Followers of Barry Ritzholz's TheBigPicture and Felix Salmon's Conde Nast Portfolio will have noticed the battle between the pro-market-technician and anti-market-technician stance of the respective authors. Unfortunately for Felix, using Jim Cramer as an example of a market technician at work does little to help his cause (Jim Cramer is many things, but market technician he is not). Felix's key point was Whenever you hear words like "overbought" or "oversold" or "momentum" or "support" or "resistance", it means that whatever you're hearing is garbage. But it also means that the person you're listening to has no idea what's about to happen, and is therefore resorting to the financial equivalent of astrology. In such cases, it's worth ignoring the message completely, but it's also worth having some serious thoughts about the messenger, too. Barry responded with a point-by-point blow as to benefits of using technical analysis can bring the ...

Now that the primaries for both US political parties are over, it is time for investors to begin to evaluate the likely tax change scenarios under the new government that will soon be installed.

All signs are that taxes will rise, but how much and in what ways will differ depending on who is president and which party controls the House and the Senate.

None of the changes are likely to be favorable to investors in general.  Accordingly, there will probably be shifts in what is more or less attractive to investors, with resulting changes in money flow and returns for types of investments.  Company behavior may change as well.

For example, dividends are a case in point.  After the tax laws changed to reduce taxes on dividends, equity income became more popular, several high-yield funds were launched, and companies increased dividend payouts.

If dividends taxes are increased, there may be a shift toward

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by CondorTrader

What should you do when the underlying moves against an iron condor position you have open? (For example, if you’re a member, you may have noticed that one of our DIA trades for May expiration is looking threatened by the recent price action in the index.) Any time this situation arises, people will always write in to ask about how they can “adjust” or “fix” the trade if the market continues to be uncooperative. It’s an understandable impulse to want to take action when things don’t go your way, but it’s also important to guard against the danger of overtrading.

Our answer here is the same as the answer we always give: there is no magic solution for “fixing” trades that move …

Fresh from the west coast, it's off to the east coast. NYC.It will be a busy week with travel, meetings, and the TD AMERITRADE ApexLIVE event taking place at the Marriott Marquis on Tuesday (tomorrow).I've already met with the folks at Minyanville and Knight Capital Group. I'll have more to say about the innovative ways that each of these groups are preparing to use Trade-Ideas - and how you can learn from them how to use the tool with more clarity, better results.If you are in NY, dear reader, and would like to meet up, please let me know in the comments.The TD AMERITRADE event will showcase our new trading automation application we make available for TD AMERITRADE customers. You can create a strategy, backtest and determine probabilities for its success in the market right now, and then automate the strategy ...