S.A.M strength Index for the Week ahead..

NZD....Putting its money where its mouth is

http://www.interest.co.nz/currencies/72196/reserve-bank-sold-net-nz521-mln-during-august

Long EURJPY ~ 138.95

Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude

There is nothing more exhilarating than being around people who exude the energy of endless possibilities. These kinds of people are needed in our lives if we wish to see what is attainable. When we surround our environment with people who believe in the harshness of life we are drained of energy and vitality. Therefore, the choice is really up to us - do we want to reach the stars or do we want to stay on the ground constantly looking up secretly wishing that we were among the dazzling jewels that grace the heavens. A strong, positive and resilient attitude will help elevate you to unimaginable heights.

In life attitude is everything. Check the people around you and observe their attitude barometer - negative or positive - and if the results are negative then you may need to look at your own attitude and make certain adjustments. Usually people mirror our own unconscious feelings and attitudes about life that we perhaps are not acknowledging head on. Remember, your attitude determines your altitude. That's why its so important to be choosy about who we do spend our time with. I believe that we do become what we think about, and who we surround ourselves with every day strongly influences what we think about or become. A positive attitude is not about displaying a phony smile, a happy face and a perky disposition. It is simply a way of responding to life in a manner that allows us to accept the duality, the contradictions, the contrasts of our experiences. A positive attitude enables you to make a difference in the world around you because when you are able to see things in a positive light, you help to influence and shape other people's attitude as well.

What is attitude anyway? It is the mental state or position you take regarding your life and affairs. This means its not what you think but how you think it. Your attitude forms every event in your life, whether you realize it or not. Out of your attitude comes your enjoyment of life and gratitude for all your blessings. Out of your attitude also comes your disappointment and anger at how things have turned out. Out of attitude also comes the feeling that no accomplishment will be ever be good enough or that you are not good enough. Everyday, your attitude is challenged by other people and by external factors. How will you react? Will you allow adversity to stop you from moving forward? Will you allow a negative person to ruin your day, make you lose your cool, or force you to give up on your dreams? When such temptations come knocking on your door, stand at the door of your mind and declare powerfully and silently, "No one is home". In other words, cease to engage.

At certain junctures in our lives, we will encounter challenging circumstances or people. We can either regard our dilemmas with anger, bitterness or frustration. Or we can look deep within and find the source that is beyond all circumstances and then pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and move forward knowing all things will work in our favor. If on any given day, negative drama surrounds you, hang on to your own positive attitude and don't let other people to drag you down. Keep the words of George Washington in mind "Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for 'tis better to be alone than be in bad company.'

Short EURCAD ~ 1.4158 into the 1.40 handle

S.A.M Mid-Week H4 sentiment

Indices...Risk Off..

The Aussie 200 dropped through the averages last week (Daily ). today the FTSE dropped through (Daily). Most of the main Indices dropped through in H4.
The Lagger is the Nikkei which is still above in H4, This would be my choice for a long should we flip to risk on..

A comprehensive list of Global News Links

http://hedgefundmgr.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/links-of-note.html

S.A.M strength Index for the Week ahead..

The GBP got stronger, though was it a case of buy the rumor ?.. AUD and NZD still being sold, though the Kiwi started to hold ground on a few weaker currencies and the JPY has been again flattened last Week..USD and CAD are still strong.
Out of the Indices the Nikkei is the big mover which makes sense looking at the currency.
The Aussie 200 selling off hard while all other major Indices stay bullish..

Long AUDJPY ~ 97.33

Self-Deception

We all go through life acting out some form of Self-Deception. Jean-Paul Sartre the French Philosopher describes it as "a legitimate way of life" he writes about self-deception in his work (Existentialism), "It cannot be either a cynical lie or a certainty - if certainty is the intuitive possession of the object. But if we take belief as meaning the adherence of being to its object, when the object is not given or given indistinctly, then self-deception is a belief".

If you think about it in psychological terms self-deception is very much at the core of self-preservation. We are all imperfect beings, we feel this from the depths of our unconscious psyche; but coming to terms with this is part of a life long journey of self discovery. If we were to confront all our "issues" in one go the chances are we will be overcome with neuroses and suffer a mental break-down. We aren't meant to drop all our intellectual dishonesty at once. Instead those committed to self discovery slowly discover these denials/deceptions at moments of existential crisis and confront these lies as part of the process of becoming whole.

The next time something goes wrong for you in trading or in life, use the situation to see if you can discover the self-deception that you are probably operating under, and try and find the hero within to confront the lie.

Regards,

Michael Berman, Ph.D.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

The Shadow

We start our lives with our psyche "Whole" but as we encounter life and its challenges and cultural demands we start to split our "Self" by developing our ego through our "persona", this is the side of our personality which we wish to portray to the people around us. However, for every positive characteristic there is a dark side - the "shadow", this is the unwanted even despised part of our personality that we cannot deal with on a conscious level so we push it into the depths of our "personal unconscious". Ok, so what if I have a dark side so long as it is buried in my unconscious who cares?

It isn't so simple because the material making up the shadow has energy/libido and when it accumulates more energy than the ego can deal with it erupts usually in a rage or unpredictable behavior or sometimes even depression. The shadow is an autonomous body within our psychic makeup and its behavior is wholly unpredictable. Let me give you an example: Mr Jones is a day trader who trades breakouts on the S&P e-mini, he has recently modified his system and he is anxiously testing it on the market with real money. The system requires extreme patience to pin-point its entry with 5 green flags required to enter a trade. Mr Jones has anxiously watched the market all day waiting for a confluence of signals to meet the required entry signal. Nothing happened, the day has frustratingly passed with no trades being signaled, Jones has had to sit on his hands all day showing tremendous restraint and respect for his new system all the time itching to hit the trade button. Mr Jones gets home from his day at the office feeling a little drained, but also pretty proud of himself for withstanding all the temptations and being true to his system. He walks through the front door and his young kids run to greet him. He puts his briefcase down and kisses his wife then she says, "Honey can you do Jordan's math homework with him a little later", like a thunderbolt out of the blue and totally unexpected, Jones goes ballistic he has a massive argument with his wife shouting how selfish and demanding she is. LOL - does this sound familiar.

What has just happened is Jones failed to acknowledge the unconscious shadow material that was built up during his day. As I stated in the beginning we start our life "Whole" and then due to the stresses and strains of our personal development in our early years our psyche undergoes many challenges splitting into ego and shadow, but this isn't how things stay forever. Unfortunately for some it does stay split and equilibrium becomes more distorted, but for the most of us and I believe even more so for traders, as we grow older we start working intensely on our own personal development. We start trying to become whole through the Jungian process of individuation or Nietzsche's process of Ubermensch:

"Wholeness for humans depends on the ability to own their own shadow" - Carl Jung.

If you have been paying attention, the shadow doesn't just develop from bad characteristics on their own. Nature works with opposing forces, night and day, life and death, creation and destruction, male and female, up and down. With this in mind even when we do good things, stuff that we bring to consciousness as part of our ego persona we are at the same time creating negative energy that is being deposited into our shadow. As the ego and the shadow come from the same source, you cannot have one without the other. The billion dollar question is how do we deal with this material so that it no longer carries the autonomous charge of a walking time bomb, ready to embarrass us or damage our reputations.

In order for us to live the life we wish for, it is incumbent upon us to make known to ourselves the sides of our personality that we don't like. By acknowledging the shadow we bring to consciousness and diffuse this potent energy; what is extremely interesting is that the unconscious cannot tell the difference between symbolic or real behavior. In the case of Mr Jones a 1-5 minute symbolic ceremony is probably all that is needed to deal with the trading days negative shadow energy.


Michael Berman, Ph.D.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

S.A.M strength Index for the Week ahead..

Industrial Production in Japan decreased 0.70 percent in September

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/industrial-production

Is the Aussie 200 going to lead the Indices down ?

The Scottish play - equity investors hedge against UK split

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/11/uk-scotland-independence-ftse-idUKKBN0H60JE20140911?feedType=RSS&feedName=fundsNews

Short EURNZD ~ 1.5668

S.A.M strength Index for the Week ahead and past Weekly performance..

US unemployment rate falls to 6.1%, but job creation hits eight-month low

http://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/live/2014/sep/05/markets-us-jobs-report-ecb-stimulus-euro-business-live

So the ECB finally reacted to the lower 5y5y inflation readings..

http://globalmacrotrading.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/recap-2014-09-04/

Short USDCNH ~ 6.1430 ~ H4

With the Aussie so correlated Ive been looking at this for an entry. Opened into NFP..