Invest With the Rhythm of the Markets

Editor’s Note: Today, Chief Trends Strategist Matthew Carr discusses why investing based on patterns and trends is investing rationally.

Enjoy!

– Kyle Wehrle, Assistant Managing Editor

There are people who say, “You can’t time the market.”

But believe me, they’re wrong. I’ve spent my career working to show that you can…

That there’s a rhythm to the markets… and it can be tapped into.

More importantly, it can be profited from.

Trained as a graphic artist, I’ve always been fascinated by patterns.

When I’m sitting, staring off into space, I break the world around me into geometric shapes.

I look for cracks and follow them, imagining where they might eventually lead if given the chance.

I do the same in the markets.

I look for patterns. I look for lines and where they might lead.

It’s what I’ve been trained to do.

In the early 2000s, I got my first real job in market analysis. It was with an oil and gas market research company in Washington, D.C.

I loved it.

For someone who is obsessed with patterns and trends, it was a dream.

Oil and gas majors and independents would send us their trades for the day from every single hub in the U.S.

Part of my job was to hunt down outliers in that data.

I’d sit at my computer, eyes unfocused, letting the trade data wash over me. I was trained not to read every line – it would be maddening if I did – but instead to let my subconscious take over and alert me when something felt “off.”

Now, you could see prices move higher the farther along the pipeline system the hub was. That’s how it should be. As fuel moves north from the Gulf of Mexico, the price increases at a measured pace. But you could also see the impact of severe weather, disruptions and oversupply.

Commodities – crude, natural gas, orange juice, wheat – are organic and highly susceptible to outside forces.

You need look no further than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. Russia is one of the largest oil and gas exporters in the world. Thus, the prices of fossil fuels, grains and fertilizers all skyrocketed because of a single event.

But commodities are also seasonal. There are cooling days and heating days, planting and harvesting seasons for crops, injection and withdrawal seasons for natural gas, and summer-grade and winter-grade gasoline.

You can predict where prices of commodities are going to move based on the season.

It was in the hours upon hours I spent hunting for outliers that I honed my skills at identifying trends. And it was also in those hours that my conscious mind first began developing the seasonal trading strategies that would change my life – and the lives of so many others.

Investing based on patterns and trends is about rationality. It’s about stripping out the emotion that dooms so many investors, who get caught on the roller coaster that leads to the highly unsuccessful “buy high and sell low” trap.

But here’s the thing… When I spoke about these ideas outside of the realm of commodities, they were often waved away as anomalies.

No one really wanted to hear what I had identified until 2009.

I had been given a front-row seat to the mother of all collapses while working in the business-to-business credit industry.

At that point, I wanted to be part of the wealth rebuilding. I felt it was the perfect time for my strategies – which were working for me – to work for others as well.

The Oxford Club gave me the chance to spread the word.

And I’ve found an audience of investors open to the concepts.

I reward them as best I can.

Not even four years after joining the Club, I set the company record for the largest gain ever (1,888% on Boston Beer Company in less than six months). And I discovered that opportunity using a market-timing strategy that was born years before, when I was hunting for outliers in oil and gas data.

I broke that record again two years later (with a 2,733% gain on Columbia Sportswear in less than six months). And the VIP Trading Services I manage have been the top performers at the Club nearly every year.

All of my strategies are built on recognizing that there are patterns – herding and migration, euphoria and panic – in the markets… and that you can time them. Utilize them. Tap into them to achieve financial independence.

Trend trading isn’t about reading tea leaves or your horoscope. It’s about removing emotion from the equation, relying on probabilities, and knowing which assets, sectors and individual companies you’re going to target (and when) well in advance.

The trend is your friend – today, tomorrow and always.

Good investing,

Matthew