Wrapping Thursday

Played golf again today and am planning to play again tomorrow. Can't shake the spring fever and sitting behind a computer screen all day is not the cure.

And then there were two - I'm down to GGB and JNPR and I will stay in this holding pattern for awhile longer. The model portfolio lost again today to 16.60 and the benchmark printed 7.77. But the IBD Top Ten actually gained a bit to finish at -1.72. Almost all of the action has been in one stock, TNH, which has both dropped 5 points and gained 5 points in the last three days. So for all practical purposes, remove that stock and it is printing -3.02. So you take out a break even stock and the top ten are busy slipping away. I won't report it for a few days now - we'll check back in next week.

The three Amigos are back to normal - AAPL is advancing, GOOG is declining, and MSFT is going sideways having lost 9 cents today. You can have your investments in all three of them - they, to put it plainly, suck.

The VIX remains in neutral, the up/down ratio is at 44% which is also neutral, and the NewMoMo is also at neutral -


The INDU ATR went up a couple of points to 97.55 which means that the rally will continue and despite the neutrality in everything else tomorrow might be an up day.

I'm looking for an up day tomorrow. The coin is looking for an ... tails - down day tomorrow.

I hit today and the coin missed that makes the score Marlyn 36 - 29 and 15 and the coin is 38 - 26 and 15.

See you tomorrow.

Wednesday Wraps

I think I'll just burn it from now on - absolutely nothing takes - I get on board and it goes up 20 cents and then bang - crash - smash - gone to hell. It's part of the general malaise of the season - that and hay fever run amok. Fortunately my burn rate is small and I'm making more than I'm losing. Blessed steel - it made Andrew Carnegie and now it is making me.

The headline excuse for this morning's drop is the "mixed housing data" which longtime readers of this site know I would consider to be absolute bullsnot of the finest kind. Bullsnot because this isn't news - it is expected - it is known - and if it didn't affect the markets yesterday it shouldn't affect them today. But it does because the moron money managers out there live in fear. I think most of those guys, no - all of those guys and most of the women bring a change of undies to work every day because every day at least one or more expected news stories will get them crapping their pants. Dumbasses - one and all. It must be awful to go through life being compared to a mindless index which is affected by everything you and every one of your dumbass peers does.

Well there, I got that off my chest and I sure feel better. I think the world would be better off if the stock market only operated on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the rest of the time was devoted to meditation and self-evaluation. Anyway we did make some money today and I think everyone did so I guess once the money managers changed their dainties they came to the rational conclusion that nothing had changed. Morons.

I'm holding GGB, a very small portion of BGG (only because it hasn't hit the stop yet) and a moderate portion of JNPR. Everything else is gone, gone with the wind, gone with the rain, gone to hell. Doesn't matter - I plan to double up on GGB and start looking for some other commodities to buy (not gold or silver).

AAPL actually lost some today and I'm trying to figure out what that has to do with new construction permits but I can't. GOOG made a bunch today and I suppose that's because everyone is doing a search on "housing permits" and MSFT, good old MSFT rewarded its loyal followers with another 17 cents - coin of the realm - better than gold (at least I can take it down to the gas station and add another lot of money to it and get a gallon of gas - let's see you do that with a gold bar).

The model portfolio is starting to mature - it only went up .68 today to 17.66 and the benchmark also went up .68 to 7.98. The IBD Top Ten went up .86 to -2.43. I wonder if today's top ten did any better.

The VIX is back in neutral the up/down ratio printed 58% so that means a moderate to down day tomorrow and the INDU ATR is at 95.74 which means the rally can continue.

This guy pulled into the neutral zone too



The coin is calling for a ... heads - up day - what do you know - the coin disagrees with me. Based on its record vs mine - I'd go with the coin.

We both hit it today so the score stands at Marlyn 35 - 29 and 15 and the coin is 38 - 25 and 15.

I've got a whole bunch of new posts planned including a new way of looking at the RSI and ATR. Stay tuned and if I can find the energy I'll get them out.

Tuesday Morning

Can't fool the market - at least not the NASDAQ - watch them tech shares go down. The other thing that was going down was BGG and I should have sold it out two days ago on the hanging man on 5/11 but I didn't. Arrogant fool that I am I believed - so much for believing. I sold most of it and am keeping a handful of shares just in case it might resume the march. I still don't trust this market and I think that that we need a 4 or 5 day correction.

I added to USU on a 15-minute bar cross over at the open and I added onto AV on an S1 hit and bounce on the open. Both those trades appear to be working out.

ANO continues to do nothing and GGB is now my only steel stock and so I'm going to hang on to it for a bit. I think it is getting ready to breakout.

Other than that I think I'm done for the day so I'll see you tonight at the Wrap.

Update - I just can't get enough of it - sold off ANO because it isn't participating (have I ever mentioned that I hate cheap stocks?) for an $86 loss and bought JNPR in its place. JNPR is one of the stocks from my must buy list ("must" in the sense of when you need a quick lift). I'm planning on dumping out of AV too - but I need another 2 cents to cover the round trip commissions. I'm fairly certain I'm not going to get it today.

Update 2 - I dumped out of AV for a $40 loss - didn't get the 2 cents and in fact lost another 2 cents - decided to let it go before it got the best of me. I just couldn't believe.

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.

Wrapping Monday

I'm not feeling too well - I guess I picked up a bug last week when I was on the road. Probably not too difficult when you observe how many people cough without covering their mouths with their hands at least. Anyway I have a miserable head cold so I'm mostly watching today and thinking.

I saw an opportunity to grab some DHI on a minor pullback so I took it. I bought it on a blow-off bottom around the noon hour that was also a tweezer bottom on the 15-minute charts. Then at 4 minutes to the close I bought a load of JNPR based on a report I read in Notable Calls and the fact that it too was forming a bottom in the final hour of trading. I will probably sell this one tomorrow.

That makes the load CRVL, KKD, still holding the Q's even though they are profitable and I swore I'd sell them, and now DHI and JNPR.

I was going to buy FNF but it just didn't look good to me. It will probably report good earnings and go to the moon tomorrow morning. But maybe not. I don't have a feel for it and I still don't like holding stocks through earnings unless I do have a feel for them. Of course at about 2:30 it started catching a bid and it went up 60 cents in the last hour and a half. I don't trust after hours so we'll see tomorrow but the earnings were down.

I did notice that GOOG had another "long squeeze" today. A "long squeeze" is when the retail traders sell all their many millions of ... wait, retail traders don't sell millions of shares ... well who's selling then? I don't know but there are a lot of 200 - 1000 lots coming across plus quite a few larger than that. I can guess that most of these are not retail traders because the time and sales window is color coded and most of the trades are in cyan - that means the trade is not at either the bid or the ask. Contrast that to a GM for instance where most of the trades are in red or green (for bid or ask). I don't know why GOOG is losing ground - I think it is possible that people are taking profits to pay for Christmas now that the bills are coming in. Yeah - sure.

Speaking of GM - back in early December Carl Icahn sold off his holdings because as he said, and I'll paraphrase - dumbass company won't listen to me so its stock is going to go down. He managed to beat it down to 28 and change in a couple of days and since then it has gained back about 5 bucks - 3 higher than where Carl sold. So much for Carl as stock picker - see just because you have barrels of money doesn't mean you're smart.

But I'd like to do another object lesson on this same theme. Let's say that on Jan 14th or so Jimmy Crack Corn Pone said that GOOG was going to 513 and from there a short squeeze would take it to 520. Let's say that you believed him and with 10K of your hard earned money you bought GOOG on 1/16 at 507 (approx the open) and you got 19 shares. Today your 19 shares are worth 8971. If you had gotten the 19 shares to 520 you would have a 247 dollar gain. If on the same day you had used the same 10K to buy 324 shares of GM it would be worth 10692 today or 692 dollars in profit or nearly 3 times the profit you might have gained with GOOG but didn't.

The point of this exercise is not to ridicule Jimmy Crack Corn Pone (although I can't help myself I really can't) but to show you that you have choices where to put your money - or as your mother used to say - if everyone was jumping off the bridge would you jump too? Sometimes it just makes good sense to buy an old sticks and bricks company like GM. From a traders perspective GM is a great day trade up or down - just watch the Dow and go with the flow.

Broker A over at Fly on Wall Street has a rant up regarding the fact that GOOG should split - and it probably should about 5 to 1 if not more. If it were anywhere near BIDU you'd be able to make direct and realistic comparisons.

Unless you have Marlyn's Curve. I'll do a post later today or tomorrow showing GOOG, BIDU, and YHOO as you've never seen them before - it's pretty neat.

MSFT and AAPL were both down today but MSFT looked to me like it might go back up again tomorrow. AAPL just looks tired and I have a feeling it will be taking a long rest. SMH looked like it put in a maximum top today - three gaps up and a DOJI star. I wouldn't be surprised to see it drop a bit tomorrow. Of course volume is drying up in just about everything. I'm not sure what everyone is waiting for but I don't like this quiet - it's too quiet.

The up/down ratio has pulled way back to 38% and the new 20-day high/low ratio also pulled back to 74% which isn't great and still reflects an overbought market but some relief is in sight. The last hour was mixed with a couple up and a couple down. And that story is getting to be real old too. The VIX has pulled back into neutral territory which is OK but I'm calling tomorrow a down day. And that is based on the tweezer top that formed on the SPY and IWM today and Friday. They weren't perfect but they were within 2 cents of one another and that's close enough for me. Between that and the absolute minimal volume across the board and I think we need a few days of downward movement just to get the pressure off.

Meanwhile in magic land the coin calls tomorrow --- tails - also down.

Let's call today what it deserves to be called and that is another mixed day or what I'm calling a tie. I lost money on my several investments today but they are all green from where I bought them.

The score is now Marlyn 8 - 5 and 4 and the coin is 6 - 7 and 4.