Back to normal

Now that all the holiday seasons are over, we can get back to normal. For a while we are done with dead days in the middle of the week, unpredictable spreads, lousy fills and even lousier service from brokers. We can start loosing money on our own accord, without having an excuse "broker screwed me". But more seriously, January has a tendency to be a busy month, with large moves and wide daily ranges. Following dreadful 2008, banks, hedge funds and other big money managers will be starting to implement their investment and trading strategies for the year. This means that large pools of money will probably be positioned in assets of choice, maybe planting seeds for bigger, longer trends. What is important about this large market participants is not only that they have buying power but also STAYING power. Once money is committed to a financial instrument or asset class, it might very easily remain there for months and years. Individual traders tend to underestimate the implications of staying power of big players, but this is one of the forces behind massive, long term moves.
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Back to normal.