trade London or NY right now. Otherwise I suppose I might follow the news a little bit more closely.

Back when I was learning the ropes and trading London overnight, I would stay up and watch everything consolidate and whipsaw around support and resistance in anticipation of the release the next morning. Foolishly, I would try to use some technical justification for opening a position in the hour or so before the NFP was released in hopes that I would make a [huge] quick buck. Well, trading the NFP report was the only time I got my ass kicked so badly that I would literally get spooked from taking any trades for the entire week after. On the bigger pairs, the price can dump 40, 50 or even 80 points in about two or three seconds. It's such a clusterfuck. Even after the initial move, the volume might be so ridiculous that even when you try to close your position, your broker won't be able to fill the order until the price has gone 30 or 40 more points in one direction. -120 points in 20 seconds? Been there... done that. Never again. There's nothing worse than working your ass off all week just to get knocked down on Friday and feel worthless through the weekend. Then you get all antsy and try to make trades appear out of thin air on Sunday and Monday before anything's actually moving. Terrible. I'm playin it safe.

When I was hedging, news releases weren't even that important because I was using any number of positions to cover previous losing positions. But with single trades, I've found it best to be very conservative in general during the entire week of NFP and just be willing to take profits a little quicker than normal.

I think I'm rambling now. I'm going to research some of OOo Calc's sorting functions.

The weather is finally wintry. It's been in the 40s for the last 48 hours and it's just barely gonna warm up tomorrow. It's been raining alllllll day and it looks like the water levels around here are slowly comin back. I'm ready to hibernate and forget about it. It's supposed to rain and snow on Friday. I'll believe it when I see it!

Christmas is coming. I have the last week in December off and I don't know what I'm gonna do with it yet. I might be helping my mom move. Maybe I'll fly somewhere if something comes up. I need some heat. I'm ready for summer again already. It's quiet in the cold.

>> "Siamese Cities" on Static Anonymity by Metric