Wrapping Tuesday

Bernake speaks - he says - don't worry - education and training will help narrow income inequality. That is - education for those who can afford it - which means parents who can afford it because you don't get through school jerking sodas anymore - not at 5.25 an hour or even 7.25 an hour. Which means - we're screwed. But you all knew that already.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about today - I'm here to talk about this amazing new stock market of the new intertube century - it slices - it dices - it cures every ailment known to man and a couple not even discovered yet - it goes up and down like a psychotic yo-yo - watch the shells boy and try to pick the walnut with pea under it - I'll give you two chances for one money ... would you like to try again?

Wow! Will this ever end? There were so many set-ups coming about mid-day I didn't know what to do. Here's several that you can look up for yourselves (all 15-minute charts) - at 11:45 JNPR printed a dummy spot followed by clear confirmation that also formed a tweezer bottom at 12:00. It took off from there. At 12:45 to 1:15 MSFT formed a classic blow-off bottom (sorry Jim) and took off from there. At 11:30 SYX formed a classic blow-off bottom with a confirmation 15 minutes later. It took off from there. SPY printed a tweezer bottom at the 11:45 - 12:15 on the 15-minute bars. In the 11:45 to 12 time period on the 1-minute bars you can see a huge 2.5-3 million share sell in SPY that was probably one transaction. After that the market reversed.

I took a bit on SYX - a stock I'd never played before. And got out at the dummy spot at 1:30.

Still holding CRVL even though it gave up a buck and a half today - probably get it back and then some tomorrow. Also holding DHI and it is only 20 cents away from where I bought it despite the best efforts of thestreet.com's loyal 10 subscribers. Still holding JNPR - it is in a nice chart formation and I think it is going to continue to go up - I'm looking at 18.90 as a target. I did sell the Q's this morning just as they jumped up at the open because I thought that they were going to go down from there hard. They did, then recovered most of it. Holding KKD too - although the next time it goes profitable I'm out because I think it is done for now. I'll wait for another set-up in the future.

I knew ahead of time that this was going to be a strange day because around noon I took a look at the up/down ratio and there were more stocks up than yesterday and the market was crashing all morning. How can stocks go up with the indices down - damifino but they do and they did.

CSCO beat - that probably means a 20 point day on the NAS tomorrow. GOOG went up today - it too had a classical blow-off bottom 11:30-12:15. Remember the BOB is characterized by a minimum of two down bars (Red) with elevated volume on the second down bar. This is followed by a Green/White bar with a higher low than the last Red bar or an absolutely equal low (tweezer bottom) with the last red bar. That is all it takes and if you see this formation you buy it and put your stop someplace below the low of the Green/White bar. You choose the spot but some multiple of the 15-minute ATR would probably be appropriate. For GOOG at that moment it was about 2 bucks which seems about right. Who in their right mind is going to day trade GOOG? Here is an example of BOB on the hour charts (yes you see it on all time scales). Of course the longer the time scale the longer the run (generally) so if MSFT goes up tomorrow too - don't say I didn't try to warn you.



Nuff of that. The up/down ratio went up today to 43% which is neutral. The new 20-day high/low ratio is 77% which still means an overbought market ahead of us. Four of the five majors finished with white candles in the final hour, only the Q's were down and the VIX remains neutral - if I were the VIX I'd probably want to stay out of it too.

I'm forecasting tomorrow as an up day. I want a downer so bad that I'm calling for an up day (although I'd take one like today but that just doesn't happen that often). It probably will be mixed again, but we'll see.

Meanwhile old magic coin says --- tails - bear market again. The coin just never learns.

Having missed today by the barest of margins, the score is now Marlyn 8 - 6 and 4 and the coin is 6 - 8 and 4. Marlyn is just barely better than lucky (which puts him head and shoulders ahead of Jimmy Crack You Know Who).

Forgot to mention - I absolutely love this stuff - every boring minute of every boring day and I hope that my absolute passion for it plays through in my writing. Have a good evening.