MartinKronicle

George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) became the lead guitar player for The Beatles at age 17. FML.

Massive change is possible if you have the intention. I admit, having the intention and no strategy can sometimes become emotionally taxing, that’s where determination and persistence come into play.

Tim Ferriss has distilled everything he knows and has experienced through his life and research into a detail-oriented book on personal health calledThe 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman.

I consider this a reference book. As such, you should buy the hardcover so you can get at the material easily. Have you ever tried doing research for a blog post or book that you’re writing with the Kindle or iPad? They are horrible at best for such endeavors.

For the trading community, if you are trading profitably, it’s probably because you have a measurable amount of discipline. That’s great because once you read what Ferriss has in store for you diet and workout-wise, you’ll see massive results within the first 30 days. That will help you build momentum, for which the lack of is the single largest reason people don’t stick with new diets or workout routines. Don’t change too much too soon.

The emotional and financial benefits to you can be staggering.

If you have the intention of changing your life by changing the way you think about trading, you can start my trader mentoring program.

Or you can change your life by training with Victor Sperando in the Master Class and you’ll be enrolled in my mentoring program as part of the Master Class at no extra charge.

I wrote about Tim Ferriss and The 4-Hour Body at The Huffington Post.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I am grateful for your loyalty in reading my humble blog. Thank you for all your feedback and comments. I will continue to try to be the most generous trader/blogger there is.

Click for larger image.

The March/April Natural gas spread seems to have bottomed and actually settled at a new near-term high at 4.7 cents premium to the March. You can look at spread charts the same way you look at charts of a single commodity. One blast of a cold front, and this spread can be off to the races.

Here is what the quote board looks like:

Click for larger image.

The red box indicates the two contracts that comprise the spread. You’ll see that March trades 4.7 cents higher than April. That’s the same difference represented in the spread chart up above.

This chart will go higher as March outperforms April. That means if March rises more than April or March falls less than April. In order to trade this spread, you’d enact the following trades AT THE SAME TIME.

Buy March NG
Sell April NG

You can buy or sell the spread (both contracts together) “at the market” or at a Limit price.

A limit order would be entered as “…at 5 cents to the March or better.”

With this type of order, you will not get long March or short April unless the difference between the contracts can be done at a price differential of 5 cents premium to the March side OR LOWER. The current level of 4.7 cents premium to the March satisfies this Limit order.

Victor and I wrote a white paper a while back that was published at Barry Ritholtz The Big Picture and the Ludwig Von Mises Institute.

Last week, The Economist ran two articles Know Your Onions: Commodity Speculators Do More Good Than Harm and Dr. Evil or drivel: the charge-sheet against commodity traders is flimsy that discussed the role commodity traders have on prices and their overall trading ethos.

Whenever there are high prices, the MSM likes to formulate headlines to sell more papers, or drive more traffic to their sites.

Both of these articles discuss themes that Victor and I wrote about over a year ago, among them:

“There is almost no evidence to connect speculators to the commodity-price spikes that they are routinely blamed for creating. And what little distortion speculators may cause is soundly trumped by the service they provide. In particular, they supply liquidity and price information that makes futures markets more efficient. Speculators plug the gap when the hedging requirements of raw-material producers and buyers do not coincide, offering a counter-party for trades that might otherwise have no takers.”

“…there is little empirical evidence that investors cause more than fleeting distortions to commodity prices. The most persuasive explanation for the rises and falls of commodities is demand and supply.”

I encourage you to read the articles and most importantly the comments. The thing that I get from all of this is that as far as financial literacy is concerned, even readers of the esteemed Economist are retarded in their thinking.