A new year is upon us, and with it a new President and many, many new questions for the average investor to ask him or herself or their local MP or Congressman. There are many people out there, politicians not the least of them, that point to the present financial crisis and recession and cry “see THIS is proof that capitalism is the wrong way to go.” I say that's a silly thing to use as evidence.

The volatility is at a record high, and for active traders, that can either be very good or very bad. Of course, for active traders, direction of the markets doesn't matter all that much because you can short stocks, currencies, ETFs, and also exercise calls and puts on options and so on. (actually the calls and puts part is a whole other can of worms altogether because they can be in the money one day, and out the next, thanks to the huge swings) Anyway, what makes the present market situation either very good or very bad what makes volatility such a double-edged sword – it'll make some systems brilliant and others useless. Sometimes technicals and their parameters seem to be the crystal ball everyone wants, and others that worked last week got shaken to bits. (lingo: shaken in and out of positions because of false or too-late signals) And there's no way of knowing ahead of time what parameters will suit the market conditions ahead of time, or what types of technical studies. There, as they say, lies the rub.

Well shut my mouth. The market did tank right after the FOMC announcement, (took them long enough to get it out today) but from positive territory, and bounced back out of negative where it remained at a modest gain until the coolest double top ever formed and in the last ten minutes the markets became negative. What a ride!

For those of you that don't know, a mugpunters would be referring to any little-guy market participants, who get fooled en mass to the benefit of someone bigger and smarter. Ever seen the market drop right before it took off? Attracting sellers, baby.

Okay, I've been silent for awhile, awaiting the markets to get back to business as usual since the Lehman failure and AIG getting booted off the Dow because it was ABOUT to fail. I'm actually unsure, but I don't think any Dow component has ever failed before, and when one is on the brink, that definitely is ominous. It has proved so since.

So this past Freaky First Friday, I got the beginnings of my bottom-bounce, despite worse-than-anticipated jobs numbers. (I had anticipated a bounce following better-than-anticipated, although still bad, jobs numbers) An up day ensued, then we saw a gap way up preceding a way-down day, a few down days, another reversal day followed by an up day.... and then Lehman failed to sell itself. D'oh...

Hello at long last. Your local Opportunist has been on holiday and a thought occurred to him while away, and figured it would be good to write a little article about said thought. As a day trader, or any active trader (more than 5 trades in a day I would say), there's a certain amount of patience involved. There's definitely a fine line to walk when it comes to being trigger-happy and trigger-shy. (in a word, disciplined)