I will have to say that it has been fun meeting a whole new group of people.  Each of you is unique in his or her own way.   I have enjoyed the back and forth with Hunt.  My wife and I still remember him fondly and can’t figure out any reason for him to still live in Texas.  The chat room has been filled with grumbles of late claiming conspiracy theories.  Goldman Sachs has become the giant conspirator and the government and all of its agencies remain the great Satan.  There always seems to be someone or something that is doing you dirt.  Why don’t you take a look at how this can be your edge?  My philosophy has always been follow the money.  I don’t care if it is GS or the Fed.  Let them run it any way they want I’ll just get on board and take my little piece of the pie.  I am not greedy.    So I don’t care if gold goes to $1300 or back to $350, I will take my piece of the action and leave the rest to others.   Writing here has restricted my trading, but on Thursday I will start up again.   You should be able to consider the market as your private ATM machine and tap it any time that you need some extra money.  There are loses.    I know that I am not perfect and I know that the only one that is going to cost me money is me, not GS, the Fed or anyone on the floor of any of the exchanges.   Once you learn to accept the full reponsibility for your actions you will find it a lot easier to trade successfully because you won’t be looking for someone to blame for everything that goes wrong with your account.   Each night you should go over your trades and see what you did right and what you did wrong.  Making money has nothing to do with right or wrong.  If you followed your system you did right, win of lose.   Rick will make mistakes and bad calls and I will make mistakes and bad calls.  If you don’t do anything you can’t make a mistake, and that is the greatest mistake of all.

I read a book once about the Swiss bankers and how they became rich.  They followed the simple economic cycles that keep repeating themselves.  Growth, Inflation, restricted growth, recession, and then growth again.  Where are we now in that cycle and what can you expect out of each part of the cycle.  Take one part of the circle.  Recession, lower interest rates, growth stable interest rates, Inflation rising interest rates, reduction of growth and inflation, lower interest rates and then it starts all over again.  So if you lay out the business cycle and a plan of action and just trade the bonds and notes you can do very well.  There are people that have made fortunes just trading one item.  There are those that just trade  soy beans, or the crush.  There are others that just trade the corn wheat spread.  How many have made a lot of money just trading Apple or Google?  There are those on this list that just trade gold and do very well.

For the beginners, try to digest everything that is put forth in this forum.  Take the parts that suit your system of trading and your personality.  Put together a system that you are comfortable with and that produces profits.  Chart your account and see how it does graphically.  It is the same as any other chart.  Once it starts down, stop trading and figure out what you are doing different now that you weren’t doing before.  Always be on the alert for something that will enhance your system and trading style and keep it as simple as you can.

So set your prejudices and biases aside and just trade what you see on the charts.

Best of luck and good trading to all.  Adios. Ira.