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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.

Trump reserved some of his highest tarriffs for SE Asian countries. I've just been looking at the SET50 (Thailand's equivalent of the S&P500 or FTSE100): The SET50 itself was down 3.57% today but there were some exceptional standouts: - Xiaomi (phones, household products, now cars) fell 20.59% today. - PTT Global Chemical fell 11.24% today. Elsewhere in SE Asia: The Hang Seng (Hong Kong) is down 13.22% today. The Nikkei 225 (Japan) is down 7.73% today. The Singapore stock market is down 7.46% Our immediate problems may be closer to home.

You comment about what others do or say but how do you trade? What are your methods?

Darvas box theory is not something I use (I hadn't even heard of it until you mentioned it) and I see no point investigating a potential new tool for my box when I have several tried and trusted methods already available to me. The evidence is on the screen above. If it works for you, that's good. p.s. I just googled DBT. If the stop is at the bottom/top of the box, that's way too wide to make any serious money. The theory is understandable but the chance of making consistent money with it... Well, tell us how you're doing with it.

Yes, in an up market trend. Now apply the same logic to a down market trend. What would it look like? Do remember that trends, once started, persist for some time. And trends and corrections are two completely different things, i.e. you can have a correction in an ongoing uptrend, and vice versa. It could be argued (please don't) that we've been in an bullish uptrend, with corrections, since at least 2009.

I appreciate your openness. Statistically, most retail traders will lose money (IG Index states 71% do on its own website, and they would know). I'm assuming you're trading (gambling - your words) with money you can afford to lose, as any trader should. I'm trying to provide some enlightenment here for those who can't see what I see. I hope that nobody here loses any money (or can contain any losses before it gets out of control).

OK, let's look at the evidence. A stochastics indicator is a momentum indicator used in technical analysis to show where the current closing price of a stock is relative to its price range over a specific period. In short, it tells you if a stock is overbought or oversold. Here's a breakdown: It oscillates between 0 and 100. High readings (typically above 70 or 80) suggest the stock might be overbought and could be due for a pullback or consolidation Low readings (typically below 20 or 30) suggest the stock might be oversold and could be due for a bounce Traders often use stochastics to identify potential turning points in a stock's price action and to look for divergences (where the indicator moves in the opposite direction of the price), which can signal a weakening trend. I like divergences very much - see the chart below for the divergence at the end of November's bar (arrowed); similar divergences can be seen across the chart prior to drops. It works for rises, too. However, when there is a strong trend, the trend will override most indicators. In a strong down market, it will bump along the bottom (or, conversely, the top in a strong up market, as can be seen in the chart). On the monthly scale, it hasn't even reached the bottom yet so, if the trend is going to continue it's got plenty of scope to go yet. The evidence has been there all along if you look in the right places. p.s. I don't use the default Stochastic parameters. I use %K of 13, %D of 2, a slowing factor of 2 and I use overbought/oversold of 90 and 10, respectively, as shown on this chart.

Standard in Europe.

The market is, indeed, always right. However, my 'guesses' are specifc, and made before the event. And I haven't been proved wrong yet whereas your accuracy prediction score is suffering a deficit recently.

Are we in agreement for once? 😉

I agree that the magnitude of change for Trump is bigger. Putin was betting that nothing would change for his exports but lost spectacularly. Similarly, I think Trump will also suffer the error of his judgement spectacularly but the scale of his errors will cause long-standing suffering and hardship to billions - directly or indirectly - and will take a very long time to be corrected.

For perspective... This the Dow Futures. Each bar is one month. The chart goes back to 2005 on the left-hand side; the last bar is this month, April 2025. In case the penny hasn't dropped, it's the 7th day of this current month, so we're only one week in - another 23 days to go. Now, a quiz. @Cameroni, @Yagoda, @Harrisfan: what does the stochastic indicator underneath the chart tell you? @Yagoda, you are allowed to consult with your 'stocks dude' before replying.

If you had asked Putin in the spring of 2022 if he anticipated that Russia would lose almost all gas sales to Europe as a result of his 'special military operation', do you think he would have agreed? Oil exports have been similarly affected. For the full year of 2024, Gazprom reported a net loss of 1.076 trillion rubles (approximately $12.89 billion USD) under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS). That must be hard coming from a country so reliant on gas and oil exports. Russia's precedent has shown that economic order on a massive scale can change, and shows every sign of being permanent.

If @Walker88 wrote a thick book, I'd read it. I can listen to people who know what they're talking about all day long.

We concur - I did put 'investors' in quotes behind the word Bitcoin. At least the US Dollar is apparently backed by the gold in Fort Knox (have they done a recent stocktake, as was suggested recently?). BTW, if anyone can explain to me how Bitcoin might one day become a serious form of currency for global trading (rather than a novelty way of paying for a Tesla), I'd like to hear the evidence... Bitcoin (and all the other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies) are yet another Dutch Tulip Bubble (1636) or South Sea Bubble (1720), IMHO. There are many lessons of irrational and exhuberant excess in history but some people only look to the future, not the past.

That's like saying it's safe to pull out of a town junction in front of an oncoming speeding car because the average car does about 30kph in town. What if I'm right and we're in for a very long depression? I assume your statement doesn't form any part of your investment strategy or trading rules. If not, why say it? Think about what you're saying before you press the 'Submit' button. You can do better.

What's the rationale behind your prediction (just so those with hope can feel validated)? BTW, for someone who has been arguing that the bull run isn't over, you're now creating ever lower predictions for the market (support at 37,000; support at 30,000-35,000; now bear market over by July-Oct). I'm unclear whether you are long, short or just an uncommitted bystander lobbing bricks in the pond for fun?

The Democrats moved Biden to one side to allow Kamala a shot when Biden's position became intolerable so it's not entirely without recent precedent.