Japan is wonderful, and I'm having a great time! I wish I would have packed more "western" style clothes though. The Colonel told me that Japanese men only wear traditional kimonos, so that is all I brought. I sort of feel like a jackass walking around the streets with everyone staring at me. Not sure if it's my pasty white skin or the flowered kimono I'm sporting; maybe a little of both.
Tuesday we visited the zoo and I learned that pandas, which I used to think were as cute and enjoyable as lolcats, are actually demon bears from hell with terrifying fangs. I got too close to the panda cage and it tore one of my kimonos to shreds leaving me battered, bruised and naked as the day I was born. The whole experience made me nervous hanging around bears in the near future. The Colonel got a real kick out of it, making several wang jokes at my expense.
Here is an updated point and figure chart with me in my kimono (pre-panda attack). I exited all of my shorts last Friday and added a bit of longs, Tuesday I added more longs.
I don't trade as fast as people here. My plan is to stay long, wait to see if we get to around 1120-1125, then 1140-1160 before I start shorting again. When and if we get there, I'll wait to see what the market internals and sentiment are like before doing anything. If we breach those down sloping lines on the point and figure chart (top one around 1170-1180) I will close my shorts.
One thing that has really been bothering me is that stupid flash crash. An enormous amount of wealth was transferred that day, but I don't think many bears (myself at least) got much out of it at all. I have a really troubling thought in the back of my brain telling me that distribution was completed very quickly, and market makers have been accumulating over the past two weeks. If so, we could possibly go way back up. Maybe even breaking the highs?
