According to this surprising new study, it appears that anger improves decision-making.
I can't say that it agrees with my trading experience. Anger breeds a desire for revenge and seeking revenge in the markets after a bad trade is usually one of the surest roads to ruin.
But I can see how low-level anger (how should we call it...irritation, aggravation) could focus the mind and help the trade-selection process. A moderately angry (quite the oxymoron) trader would presumably make fewer mistakes than a bored trader, one would think.

Very nice recap of the late 90's Nasdaq bubble by someone who obviously observed it up close and personal on The dk Report blog.
This is the comment I made regarding that post:
It's funny how, even though I lived (and traded) through it all, I don't remember it quite like it really was, particularly the last few months of the bubble. I think it's partly because, while the indices were going up, many stocks were cratering. Every day had its disaster du jour and the new all-time highs on the indices were but a footnote.

You've probably been hearing this a lot the past few days: the 10-year rate has broken a major multi-year downtrend. Some people say 15 years, others say 30. My chart (this is the monthly) shows a clean falling trendline dating back to November 1994 that has definitely been broken this week. I fully realize that we have to wait until the end of the month to pronounce the monthly trendline broken but still...
Now a mistake most people make (including me, all the time) is to automatically conclude that, since a downtrend has been broken, an uptrend is about to start. Which is to forget that a market can do something else besides going up or down, it can go sideways. After the dust settles (and obviously emotions are running high these days), we could be stuck in a 5%-5.50% range for many months to come.

Everybody knows that John Murphy's all-time favourite tool is the relative strength chart. Intermarket analysis being his main area of expertise, it's understandable. And even if one can easily fall prey to overusing and overanalysing them, relative strength charts (or ratio charts) can be very useful. Shown above is simply the daily chart of (GOOG divided by SPY) and what it shows is that even though GOOG is making new all-time highs in absolute terms, it is still trading below its all-time high on a relative basis. Therefore (and you know where this is going), it still has room to go.
Granted I do own a few shares of Google and I am thus a prime candidate for the very common "cheerleader bias" where one only looks for facts supporting one's theories. I would be worried about it if GOOG were in a free fall, which is not the case (fingers crossed).

GOOG launches into the stratosphere? That's what is commonly known as coil action.
The last time it did this, in October 2006, it went up 100 points.

Here's another possible breakout. EWJ, the Japan ETF, breaking out of a falling resistance line. You'll notice the gently rising 200-day Moving Average (blue line on the chart that I really thing you should click to enlarge and have a better view. Have I ever mentioned the fact that a chart is worth a million words?)

Boy was I wrong about TLT. What I thought was a failed Head and Shoulder turned out to be only a "complex" or "irregular" one (the right shoulder had an added bump if you will).
In any case, according to my "calculations" (very subjective of course), this should take us down to the 82 area. Got short some here at 85.6, atrociously late of course but isn't it always the case when you're caught wrong-footed?

GOOG still going. Shown above are the 30-minute and daily charts (click to enlarge).
While the first one shows a continuing uptrend, the second adds the bullish fact that a falling resistance line was decisively broken in the last few days. Bigger, better things should follow.

And now....the musings part of the blog.

I'm reading this book on commodities by Jim Rogers. Nothing to write home about but something he said about the required character traits in a trader resonated with me.

Three main things he says:

1) be absolutely candid about your own attitude toward risk

2) have the ability to admit your mistakes

3) be willing to stray from the herd.

They don't sound like much at first but when you think about it, the reason why these traits are so hard to have and/or acquire is that they run counter to peer pressure, the strongest of pressures. We're pressured since a very young age by "our peers" to:

1) show we can "do it", "take it", "handle it" whatever "it" is

2) never explain, never apologize: it's a sign of weakness

3) be a team player.