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Dormeier, Investing with Volume Analysis

In addition to his “real” job managing money, Buff Pelz Dormeier develops technical indicators. He shares some of the fruits of his—and his noteworthy predecessors’—labor in Investing with Volume Analysis: Identify, Follow, and Profit from Trends (FT Press, 2011).

When I started reading this book I suspected that it would be like so many others: long on generalities and short on actionable ideas. The first hundred pages or so do indeed deal with general relationships between price and volume, and some of the material is familiar. But even the familiar material is often presented in an unusual way. Here’s one example.

Newton’s second law of motion, reinterpreted to apply to financial markets, analyzes “how much volume (force) is required to move a security (the object) a given distance (price change) at a given speed (acceleration/momentum). … Richard Wyckoff referred to this principle as the law of effort versus result, which asserts that the effort must be in proportion to the results.” (p. 47) As a corollary of this law, “if more volume (force) is required to produce less price change (acceleration), then the stock is becoming overly bought or sold.” (p. 85)

In apparent contradiction to Wyckoff’s law of effort is the rule of trend volume, according to which “more volume substantiates a stronger trend.” (p. 85) Can these two principles be reconciled? Dormeier suggests that they can, once we bring the notions of strong hands and weak hands into the equation. His discussion is too detailed to summarize here, but it is premised on how strong hands and weak hands play the game. As he writes, “Strong hands buy out of an expectation of capital appreciation. Weak hands buy out of greed and the fear of missing out on an opportunity. Weak hands sell from the fear of losing capital. Strong hands sell to reinvest in better opportunities (which does not have to be other equities).” (p. 87)

Dormeier really hits his stride when he turns “general volume principles into indicators with numerical values.” (p. 113) These indicators have a dual mandate—to lead price and to confirm price. But they don’t all work the same way; they are “tools, each of which is designed to explain a distinct piece of the volume puzzle.” (p. 117) (more…)

Shinzo Abe will not revive Japan by rewriting history

Ingram Pinn illustration

The headlines shout that Japan is back. Shinzo Abe has returned the country to centre stage after more than a decade in the wings. This week’s turbulence aside, the stock market has boomed, consumers have been spending and growth looks like picking up. Abroad, Japan is commanding attention. There are three things to say about this reversal: two are mostly positive and the third seriously negative.
When the Japanese prime minister tips up at next month’s meeting of the Group of Eight advanced industrial nations, it is a fair bet his fellow summiteers will want to get to know him. The same could not have been said of his recent predecessors.
The prime minister’s office has had a fast revolving door. Between 2006 and Mr Abe’s election victory in 2012 there were as many occupants as years. Other world leaders would shake hands with their Japanese counterpart in the near certain knowledge that he would be gone before their next big gathering. America’s Barack Obama was said to be especially irritated by the time wasted in these fleeting encounters.
Mr Abe, of course, was one of those who passed through the revolving door – presiding over a failed administration between 2006 and 2007. His political prospects now, however, are better than any since Junichiro Koizumi’s premiership in the opening years of the century.
Mr Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic party faces elections to the upper house in July, but if the polls are any guide it is heading for a comfortable majority. Barring any accidents, that would leave Mr Abe with a clear run until the next poll for the lower house in 2017. (more…)

A Blast From the Past-Quotes Relates to Trading

The quotes alone are worth the price of admission. Here are a few that could be applied to trading. Take a read and think about how each quote relates to trading.

Emerson said, “All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.”

Faulkner once said, “Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Samuel Johnson wrote, “Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.”
Shakespeare wrote, “Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable.” “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Robert Oxton Bolton once wrote, “A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.”
Nietzsche wrote, “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.”
Albert Einstein said, “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
“The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still the will be a scar left behind.” French writer François de la Rochefoucauld. “
“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” Rose Kennedy 
Philosopher Kahlil Gibran wrote “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”