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I hope it doesn't appear to be boostful (or boastful). It's a bit of light entertainment amidst all the gloom. Back when I was trading the tech shares boom for eight months, my biggest daily gain was £78,000 - it's all about the timing and that trade probably wouldn't have lasted more than a few days. That was a nice distraction for someone who was at work attempting to complete a complex multi-year project with his team. Personally, I find making money never gets boring. I don't accept what you say at all, and nobody else reading this will either. I'm excited about my trade today but, as specified, I've used mature trading methodologies and principles to increase my chances and managed my risk (to the point that I don't have any now) so my excitement is not fuelled by adrenaline. I stand by everything I said.

Any experienced trader would dissect that statement and realise that you are actually a fantasist. I assume you dream about playing with the big boys and quote all kinds of theories (some of which contradict others) but it is evident that you have no practical knowledge or experience at all. And you clearly haven't taken the opportunity to critically examine anything I've said in case it might actually be useful (but that's your prerogative). I've enjoyed posting things about the markets recently to help others. I've tried helping you in particular but I now realise that some things are beyond hope so I'll be stopping now.

For those that don't know, hindsight is a wonderful thing but we can't trade past movements... What is the trade opportunity on this chart right now, i.e. from the last bar on the right? Where would your stop go and what is your target?

You appear to have a very short memory span. I also feel you have little self-awareness to gauge how you are coming across here... I've explained that I wouldn't use MA's for trading so I have no interest in pursuing your theories. You apparently would use them, and that's fine if it's your money at stake. I'm just asking you to show that it works or, if not, realise that you appear to say a lot of ridiculous things that would never work in the real world. If nothing else (and I won't ask you to publish your findings if they make uncomfortable reading) calculate the risk/reward ratio of any of these potential trades. Risk is where you would place your stoploss in case the trade doesn't work, and reward is your stated target at the outset of the trade. Then decide how long your trading pot would last if you had a 66% success ratio (which is good in this game, believe me).

Do it, and show us the charts. 🙂

1. It's all relative. I risked £30 to make £250. If I had risked £300 - and my bet succeeds - it would return £2,500. This one is for fun and, as stated, I now lose nothing however it goes. 2. Success is measured in small steps in trading. Sure, you could go all-out for the big one but you are then likely to crash and burn, just like the majority of retail traders. 3. I earn more in retirement each month than I did in my well-paid full-time job in IT before I retired. That's good pensions and good investments for you. Furthermore, the investments are rock solid so this happy situation will remain for decades, until I die. I'm not unhappy with my lot in life.

I wouldn't enter a trade that didn't have a risk/reward ratio of at least 1:3 and I think you'd be hard-pressed to do that with MA's. But if it works for you, that's fine.

I've marked up the turns on a GBPUSD chart (from July 2023 but it could have been any chart). In this instance, there are 9 minor turns from the top over 58 traded days, averaging 6.5 days. Over a longer period, it would show closer to 8 but this is enough to illustrate the point. Where's the study on this? It's not a study - it's a proven methodology. In fact, the bigger turns have their own averages, which is how I can be confident that a big top has just been created in the markets. However, that's too deep for this conversation but be my guest and search the internet.

I didn't mention moving averages because they are of no use whatsover with trades lasting a few hours or a few days. Personally, I see no use for them on any trade timescale less than, oh, six months. All markets (Forex, indicies, stocks) make minor turns ON AVERAGE every 8 days. It's just a fact so it's not up for discussion. I've posted the full rationale for entering this trade and it's already made enough profit to justify itself. I offer this for educational purposes, and I have attempted to do it as soon as the trade was opened so I'm not giving an after-the-event bull<deleted> story that could be imagined. As for you, I don't think you trade. Anyone who quotes a 12-year moving average is not actively doing anything, just observing for the sake of it. And that's OK (it's what I've been doing recently but then the stars aligned tonight and I couldn't resist it. 😉).

Personally, I think Americans should accept responsibility for their deviations from the King's English and call their language American. Then you can spell colour whichever way you want and nobody will get upset. Just don't call what you use English because that irks those of us that use our language correctly (and thus pronounce the 't' in often...). 😉

This one's primarily for @Harrisfan, @Yagoda and @Cameroni but may be of interest to others. There are trading opportunities in all markets - even volatile ones like these. I saw an opportunity this evening so I couldn't resist. I'll explain the rationale behind it. Above is the 5-minute chart of the Dow. I'll come back to this in a minute. This is the daily chart for the Dow. Rationale Explanation There are turns (big and small) in the markets every 8 days on average (I did state recently that sentiment and TIME drives markets...). We've just had 7 days down from the minor top on 26th March and two days of movement up since then. I'm counting 26th March as one of my minor turns and Mondy as a turn back up again. N.B. Sundays don't count on the futures markets - they're not a trading day. I should hasten to point out that there are 8 days between turns as an average (as already stated) and can be as low as 1 day or higher than 8, but not by much. You have been warned. Taking the recent bottom (I used Sunday's bottom for extra safety), I then did a Fibonacci retracement on the 1-hour chart (see below). Most people think about 62% or 78% retracements but these are volatile markets so there are two higher numbers that I like - 88.6% and 94.1%. If you're interested I'll explain where they were derived from but back to the plot... You'll see that the retracement from Sunday night has just about hit the 94.1% line. Furthermore tonight, when I was looking at it, there was an apparent move starting up which had also retraced 94.1% (see the 5-minute chart above). I opened a buy with the stop at Sunday night. Also, the divergence in the stochastic on the 5-minute chart was very much in my favour (see below). Reminder - a momentum indicator like the Stochastic usually goes up when the market is going up, and vice versa. However, the last few bars on the 5-minute went almost as low as the preceding low nine bars to the left but the stochastic has diverged and is much higher, indicating a potential turn. The Important Bit This is just a bit of fun so I have £0.20p per point. My guaranteed stop would have cost me £30 if I got it wrong so I'm not in big time. Secondly, my target is over 2,000 points higher so the screen told me my risk/reward ratio for this bet was 1:6.3. Let's just talk risk/reward for a moment. No-one gets all trades right so, to make money overall, your wins have to be bigger than your losses. So, if you have a 66% win ratio, you'll get two wins for one loss. Your risk/reward ratio has to be considerably bigger than 1:1, e.g. 1:2 would be enough, i.e. twice as much on a win than you lose if you hit the stop. What is my target? Well, I think the last couple of big bars (Monday and Tuesday, red, then green - see daily chart) are forming an ABC EW retracement. If so - and the C wave doesn't stop prematurely, the market should rise above Tuesday's high (the top of the A wave). Typically, it should go higher but, just in case it does and then goes back down again while I'm asleep tonight, I've set my target to close at 39,471. And the best bit? The market did move up within minutes of opening the trade and, if I'm right, won't revisit the starting position again before this move is over, so I've moved my guaranteed stop up to the open. I'm presently £103 in profit as I write. I cannot lose anything now but stand to gain about £250 if I'm right. I hope this helps. If anything is unclear, just ask.

We get the same thing out in the sticks every year, leading up to Songkran.

There may be a mix-up in terminology here, or I've misinterpreted something. What we're looking at in your photo is a swarm of bees. There's no honey to be had from a swarm (honey is only ever stored in the wax honeycomb in a hive). Now if the hive from which the bees swarmed is nearby (it should be within a few hundred metres) and its location is known, that's potentially an opportunity to get some honey, although there will be a small colony of bees left in the original hive and they probably want to keep it. 🙂 The only other possibility I can see is that the bees have been in the tree for some time (several weeks, minimum), and made a nest there. If so, there may be wax and honey.

Hi. I am an experienced beekeeper. Unfortunately, I'm down in Roi Et otherwise I'd come and remove them for you. The chances are that they are apis mellifera, the European honey bee (your photo certainly looks like it). Your climate there suits them and most Thai honey is produced in your region; unfortunately, it's slightly too hot for them here. I used to collect local swarms for our bee club members back in Cambridgeshire prior to emigrating (we would re-house collected swarms in members' hives). The method is very simple. Put a large box or container (plastic dustbin) under the swarm and give the tree branch they are hanging from a hefty knock. The bees will fall into the container. Obviously some will fly around but the magic now occurs. The chances are good that the queen (who is in the swarm somewhere) falls in the box. The bees in the container will stay there, even though the top of the container is open. The workers (all the other bees in the swarm) are attracted to her pheromones and, if they're not already, make their way into the box to join her. Have a cup of tea. Typically, after 30-60 minutes, all the bees are together in the box. Put the lid on (or close the flaps of a cardboard box) and then transport it away. You will be able to find videos on YouTube if you look for 'swarm collection'. Usually, despite their intimidating appearance, swarms are actually very docile. It sounds like your bees are agitated so anyone attempting this does need to wear a bee suit. p.s. I recently acquired two hives of miniature stingless bees (apis melipona). They're slightly smaller than house flies but, as the name suggests, are totally harmless and are great pollinators. 995THB for each hive, on Shopee.

The claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was prepared to sign a peace agreement with Russia in 2021 but was dissuaded by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson lacks substantial evidence. Notably, in a February 2025 interview, President Zelenskyy addressed and dismissed such assertions, labeling them as "illogical." He emphasized that there were multiple approaches involving ultimatums from Russia, none of which received his approval, and stated that Boris Johnson had no influence over his decisions regarding negotiations. While reports suggest that during his April 2022 visit to Kyiv, Boris Johnson advocated against negotiating with Russia, citing the need to apply pressure on President Putin , these discussions occurred after the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Therefore, they do not pertain to any potential agreements in 2021. So, there is no credible evidence supporting the claim that President Zelenskyy was willing to sign a submission to President Putin in 2021 or that Boris Johnson influenced him to abandon such an agreement.

Credit where credit is due - we agree on something.

Others will possibly have other definitions but my view is that he has a delusion of his own, and Russia's, importance in the world. He wants to grow the Soviet Union back and he can't stand the fact that he's been frozen out of international relationships (except with fellow dictators and corrupt regimes in BRICS). He can only strut his stuff within Russia but, even then, he has to be careful where he goes. The only thing people take notice of is when he threatens to use nuclear weapons, and he only does that because he hasn't got any other tools in his box. The EU (we can exclude Hungary and Slovakia, for obvious reasons) want nothing more to do with him. He lost that gamble and Russia's economy is paying the price. He's now a political has-been with no route back. Eventually, Russia will realise that they are better off without him.

Is that the same as "We've formally adopted the five invaded regions of Ukraine so they're officially ours now?" logic? Don't you recognise sabre-rattling when you see it? More bluff and threats. It happens every time someone puts him on the back foot - it's all he's got left. We all wonder when his oligarchs will have had enough of his antics. His neck must be so sore from continually having to look over his shoulder...

There was an interesting article in the UK's Daily Telegraph yesterday by John Bolton. I quote from it below: I worked for Donald Trump. This is the key to understanding him. It's not about America, and there's no connection to the real world. (John Bolton served as US National Security Advisor from 2018 to 2019 during the first Trump administration). What does Trump really intend? What is bluff, braggadocio, and bargaining and what is not? Because he does not have a philosophy or a national-security strategy, and often doesn’t seek pre-conceived objectives, observers from left to right are often confounded. Trump is the very epitome of “transactional,” his one immutable focus being himself. Accordingly, assessing such aberrational behaviour, what’s really happening inside his head, can be nearly impossible. Media, politicians and businesspeople alike frequently persuade themselves he is simply posturing, but are continually surprised by what he does. Consider Ukraine, Nato, and tariffs. Trump, many said, would never embarrass himself by a Ukraine settlement that conceded too much to Russia. During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly boasted that the Ukraine war (and the Middle East war) would never have occurred had he been President, thereby criticising Biden’s (and, later, Kamala Harris’s) weakness. However, neither Trump supporters nor opponents perceived his obsession with resuming his personal friendship with Vladimir Putin. To Trump, good personal relations between leaders signify good relations between their countries, an enormously oversimplified view of the world. Putin said he wanted peace, and Trump accepted it. That is why Trump has made so many concessions to Russia, and why Volodymyr Zelensky rightfully feels so beleaguered. This is the personal motivation so many observers missed, speculating instead on “policy” reasons why Trump would not change America’s Ukraine policy. He had no desire to vindicate Ukraine’s freedom and independence, and felt no imperative to show strength against Russia’s unprovoked invasion to deter, for example, China’s irredentism regarding Taiwan. Moreover, starting in his first term, Trump has wanted a Nobel Peace Prize. He envied Barack Obama’s award, in his first year in office for no apparent reason, and felt he deserved one too. Accordingly, Trump saw resolving either Ukraine or the Middle East as possible paths in his second term’s opening months. This is likely the reason Trump often bragged that he could resolve Ukraine on his first day in office, or at least in twenty-four hours after getting Putin and Zelensky alone in a room. It also explains why, in his March address to Congress he called the war "senseless". Obviously, such a war is easier and quicker to end than one where real issues are at stake. This is a man in a hurry for his Nobel. Those who believed Trump would not undercut Ukraine or, even worse, shift sides to support Putin, were repeatedly surprised. They took comfort, for example, when Trump named long-term advisor Keith Kellogg as his chief peace negotiator. But Moscow objected that he was too “pro-Ukraine,” and he was swept aside, purged one might say. Kellogg showed Trump unwavering fealty, but that was, as always, insufficient for Trump. The record of a given staff member is not a safe predictor of how he will act. On Nato, observers said, Trump was merely bargaining when he declared America wouldn’t defend members not meeting the 2-per-cent-of-GDP military spending target. And so too, they said, he was just bargaining when he raised the target to 5 per cent. But Trump means what he is saying here. Nato is not safe from US withdrawal, especially if allies fail to grasp that the potential for withdrawal is still top-of-mind for Trump. Then there’s Trump’s fascination with tariffs. The damage Trump has caused Ukraine and Nato pales by comparison to what his tariffs will do to America’s economy and the entire international economic system. If Trump had acted on April 1 instead of 2, he could quickly have said it was all an April Fool’s Day joke, thereby saving the global economy trillions of dollars of damage when markets started heading south. Unfortunately however, Trump is totally serious, a fact evident long before “Liberation Day.” Here too, “experts” and anxious businesspeople steadfastly ignored Trump labelling “tariff” the dictionary’s most beautiful word. Tariffs, they said, will be targeted, carefully calibrated, and he’ll do deals quickly. It’s all a bargaining tactic, Treasury Secretary Bessent said in October, 2024: “escalate to de-escalate”. Even as global stock markets drop like rocks, experts are still rationalising what his “strategy” is. Wrong again. Trump is more likely to win the Nobel Prize for literature than for peace. As with Ukraine, Trump listens primarily to himself, not to others. He creates his own world, this time an imaginary trade world, and then lives in it. Trump isn’t lying so much as he is ruling a parallel universe, like a boy’s tree house, where numbers mean what he says they mean. He doesn’t react well when the real world’s numbers don’t match: after all, who’s in charge here? Trump can’t tell US friends from its enemies, either politico-militarily or economically, and doesn’t seem to care. What matters are Trump’s friends and enemies, which are manifestly not the same as the America’s.

I don't think there are too many complaints about the Russian people, per se. It's their despotic delusional President and his corrupt regime and cronies that is the issue. The Soviet Union is lost, Putin is vainly trying to restore it - in his own words. In a documentary in December 2021 he said "It was the disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union." The west had no malicious intentions towards Russia because, until the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia wasn't a threat to the west. Anyway, let's not forget that it was the pressure from the mothers of the deceased soldiers sacrificed in Afghanistan that forced Russia's withdrawal in 1989 after its ten-year invasion. Perhaps more than 500,000 angry mothers might have reason to protest about the same sacrifice in Ukraine (Russia's Mediazone claims 100,000; Ukraine reports it's now 839,000). And, if it's so important to you, perhaps some of the draft dodgers in Pattaya and Phuket could go back and help the cause instead of causing trouble here.

Just for the sake of clarity and context, would you like to declare your nationality? I'm English.

The Russian food supply chain is under pressure. The wheat harvest was poor last year so exports have been limited to prioritise domestic supply. And the Moscow Times reported that food price inflation to December last year was 22.9,%, apparently triple what it was the year before. That is making life hard for poorer households, wouldn't you agree? BTW, do you condemn the 'special military operation'?

Help me on one point please. Given an EU-wide distrust of Russia and an avowed intent to have energy independence from Russia, who would be the customers of gas from a re-opened Nord Steam 2 pipeline?

I guess we're going to have to take Anton's word for it, whoever Anton is. I've noticed that Russia denies everything recently, so if they something isn't happening, it most certainly is, and vice versa. It smacks of concealed panic and desperation to me because the top brass know Putin has screwed his own country, almost depleted their strategic currency reserves, killed a good proportion of the national workforce and ruined their oil and gas export markets. Oh, and the general populace are suffering food shortages. Not a glowing record, is it?

Do you think Russia's nuclear arsenal still work...? The Russians haven't maintained their war assets over recent years. The chances that parts have been stripped over the years for scrap sales by enterprising locals is not out of the question. I wouldn't be surprised if they fizzled out and did nothing if they lit the blue touch paper. Hopefully, we'll never need to find out.