Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Tuesday Wrap

What was that? A bull market, a bear market - a bullish bearish bullish market? I have no idea - all I do know is that SYMC was the story of the day and I followed it closely - you seldom get to see the sharks in an irrational feeding frenzy so it pays to watch when it happens - more about that later.

Bought some MDRX this morning off a weekly breakout. The average true range is 1.74 on the weekly charts and I planned to hold it for a couple of days so I put the stop at 50 cents below the buy price. Breakouts are excellent opportunities for profit - but you need to be patient and actually wait for the breakout. I tried to show this picture earlier but Blogger, at least the server I have access to, was broken - again. Blogger = Google = hmmmmm? More about that later, too.



I hit break even with DHI in the first 15-minutes and sold it off immediately - I'll wait until housing does a real turn around before I buy any more of the homies - but at least I didn't lose any money. The way I played it was like this. On the way down I sold it off in pieces except for the last piece. Then I waited for it to turn. When it finally bottomed out I bought back enough of the pieces all at once to reduce my base to a reasonable level - when it hit that base this morning (actually a bit more on the open) I sold for a bit more than break even. Right after I sold it dropped again. Lucky me.

The Donchian Channel scan I ran off Friday's close came up with an old friend - BLG - and it showed a crossing on the first 15-minutes bar this morning but I took a pass - a shame - I would have made my losses back on that one in about an hour.

SYMC spent most of the day looking for a bottom. At 3:45 EST there were 110 million shares sold and I mean sold. Quick - tell me what percentage of SYMC is that and why do I call it an irrational overreaction to a non-event? 110 million shares is over 10% of the total outstanding shares of SYMC. Today SYMC shareholders lost more than 317 million dollars by 4 P.M. EST. And this is all based on the fact that they say that they are going to miss their estimate by about four cents. So you see - profit means nothing - perception is reality - "beat by a penny" is life and death - this is why I hate playing stocks into earnings.

The last 15-minute candle looks like short covering - so we'll see what tomorrow brings. I know one thing from watching the time and sales screen - there wasn't a second all day long from 9:30 till 4 when someone somewhere wasn't selling SYMC. The first time it went through 18.00 it looked like a waterfall of red - then the next couple of times every bid was hit but it didn't go down as fast. Probably the brokers taking out the rest and building inventory. You have to know that that was a lot of institutional selling and those guys take care of one another.

Played CRVL early for some easy change - in at 44 - out at 44.5 - the best 30 minutes of the day. After rewarding me for no reason whatsoever it turned around and went down. This might be a good chance to get involved in this stock - or maybe not.

GOOG hit 513 - but no short squeeze - gosh - could Jimmy have been wrong? At any rate it rebound off 513 as if it burned its hand. I wonder what that's all about? And there was a hell of a short squeeze - between 3 and 3:45 EST a lot of shorts piled in on a red bar cross and took it to 503 at which time the covering took it back up to 506. You can see this on the 15-minute charts. They banged it some more up to the close.

The up/down ratio is 40% which is good because it means that some of the pressure was taken off the market. The new high/low ratio is 68% which is also down but not as low as I'd like it to be. The VIX has withdrawn from being 10% under its 10 day moving average and the four major indices we follow all had strong white candles in their final hour. (I think the Q's would have turned green also if it hadn't been for SYMC). GS however finished the day red. Put all that together and I think we have an up day tomorrow.

The magic coin says ... tails - bear market tomorrow - well at least we will have a contest.

Of course today is a no decision because of the split so we have Marlyn at 3 - 2 and 1 and the coin at 2 - 3 and 1. See you tomorrow.

1 comment:

QUALITY STOCKS UNDER 5 DOLLARS said...

Theirs some truth to whats in the post.