一个笨蛋的股指交易记录-------地狱级炒手

hefeiddd

Monday, December 11, 2006Waiting on the Fed
Hi folks. It was another "watch the paint dry" kind of day on the market. The Fed announces its rate decision tomorrow at 2:15 EST. In the old days (a year ago or more....) this usually caused unbelieveable fireworks. With the market so tepid and boring now, it might be a relatively subdued session. But it's bound to be more interesting than today.






What didn't show up to the market today was any kind of excitement. Take a look at the $INDU - I've drawn a rectangle around the relatively tight 100-point range of the past couple of weeks. The market dipped below it for one brief shining moment, but generally speaking we've all been in a total rut since Thanksgiving.


The S&P is a similar story.


The $XAU is also in a pretty tight range. A clear move beneath this area would encourage gold bears. I sure wish the market - any market - would make up its mind. We're all just diddling around here.


GOOG seems to be in a quagmire around $485. If their quarterly earnings aren't sensational, that could be the catalyst for a nice move down. There is nothing terribly clean about this chart. The only thing it tells us is that the explosion up to $500 has abated.


Check out the monster divergence in Goldman Sachs (GS). What I like about the puts on these is that they could get some meat on them. Yahoo, for instance, is never going to have 40 or 50 points blown off of it, because it's only a $29 stock (peanut butter, anyone?)

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Check out the monster divergence in Goldman Sachs (GS). What I like about the puts on these is that they could get some meat on them. Yahoo, for instance, is never going to have 40 or 50 points blown off of it, because it's only a $29 stock (peanut butter, anyone?)


My bullish case for NTRI was off the mark; the line I should have drawn is horizontal, not angled. I've reworked it below. As you can see, the price failed to clear above this line, and it took a pretty bad drubbing today.


See you on the other side of Bernanke. Let me know if you find that tape dispenser.
at 12/11/2006 19 insightful comments
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Labels: $indu, $spx, $xau, c3po, goog, gs, ntri

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hefeiddd

Friday, December 08, 2006Similarities to Early December 2006
Pretty quiet day out there. With all the chatter about what this market is most like (and I've been as guilty of this as anyone else), I think we can all agree the current market most resembles December 2006. You never step into the same stream twice, right?

The Dow Transports is just about the only stock index behaving in a truly bearish fashion these days. Nothing dramatic, but it simply lacks the strength of the other indexes.


Something I've been shorting lately has been the $XAU. It's at a bit of a crossroads right now. It's not in a head and shoulders pattern in the traditional sense - - it has the rather gruesome formation of a shoulder, a head, and then two shoulders. Yuck. So it's really more like a price channel. And it's pretty much at the top of that channel now. I'd put a stop on this at $149.70.


Federal Express (FDX), obviously an important part of the $TRAN, is another short of mine. It seems sufficiently weak to hang on to.


RIMM, mentioned here earlier this week, has seem a decent swelling of volume during the recent selling. Stronger volume on downdrafts is what I want to see.


This was not a week of fireworks, to be sure. I feel like we're just going to wind down the near and it'll sputter to a stop. There won't be a lot of excitement until earnings season appears in mid-January. That, to me, is the only proximal event that might help us bears take charge again. At this point, it's somewhat of a stalemate.

Go find some mistletoe this weekend. Oh, and hey, do me a favor - - I'm thinking of having a little get-together in Second Life next week, just for the hell of it. Post a comment if you're interested. I'll post the Teleport SLURL here if I decide to do it.


at 12/08/2006 32 insightful comments
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Labels: $tran, $xau, fdx, rimm

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Thursday, December 07, 2006Making It Up to My Readers


Today was a nice (although modest) down day. Take a look at the Russell 2000, shown below (and, as always, clickable to be larger), which I've embellished a bit with some studies for those folks finding my graphs too plain. Examine the "waves" of the past, and notice how far the moving averages were at the peaks of those waves. Looking at the most recent data, the averages have never been farther apart.


The same can be said of the S&P 500. Just look how rapidly the index has ascended and how much distance is spread out among the averages. At the same time, look at the continuous softening of the RSI. Quite a divergence, wouldn't you agree?


The $VIX has finally gotten some legs. It seems to be pushing way higher, as the market seems to be not-quite-so-sure about the certainty of indexes rising every day of the year. And this is all in the context of the Dow 30 hitting a lifetime intraday high today!


Now, some specific stocks - most bearish, a few bullish. I've been terribly impressed with Akamai's (AKAM) strength. It seems to be defying any weakness right now. This is one of those stocks which, in 2002, you might have felt was doomed to bankruptcy. But it's been a barnstormer.


I must again offer Capital One Financial (COF) as a short suggestion. My puts on this are doing well, and I just really like the look of this chart.

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hefeiddd

I must again offer Capital One Financial (COF) as a short suggestion. My puts on this are doing well, and I just really like the look of this chart.


My small bearish position on GOOG is doing OK as well. I do not normally watch CNBC, but at the airport yesterday I saw they were doing a featured story called something like "Can Anyone Stop Google?" That's my feeling exactly. People seem to think Google is perfect and unstoppable. A good time to fade the market's disposition. Can you imagine the collapse when they make their first earnings stumble? Whether it happens next quarter or in 2025, it will happen. And great will be the fall of it.


Being short investment banks has been tough lately, but maybe we've finally turned the corner. These banks got great news yesterday in the form of a very favorable court ruling, which stated that class action lawsuits against these banks were not permitted. I'm sure the 50 Goldman Sachs personnel getting at least $25 million each for their Christmas bonus (you read that right...) are having the time of their lives. But take a look at the graph below. How's that for a monstrous bearish engulfing pattern?


HYDL looks ripe for a short as well, with a nice, tight stop.

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HYDL looks ripe for a short as well, with a nice, tight stop.


I've had puts on LEH for a few days (someone commented how I got whacked on it; I have no idea what they are talking about; I did not get stopped out). The way it's playing inside these Fib Fans is cool, and it seems to be losing its grip at this level.


Here's a longer view on LEH to bring more clarity to my explanation.


NVR has had a good run-up of late, and a look at the Fibonacci retracement levels gives good reason to short here, with a very tight stop.

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NVR has had a good run-up of late, and a look at the Fibonacci retracement levels gives good reason to short here, with a very tight stop.


I suggested Redback (RBAK) back on October 4 when it was about $14. It pushed to about $17.50 today on strong volume. This stock looks more bullish than ever.


I put puts on RIMM a few days ago for the worst of reasons - "it just seems really high." Luck has smiled on me so far and it seems to be tumbling more than a skosh.


I remain long puts on SHLD.


Apparently all eyes are on tomorrow morning's employment report, released an hour before the opening bell. It's one of those funny ones where if employment is strong, the market supposedly will take that badly, whereas if employment is weak, the market will respond well since rates are more likely to drop. Ya know, folks, interest rates are not the entirety of the economy! Take a look at Japan during most of the 1990's which was completely buried in recession and had negative interest rates. There's only so much good they can do.
at 12/07/2006 22 insightful comments
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Labels: $vix, akam, cof, goog, gs, hydl, leh, nvr, rbak, rimm, shld


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Tuesday, December 05, 2006The Neutral Position
Greetings from Times Square in New York City, where I am sitting in my hotel room in what must be earth's most uncomfortable chair. How did they pick these things? I think a milking stool would be preferable.

Of course, a down market would be preferable too, but God's not taking any wishes at the moment. The U.S. stock markets went on yet again to new highs in many cases. Below is the Russell 2000, for instance. For those desperate for a sliver of a silver lining in on a very big cloud, you can at least take heart that there was a spinning top today. But.........big deal. The markets have done little but climb for the past five months. It is absolutely unrelenting.


One fellow wrote and made a good point in the comments section. He said he was a bear, but he had basically stayed out of the market during this time. That actually makes abundant sense. You can have a point of view and still wait for the insanity to pass. You might miss the exact top of the market, sure, but more likely you'll miss a lot of pain (such as the last five months). Having a neutral position makes a lot of sense these days. You can have your opinion, but wait until a better time to act on it!

One mild curiousity is how the $VIX has actually been edging up in spite of the market's strength. The graph below shows how the $VIX and the $SPX have been pretty much mirror images of one another. But the past week, the $VIX has started acting differently. I think last Monday's big drop shook things up.


The Major Market Index ($XMI), shown below, is absolutely in a bullish formation. There's no denying it. I have posted this index many times in the past few months. I keep looking for weakness, but it's not happening. If you're a bull, this is exactly the kind of pattern you want to see.


In spite of plenty of bad homebuilder news, homebuilder stocks have shown recent strength. Take a look at BZH.

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In spite of plenty of bad homebuilder news, homebuilder stocks have shown recent strength. Take a look at BZH.


I'm loathe to point out short ideas right now, but Capital One Financial (COF) seems so toppy to me I am compelled to mention it again. A person purchasing puts on this might want to make the expiration pretty far out there.


NutriSystem (NTRI) is a stock that had been weak earlier this year. But the volume and strength of this stock have shaped up into something that looks plausibly bullish. A breakout above the (roughly) horizontal line shown would be very bullish for NTIR.


at 12/05/2006 29 insightful comments
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Labels: $rut, bzh, cof, new high, ntri

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Monday, December 04, 2006More Cowbell!
Ouch. Another big up day on the market. New never-before-seen highs on a number of major indexes. These are the times that try a bear's soul.

I'm not going to share many charts today. Mainly because my picks have stunk so badly recently! I really wanted instead to address some of the comments I have seen recently in this blog.




Let me be clear: even though I have access to every indicator under the sun, I use hardly any of them. I'm a simple soul. I'm interested in (1) patterns (2) trendlines (3) Fibonacci studies. That's really about it. I've been tossing in some RSI here and there to spice things up a bit, but honestly, if you're looking for something like the graph below, you might be better off hanging out at the public chart site of StockCharts.com (which is where this graph is from):


Oh, and there was one other (anonymous, of course) comment I must address.

I think Tim has a secret agenda. Tim is certainly not a technician because the number one cardinal rule is trend is your friend. He clearly violates that rule repeatedly. Personally, I think he subconsciously hates American capitalism. He wishes the economy will go sour and companies go bankrupt.

Ummm, actually, my love of America as well as capitalism runs pretty deep. Need I remind you that I built, grew, and sold my own company? And it continues humming along to this day. I am proud to have created employment, created value for subscribers and users, and made enough money to afford the overpriced real estate around here. So you, sir, are wrong.

As I mentioned, there were some new lifetime highs today on such things as the MidCap 400 ($MID), Russell 2000 ($RUT), and some others. The Dow 30 is within spitting distance of another lifetime high, and the S&P 500, while still a little ways from a lifetime high, pushed into territory not seen since autumn of 2000. The bulls are extremely strong now.


But getting back to the bit about being a technician. At the moment, this really isn't a technician's market. Sometimes the market is more favorable to technical analysis than others. And I'm speaking of both bullish and bearish plays. The kind of analysis I do, described above, really isn't yielding much these days. Yes, GOOG and SHLD could wind up being fantastic buys. I guess I'm just having trouble getting past their nosebleed levels to believe they would burst hundreds of points higher from here.

Let me point out one interesting parallel, however. Take a look at this graph of the Dow 30 leading up to the bear market of 1973-1974. What we have here are four interesting steps: (1) a gigantic secular bull market (2) a moderate bear market (3) a backlash higher, pushing the market back to its prior high (4) a push above the prior high into new record territory, although not much higher than previous.


Take a look at the Dow 30 of the present day. I've provided numbers for easy reference. Do you see the parallel?


You can tell I'm pretty disheartened since I'm offering not a single stock suggestion. But I at least wanted to respond to the recent comments and share some thoughts on what I see as an interesting historical parallel.


at 12/04/2006 33 insightful comments
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[ 本帖最后由 hefeiddd 于 2009-5-6 10:32 编辑 ]

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