An even easier one to read is the $COMPQ. This close within molecules of that blue resistance line. Unless tomorrow starts weak and stays week, my interpretation of these charts is going to have to change.
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The $NDX pushed to a record high close for 2008. It was only on Tuesday that this index was on the cusp of breaking its supporting trendline. {Expletive deleted}.
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My former buddy $RUT close at its high for the day and a new high for 2008. Very broadly speaking, it is still in a lower-lows, lower-highs pattern, but you have to step back to a pretty long-term chart to see it. The past 10 weeks have been wretched for bears.
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The stories vary more widely when you get down to individual stocks. AAPL is pushing towards the underbelly of its trendline, but the problem with that strategy is that a stock can keep making new highs while obediently staying beneath its former supporting line. My stop on this is not far away.
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Even though FSLR shot up over 13 points today, I am not worried about this position, as we are still below the very plainly broken trendline, and I am confident that oil will, over the weeks, soften up, causing this to soften as well.
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AGN is presenting those without a position with a potentially low-risk opportunity to get into this short. Unlike many of the issues I follow, this one has been in a general downtrend for months.
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ATI was one of the very few issues in my portfolio to do well today (that is, go down, even if by a little). In the face of a day like today, that's a good sign.
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CHTT is also very attractive; this price is approaching its neckline again, which as most of us know represents the ideal entry point for head and shoulders patterns.
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Anyway, today stunk. And I'm sorry to have been so out of pocket. I was not in the mood to talk about the markets, as you might guess, and I had my share of technical issues in the morning. Let's see if Friday is any better or if it simply makes this week stink up the joint even worse.
Posted: 02:59 下午 | Comments (View) | Permalink
六月 02, 2008 - 07:53 下午Patience!This week is relatively light on economic events, with the exception of Friday's unemployment report, but today still provided some interesting fireworks.
I've been following the $XBD (AMEX Securities Broker/Dealer index) with great interest over the past year. This index peaked in June, and it got smacked hard in July, October, January, and March. A few days ago, I was starting to wonder if the bottom had been reached with the March 17 Bear Stearns bailout. One could see a lower in mid-March, a higher low in April, and a higher low in May. Perhaps a new uptrend was in the works.
I think today answered that question - - the trend appears to still be down. If we take out April's lows, which we can close to doing today, the entire "higher lows" pattern has been zeroed out.
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The downgrading of the investment banks had sweeping effects throughout the market. The Dow was down 200 points intraday, although it closed down 134 points. It is still dancing around its Fibonacci retracement, but it is on the underside of it with good prospects of moving beneath April's lows.
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Although high-tech had a very big bounce from mid-March to mid-May, the action over the past couple of weeks may be marking an exhaustion point. The $MSH, shown below, tried last Friday to push to a new high for the year, but it fell short. Today the price of the index started falling away from that level, and a crack beneath 580 would seal the fate of this index.
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A similar phenomenon can be seen with the $COMPQ, although the bearish point is easier to judge; a break beneath 2,430 would clearly indicate lower prices ahead., as the failure to move above the resistance line is a loud signal of the bulls' failure.
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Another interesting NASDAQ pattern I am watching is the ascending price channel on the $NDX (NASDAQ 100). A dip beneath last Wednesday's low price would crack the lower support line and, in my estimation, signal we have entered a "C" wave downward.
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I have a few puts in semiconductor stocks (like KLAC) since the one index I was fairly bullish on a couple of months ago seems to have petered out as well - - the $SOX.
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I mentioned last Wednesday that the S&P had closed precisely at its retracement line. It pulled the same stunt again today, matching the retracement almost to the hundredth of a point. Obviously the price is noodling around this line, trying to figure out which way to make a break.
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I got a bit of flak for my AAPL puts, but I stand by this call. I have great hopes for this trade.
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We've all been watching FSLR, and today's sharp movement downward has pierced the supporting trendline. I am optimistic that I've got about $50/share more in intrinsic value to pad onto my FSLR puts.
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Although GENZ has pierced its neckline, I'm a bit frustrated that the prices haven't moved more plainly lower. I find the strength in the face of this pretty good H&S pattern to be puzzling.
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Capital One has also been a long-time favorite stock on this blog. I had even suggested last week, given its proximity to the supporting line., that it might be a long candidate (although I simultaneously said I wouldn't buy it myself, because I was afraid the trend would break). Sure enough, it broke today. This has been a frustratingly slow-moving stock, but I can at least say that I think the likelihood of a bullish move by COF is now kaput.
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Several nice folks thanked me for my CHTT suggestion. This H&S, unlike GENZ, is clicking along nicely. Traditional projection measurements would put the target price on this at about $48.
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Lastly, I sold some INFY short. Many folks in the comments section have puzzled over why I short really strong stocks and not those already getting beaten up. I am starting to take this advice seriously. INFY has plainly been in a downtrend for about 17 months now, and I felt that the recent surge representing a relatively low-risk entry point.
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I am back from my travels, so my updates should be a little more punctual for the rest of this week. Thanks, as always, for stopping by!
Posted: 07:53 下午 | Comments (View) | Permalink
五月 29, 2008 - 02:38 下午Oil Helps OutCrude oil, which is on the nation's mind like never before, softened up enough today do my puts some good. I am generally short most major items related to oil, gold, and agriculture. We had similar dips in crude oil in late March and late April, both of which were followed by pushes to new lifetime highs, so I am not saying the past few days are game-changing. But at some point this bull trend will be broken.
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I mentioned yesterday that I closed out my XAU puts. That was obviously early, and it's a shame that the huge bid/ask spread was the major reason for my wanting to close them out. Oh, well. I could see this easily heading to $160 and maybe even lower.
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My NASDAQ puts are pretty deeply in the red. I am watching $MSH closely. If it pushes past 625, this trade is shot.
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Crude's weakness translated into strength for the transports. This index is within a hair's breadth of a new historical high.
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Apple remains one of my favorite puts, particularly in light of its relative weakness to the broad NASDAQ today.
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CNQ is just one example of the formerly hot ag-related securities that are softening up.
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I mentioned $250 as a key breaking point for FSLR (which has fallen am amazing 65 points in just a couple of weeks). We're very close.
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Both Baidu (BIDU) and Google (GOOG) are also tantalizing at these levels.
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Baker Hughes (BHI) is a pretty sweet short with a stop at $90.
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The broad OIH has had an amazing run this year. A true tumble in crude might bring this down to the $150 level.
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I don't know if I've ever trade OSTK before, but I entered a new position in it today (short).
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Another new position for me is VMI, which is forming a broadening top.
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also entered AGN today based on its push higher today, since the risk is lower at these levels. My stop is at $58.
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CERN is falling away nicely from the horizontal line you see here.
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And Fastenal (FAST) was a new short for me today, again based on the lower-risk entry point. There is a lot of resistance in the $50-$52 range.
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Finally, a couple of steel-related issues on the short side.
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While I am encouraged at crude oil's weakness, I gotta say, if Friday isn't a down day on the indexes, I'm going to be pretty disappointed with this week. Today's firmness in equities are disquieting, although at least a portion of it was lost in the final 90 minutes of the trading day. See ya Friday!
Posted: 02:38 下午 | Comments (View) | Permalink
五月 29, 2008 - 09:25 上午Rude CrudeOn the whole, my puts and equity shorts are doing pretty well in the face of a softening crude oil market, but my index puts are doing definitely not-so-hot. I've still got puts on the $RUT and $NDX, but I get could stopped out of those in a day or two if things remain strong. So far this morning I've been stopped out of ABT, ALB, BLK, MON, RJF, and ACL.
Here are a few of my holdings that I'm feeling pretty confident about:
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Posted: 09:25 上午 | Comments (View) | Permalink
五月 21, 2008 - 03:58 下午Zap!
Posted: 03:58 下午 | Comments (View) | Permalink
五月 19, 2008 - 03:03 下午Nerve-WrackingEverything is relative.
When you get used to the market soaring day after day, and yet again the market blasts 140 points higher, you will gladly take a 40 point gain on the Dow. Not to mention a drop in the Russell 2000 and NASDAQ.
Things were really miserable earlier today. The Russell was looking dangerously in blast-off mode, and everything under the sun was soaring higher. And then suddenly the rug got pulled out from underneath the bulls' stinking, corrupt hooves.
You may be puzzling as to why this happened, but now I can finally reveal it. There was an International Symposium on the Cooperation Between Government and Markets held in St. Petersburg.Everyone was there - - Bernanke, Stephen Schwarzman, Paulson, Abby Joseph Cohen, Jim Cramer - - everybody. This gathering was a shameless formalization of the relationship between the major governments of the world and the principals of the investment banks. This conspiracy excited the markets higher early in the day.
What they didn't realize was there was a certain blogger who had infiltrated the group using false credentials. You can see the mayhem that erupted about 30 seconds into this video. I barely made it out of there with my life.
To add to the confusion, there were "riots", according to Jeff Kohler, erupting over at his blog. For some reason the comments section was getting pretty rowdy with comments comparing Slope with Addict. Jeff had to quell the noise, so he offered this.
All right, on to the markets. First, China. The old saying about "what everyone knows isn't worth knowing". I tend to think this is the case with China. Yeah, yeah, the China century. I've heard it. I get it. We're the new Britain, they're the new United States. I don't think so. And God help their environment and all the health disaster that's brewing there.
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This chart still intrigues me. If we break 170 hard, this could get exciting again.
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五月 19, 2008 - 03:03 下午Nerve-Wracking
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This chart still intrigues me. If we break 170 hard, this could get exciting again.
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Transports made a new never-before-seen-in-history high today, but gave up virtually all of it. Check out the shooting star on this baby.
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Pitifully, I remember the days when I was short OIH and had 192 as my stop loss. Here we are at nearly $220. It's getting awfully close to that Fib fan, don't you think?
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Speaking of shooting stars, here's another beaut - - the S&P 500. Don't get me wrong; the markets aren't acting bearish. But this bull is sure looking weary.
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I'm the unfortunate holding of DUG right now, and it's been pathetic. We're scraping the bottom of that sloping support line, as you can see. And the explosion in volume over the past few months is amazing.
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Now on to a few equity shorts. ABT is pushing up against a major broken trendline.
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Albemarle (I have no idea what they do, and couldn't care less.......) is in a similar pattern.
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Bottom-fishing is dangerous, but there are a handful of stocks that look intriguing for a bullish play. IFC is one of them.
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Akamai (AKAM) is really interesting, its price approaching two important levels of resistance.
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And our buddy AAPL, whose puts made some people some green today (and I got a few thank-yous on that; you're certainly welcome).
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