Wrapping Tuesday

Wow! Well I've been saying that we needed a blow-out and I think we got one. Now, of course, the question is what's going to happen tomorrow?

Given my aversion to losses I sold everything off except for LQDT. I doubled up on it this morning and managed to make up a lot of my losses when it peaked out around 20.80 or so. I sold shortly thereafter and doubled up again this afternoon at 19.98. I reacquired WLT on the bounce for tomorrow. I need 12 cents from it to get a break even on today. I need about 30 cents from LQDT to cover everything else for good.

What happened? Well what always happens - an oversold market started falling and the hedge funds panicked and like a herd of crazy steers just stampeded it down. Why the hedge funds? Because that wasn't retail traders. They sit around and wait. Funds move quickly and program trades start the avalanche.

But this is the view you need to see -

I first started showing this view in December and at that time I said it looked like we were getting too far away from the EMA 90 and a correction was needed. Since then it's only become worse.

It's also pretty obvious that we're still oversold and we could go down quite a few hundred points more. I don't know if that's what will happen but you can see from this chart that we are overdue a visit to the 90 EMA and it might take a couple of weeks to get there. Now that can happen just as a matter of "swup" (sideways-up) but I think a couple of more blow-offs are needed. Once there it will be time to start making some real money once more.

And while this indicator looks pretty oversold -

You can see here from last year that it can go a bit further down -


Point 155 is in August and 177 is in June. If you look at the chart above you can see what was going on at that time. So it can go a bit more - but not much. The key is the rollover - when it changes direction again we will go up for awhile again.

The important thing to remember about markets like this - if you don't short - your best effort is to take a break and let it sort things out on its own. Normally such a large drop happens over days to weeks - not in one day. But the fact that it did is not unprecedented. I'm going to watch WLT and LQDT and if we get the bounce tomorrow well and good - if not I'll sell off - go flat and wait for NewMoMo to turn around.

I've been doing the up/down ratio for many months now and it is at 9% which is the lowest I've seen it. The VIX went up 7+ points today to 18.31 which puts it at 39% over its 10-period moving average. Last July it spiked to 14.9% which is less than half of today's by a bunch. All 4 indices that we follow and GS - the proxy for the market forever - finished the last hour with deep red/black candles. These are all excellent indicators for tomorrow. Along with these the INDU ATR is an amazing 126 and the RSI(2) is 0.31. Severe drops in the market are always accompanied by huge ATR and an ATR of that level is unsustainable.

I am forecasting an up day tomorrow.

The magic coin is saying ... heads - also calling for an up day.

Having missed today by a country mile or two the score now stands Marlyn 15 - 12 and 5 and the coin is 12 - 15 and 5.

Shuda Picked "Crash"

But I said "We are going to have a boomer tomorrow or a crash - I'll go with an up day."

That was after I said that the INDU ATR had slipped below 80 again. Now there was no reason for that to happen unless ...

Oh well - the first thing I saw as TLB drop to 20.24 from 25.90. I instantly tried to buy every share available - but - guess what - nobody was really selling at that price so now we have a false spike in the data and that just screws up the charting.

But I did double up on LQDT and am already showing profit there. The market is settling and even coming back - the Q's are already 27 cents higher than the low of the day and going up.

My worst holding right now is WIT and I'm probably going to dump that one later today if it doesn't recover some.

I said we needed a nice blow off and with any luck plus some perseverance on the part of the bears this might be it.

LQDT just flashed green after being down 90 cents. (10:17).

What a day its going to be - a lot of opportunity for the day traders and not on the short side - everything is so overblown it's cherry pickin' time.

Wrapping Monday

I did well today - I got rid of all of my dead wood including TLB on its initial pop. LQDT went up for as much an unknown a reason as it went down the other day and I bought back TLB, CRI, and WLT. Kept WIT that I bought this morning and doubled up on it this afternoon. It didn't go anywhere today but I'm thinking that is because the market didn't go anywhere either and tomorrow will be an up day. Unless ...

Dow Finishes Down 15 at 12,632, Nasdaq Finishes Down 11 at 2,505 on Market Correction Concerns

Let's parse that headline - the market went down because the market participants are afraid that the market is going to go down.

It's a shame that America has lost its ability to have a laugh without a lot of foul language or sexual innuendo because that. is. hilarious.

What else did we learn today? The Tres Amigo were down some, down a bit and up a little. GOOG was down some and that makes sense since I think the shine is off that apple - AAPL on the other hand only dropped a bit and MSFT finished the day with an unexpected gain. I don't know how anyone can invest in MSFT these days - talk about a company that is used up. They are probably going to stay in this range for the rest of their existence - and if you don't think that is possible - trust me it is. The only way Gates or whomever is going to change that is with a massive share buy back and that is probably not going to happen. And even if it did it would only move them to another range where they will be locked.

MSFT is a commodity and it will trade like a commodity with the only problem being it will never be in short supply like a real commodity so it will never go up as a result of demand. There is absolutely no product that MSFT can come up with short of a cure for AIDS or Black Lung that will get them any momentum. And I'm not talking about the odd buck and a half here and there I'm talking about the kind of stooch that makes something like this happen -



Another Seattle firm - well - formerly of Seattle. ("stooch" is an old New York word that means whatever you want it to mean that is big and hairy with cajones that drag along the ground when it moves. I'm not even sure what language it comes from).

The best thing that can happen to MSFT is a correction that takes it back down into the teens so it can come back up to 30 again.

Anyone catch the HPQ and DGX action - today would have been the day to back up the truck and do the triple buy. Of course you could have done that on FRO at 2 P.M. and made some before close. I shouldn't pick on Jimmy Crack Corn Pone - there are like 800 web sites out there that specialize in it but I'm still waiting for that GOOG short squeeze - and I'm not kidding - One would think that GOOG would be shorted to a how d'ya do but it would only take 1 day to cover. Contrast that with TRLG which would take 16 days to cover - absolutely nobody expects that one to go up. FRO also has a heavy short interest (9 days) so who knows.

Cost Of Talent Skyrockets In India

WIT is an Indian company and I saw this headline under its summary on YHOO finance. I'm not sure what people expected - once labor becomes educated enough to be able to use the internet they find out how cheap they are and guess what - they don't stay cheap. Apparently they don't have enough IT workers in India so they're outsourcing the work to the United States to meet their contracts. Kids - you can't make this stuff up.

SSCC shot up out of the gate and then dropped back into a dull sideways move and I couldn't find a reason to buy it.

The up/down ratio stayed the same as the other day at 41%, the VIX is over 5% away from its 10-day moving average, the INDU ATR slipped back below 80 and the INDU RSI is below 5. And this indicator is massively oversold


We are going to have a boomer tomorrow or a crash - I'll go with an up day.

Meanwhile, the coin sat quietly by all day today waiting for its magic moment and the coin says ... heads - up day tomorrow.

The coin won today's race and the score is Marlyn 15 - 11 and 5 and the coin is 12 - 14 and 5.

Monday Monday

Bought WIT and CRI - sold WLT and SYNA - the latter two I sold for not doing anything other than moving sideways. Sold TTI - earnings are coming Wednesday and I really liked the pop I got this morning. I'm in WIT off the RSI 2 filter and CRI because it looks like it might go up a few cents before noon.

I'm 19 cents away from breakeven on LQDT and 19 cents away from stop loss on LQDT - every time it hits 19.30 a bunch of sell orders hits the wire and it can't get by that spot.

These are the days I hate the most - market explodes up in the first five minutes comes back and then sits.

Well I can sit too.

Update - And of course as soon as I sell WLT it takes off for parts unknown. I knew it would I just had to sell it in order to induce it to move.

Wrapping Friday

Excellent day - I was hoping for yet another down day and we got it. This should be it for awhile - the INDU dropped through the 21 and then came back up to sit on it - that's generally a good sign.



I'm still holding LQDT, about 21 cents down, SYNA, about 51 cents down (4 cents higher than my planned stop - if it opens down on Monday it's gone), TLB, I'll talk about this one later, TTI, today's success story, and WLT, 19 cents down.

I lost TLB to a stop early this morning but I reacquired using the 4-minute charts and tweezer bottoms - see if you can guess the four places where I reacquired this stock from this chart -



This chart is from Quote Tracker and I set up a filter that watches in real time for tweezer bottoms on the 4-minute charts. Tweezer bottoms are very efficient on the low frequency charts and I bought it each time the arrow popped up on the screen.

The three Amigos, AAPL, GOOG, and Mr. Softy dropped today and that is a good sign too. The market is desperately in need of a blow-off to get the pressure out and provide some buying opportunity. The last several days have provided that.

Bubblevision was talking about a 5 to 10% correction and you know that I don't even think in those terms - I believe that I showed you in my recession post that this market was turning up and it has a long way to go yet before we get to a 5 to 10% correction (he says - I'll probably eat those words on Monday evening but I feel good about it right now).

This indicator suggests that we have gone down far enough and will be turning around fairly soon.



And the up/down indicator says 41% which is lower than yesterday (yesterday's post contained a typo on this indicator - it actually was 49% and I typed 40%). That drop is significant even if the VIX remains neutral - stupid VIX. The best indicator - the last hour of the indices are all black/red and that is always a bullish indicator. The INDU ATR remains above 80 at 83 and change so put it all together and Monday - we are going up.

The coin says --- we are going down - well - it's a race.

Marlyn wins this leg and the score is Marlyn 15 - 10 and 5 and the coin is 11 - 14 and 5. I'm doing a lot better than luck now - and that's pretty good.

Thursday Wraps

Well I did it - I took a day off and didn't miss it. I said in my post this morning that I had bought SYNA, WLT, LQDT and sold half of my TLB. Of these LQDT was in the money all day and the other three just drifted. Some action late took them all up to near where they were purchased with WLT poking above break even.

I said if the market was going to be down I would buy them at the close but I didn't know at the time if I were going to be here for the close so I bought them early.

What a day - AAPL finished up 30 cents, GOOG finished where it started and MSFT made all of its millions upon millions of happy owners - 3 cents. Once again tech was up with the semis (I know - I pronounced them DOA a week ago or so) leading the way. Somehow none of that makes sense nor does it fit with the news reports regarding the glut in semis. But if the three Amigos couldn't make a score today I'm telling you something is rotten in this story and we haven't heard the end of it yet.

Of course I forecast a down day today because the various indicators that I look at pointed in that direction. And for tomorrow - I think we have one more down day into the weekend. We just aren't set yet and most of the indicators remain neutral or bearish.

The up/down ratio is close at 40% but the VIX remains neutral. The INDU ATR is at 86 which suggests that it is coming time for the market to turn. But the NewMoMo indicator hasn't broken below -.005% yet and that will be the real deal when it does. That's the direction of the momentum so one more day should do it.



Meanwhile the coin says ... heads - bull market coming tomorrow - stay tuned.

Despite the fact that tech went up the broader market went down so I'm calling it a down day - too many ties lately.

So we both got it and the score is Marlyn 14 - 10 and 5 and the coin is 11 - 13 and 5.

Friday Wraps - TGIF

Start of a three-day weekend and I'm glad. It was a rough week but I actually didn't do as badly as I make it all sound. I took two shots at LQDT today and both were profitable - 50 cents on one and a quarter on the other. Basically both were simple breakouts on the 15-minute charts. I also played SGP to a 6 cent loss and TTI to a break even + happy meal. The latter two I took off my "Day Trading with BOB" filter and they were the only ones that had any promise at all - a very weak output this morning and then a weak day going forward. I'm flat going into the weekend - still not ready to carry risk overnight - I'll let you know when that changes.

Of the three Amigos - GOOG had a reasonable day, Steve Balmer managed to talk MSFT into a 75 cent loss, and AAPL just twisted in the cold, cold wind - down 40 cents or so. I watch these three because these, among several others, are bell weather stocks. They let you know which way the wind is blowing and today it was just swirling around going nowhere.

That described the market as a whole,of course, but the INDU finished the day in positive territory. However, when you look at it and you don't have to look too closely, both major indices - the SPX and the COMPQ finished down - so I'm considering today to be a down day.

Small cap finished up and I think that is going to be the real story going forward for the rest of the year. I'll be publishing an update to the Marlyn's Curve over the weekend with the four indices overlaid. I've made a major change and I want to see how it works out. First major change to Marlyn's Curve in almost a decade.

I've started working with this new charting service that I read about over on Esto's site - named Quotetracker - what appeals to me is that you can program your own alerts based on your own custom criteria. That has to be worth something. And I can use my existing prophet.net data subscription to drive the beast. I'll try it out and let you know. I'd really like to program good old BOB into the engine on a 15-minute basis and see what comes out of that. I know that there are other applications out there that permit you to do these things on the minute-based charts - but this only cost me 60 bucks for a year's access and I'm already paying for the data feed through prophet. I also can get a real-time data feed from one of my brokerage accounts (free) - so I'm covered backward and forward.

I'm looking for a solid down day on Tuesday - this is afterall the week after expiration and all of the 401K money has been placed. The up/down ratio still sits in neutral but the VIX slid more than 5 points below the 10-day moving average. The INDU ATR is at 75.87 and this indicator is two days overdue:



And way way overbought. Once again we're in that position where we need to take a little pressure off the market. It has to go down to go up.

I'm calling Tuesday - down.

The magic coin is calling Tuesday ... heads - up. OK - we're starting to diverge.

Having called today a down day I get a point that makes it Marlyn 13 - 9 and 4 and the coin is 9 - 13 and 4.

Wraps Thursday

A good day. No 12% haircuts for me today. As I said yesterday - I don't hide - but I did make a change or two today and I recommend this to anyone who gets hit hard a couple days in a row. Drop back on the weight - only take half or quarter loads. Get the feel back. It was probably just bad luck - but ego and arrogance play a large part in what we do and if you go out swinging for the fences after a bad beat or two you are liable to get beat some more. Remember the market can dish it out a lot longer than you can take it.

So that's what I did today - I throttled back and here's how I did. PLXS +4 cents for a breakeven plus a happy meal - my bride is pleased - we eat tonight (just kidding). LQDT +1.10 - probably could have had more but was in late and out early (another part of the recovery process - a good profit - is a good profit - is a good profit). PDLI +30 cents. And KNOT +31 cents. I bought KNOT and then doubled up after it bounced off the EMA 21 on the 30-minute charts. I was expecting it to do that and put some nice coin in the register because I anticipated a recovery. All told $1.65 and I feel a lot better. And, of course, I'm flat in my account - just cash going into Friday. I was done by noon and spent some quality time with my bride. And that's how it has to be for now.

I had 9 candidates with the "day trading with BOB" filter today. 4 went down and 5 went up. One gapped up too far to be of any use and of the other four I took PDLI and PLXS. PDLI proved to be the best of the lot. Of the 15 I had yesterday 12 are now up and only 3 are down. I think this is going to be a good filter - not automatic - but a little common sense can go a long way in this business. And once we get out of earnings season it should be a good filter for picking swing trades. It is interesting how the smallest things can sometimes mean so much.

I ignored CRI even though I saw right away that it was going to gain back some of yesterday's lost blood. Sometimes I just don't want to be bothered with the garbage. It's probably foolish of me because all of the bad that could happen has happened but once burned twice shy. Maybe tomorrow.

I read this morning that Cramer was all over NTRI for low balling their announcement on January 31st then coming out with a boomer last night. He said that he's through with this bunch. That made a big impact on his legion of fan (sports stars have legions of fans - Cramer just has legion) and I see that NTRI is up 14%.

The three Amigos - MSFT, GOOG, and AAPL didn't get the message, two went down a bit and Mr. Softy made about 6 cents for his loyal supportors. Let's see 100 shares x 6 cents = happy meal? Nope. I'm not really sure what that sums up to except something negative going forward. Probably has something to do with options expiration tomorrow. BIDU took the 12% haircut today.

I notice that bubblevision is blaming Bernake today for the market not continuing the boom. He was the hero yesterday and the goat today and pretty much said the same thing. The media types always have to have something to blame it on. They just can't say its a matter of supply and demand. If they did they'd soon realize that they were an oversupply to very little demand.

I looked at the charts every once in awhile this afternoon and about the only thing I could say that could even come close to a characterization is "driftage" - the market is in "driftage". No point, no purpose, no real destination, just a large floating cloud of crap.

Of course I missed on my forecast but as I said the NewMoMo method is relatively new and I do know from my testing that it doesn't have a 1.0 correlation - just close. The ATR indicator is also "just close" and most of the time several days go by between its dipping below 80 and the INDU taking a fall. I showed that on the figure last week. So probably tomorrow.

Speaking of the NewMoMO indicator here it is for today's edition of As the Wrap Turns -


The up/down ratio is printing 48% so it's neutral again. The VIX is neutral and the ATR indicator is 77.78. So two in neutral, two showing down - I'm going with down - I don't think the market can stand another up day this week.

The magic coin says ... heads - a bull market again - well at least we differ.

Once again we both missed so the score is Marlyn 12 - 9 and 4 and the coin is 9 - 12 and 4. Still just a little better than luck.

Wrapping Tuesday

Another one-hour day. That's pretty much it any more - the market spikes and then drifts back down, touches the EMA 8 or 21, spikes again, then more drifting. Tough way to make a living.

I got back about 80% of my profit on LQDT this afternoon when it printed a blow-off bottom on the 15's. I got in at 19.20 - rode to 19.90 and when it pulled back to 19.80 I was out. I don't think it is going to recover soon - it might have an up day tomorrow, and might even have a gap up on the open, but the sell off today was relentless and very, very angry. Usually in the secondary offerings you get one gap down and you sit and wonder what happened - this was a gap down followed by relentless selling starting about 10:30. And the only thing that happened was the volume kept increasing. Four times normal volume and that doesn't speak well for their plan. This could have been simple short selling but I don't think there were enough up-ticks to make that possible. Tomorrow will complete the picture and we'll see then if all is forgiven.

There's been a lot of angry selling lately - AOB has been on the bad end six of the last seven days - although today looks like it is finally bottoming. I'll be watching this one for tomorrow and see what happens. This was another stock where I took a "secondary offering" beating a couple of years ago - it still owes me money. At least with LQDT I'm a bit ahead of the game.

CRVL we've discussed several times - and it is toast right now - at least the volume is drying up some. And there was some nice action in the last 45-minutes. They finished today with a nice DOJI too and that might mean that the sell-off is over for the time being. But as I've said before unless they come up with another buy back plan they are probably going to keep going down.

But they're not the only ones - AMD keeps getting hammered day after day - as does NTRI. But NTRI also formed a nice DOJI this afternoon. I don't know if these DOJI are significant - there are a lot of them and they don't necessarily have to mean a bottom. They might - that's all I can say.

HANS looks like it has blown its top (not a blow-off top but a blown top) and it shaved 9% today. I mean this is a day when the markets were going up and all of this carnage was taking place among the darlings.

Gold has been going up quite a bit lately - the problem with gold is that the miners go with the metal and with the market - if the metal is down - the miners are down, if the market is down - the miners are down. The only time the miners go up is when the market and the metal go up together - like today - but most of the major miners (sorry Mom) formed gap-up DOJI and that might spell trouble.

GOOG gained 70 cents today. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that. That was 0.16% which I'm sure made some fund's quarter - I'm also pretty sure that it wasn't the "short squeeze" that Jimmy Crack Corn Pone predicted.

AAPL continued its losing ways but you know how I feel about AAPL. It is probably done for all time.

The semis are done - here is a "maximum top" from last week.



You see on 2/01, 2/02, 2/05 three gaps and a DOJI - classic maximum top. It tried to get over it but it couldn't. If the semi's are done - tech is done - it's pretty clear. Have you looked at a SYMC chart lately? It's been trading between 17.60 and 18.00 for a month now - that's a 40 cent range. Oh well, just as long as they keep paying that dividend. Oh - that's right SYMC is another one of those tech stocks that has been around forever (1990), backdates options, and doesn't pay a dividend. Tell me - exactly what part of a 40-cent wide daily range makes this piece of crap a "must buy"?

MSFT is fighting back but swinging like the little old lady it is. It will fight all week to pin at 30 and once it has caused maximum damage to the options trader's accounts it will resume shuffling down the hill. Mr. Softy is another one - the sizzle has already been sold and nobody is buying the Bull.

And I'm saying all of this on a day when the INDU is up 100 points - I must be absolutely nuts. But that ATR-less-than-80 indicator that I wrote about last week worked like a charm - the INDU ATR(10) went below 80 last Thursday and took the INDU down through the EMA 21. Once the INDU closes on or below the EMA 21 it goes back up again. Maybe the market is just fine and some of these mature stocks are just that - mature stocks. Time to start looking for fresh meat.

Took two swing trades today - RX and CRI. Both of them breaking out and they look like they might be able to make a couple of points in the next month. I have a feeling I'm going to have to hold them for awhile.

I'm dropping the new 20-period high/low ratio because it doesn't seem to be a good predictor - certainly not as good as the ATR indicator I found last week. The up/down ratio is a relatively good indicator as is the Newmomo indicator below. So I'm going to be using these three plus the VIX for forecasting from now on and I'm dropping the last hour indicator also - unless it is five reds or white/greens. Those two configurations actually have meaning for the 'morrow.

So saying for tomorrow the up/down ratio is printing 59% which is neutral and the VIX is back in neutral territory, the INDU ATR(10) is above 80 and the Newmomo indicator still reads bullish.

Thus while it doesn't necessarily have to be an up day tomorrow - I think it will be.



The coin is saying --- heads - also forecasting an up day.

We now have the score as Marlyn 11 - 8 and 4 and the coin is 8 - 11 and 4.

What A Difference A Day Makes - II

Yesterday LQDT was flying high - nothing between it and 500 points but fresh air and sunshine - today, to this moment (1:30 P.M.) it has already shed 389 cents and that is, roughly speaking, about the same 90 million bucks in capitalization it made last week on its just OK earnings. What goes around comes around.

There really wasn't any need for the secondary offering except the greed of the participants and consequently a lot of 401K's (LQDT's labor force) got raped and it is all perfectly legal.

How about that - you put your money into your companies stock because your company is a strong, solid place and you know they are doing good things, and you are very proud to be part of that gang - you go to bed on Monday night with a solid retirement fund and by the time you get to work on Tuesday morning your company has killed 17% of it - not theirs - just yours - they're selling 5 million more shares for their retirement fund.

Gotta love it.

Secondary Offerings

Secondary offerings have cost me more money than any other useless management scam ever perpetrated on the unsuspecting trader. I'd rather they backdated options - at least that doesn't have the effect of "company is going to sell 100K shares and "selected shareholders" are going to be allowed to sell 5 million". Wonder who they are? As I said a backdated options scam is less painful than this crap.

OK - I lost 75 cents on the bet today - that gives me a two day net of 0 including commissions - I should consider myself lucky I suppose - I actually had a profit in my account for 24 hours and then I got greedy. The rule is simple - don't try to drink from the well twice in one day - you will always gag on the second drink - always.

It's only good to be management folks - no one else stands a chance.

Monday's Wraps

Well I sat and watched for awhile then went out with my bride - didn't miss much. About 3:30 I reloaded with LQDT and maybe I'll get another bump up tomorrow. It would be nice. Other than that I'm flat, dumb, and happy to coin a phrase. As of the close LQDT was already profitable. We'll see.

Last week I read that the market went down because oil went down (!) and there was too much talk of raising interest rates. Interest rates of course are always a one-day story so today it had to be something new - and that was investor disappointment with a number of collapsed deals. I was always taught that there is always going to be inflation in an economic system based on smoke and mirrors and the way to combat inflation would be to --- wait for it --- invest in stocks. Apparently we can't invest in stocks when there is inflation because inflation gathers interest rate hikes and interest rate hikes cause the market to - you guessed it - go down. And you wonder why I gave up all that mumbo jumbo and do silly things like buy at 3:30 and sell at 9:45. Self preservation is the real reason behind rule 1.

Just read an interesting article on Seeking Alpha by John Hussman regarding "selling too early." It is an interesting commentary on today using a historical figure. Worth your time to read, IMO.

I spoke about the historical basis for stock movement this morning and its relationship to the EMA 90. I hope everyone got a chance to look that over. Same theme as always - buy low and sell high. It truly is an easy game in a market that refuses to come down. Although the last couple of days have been a good start.

Unfortunately while we could use a bit more downside I'm thinking that we are in a perfect dip buyers crease and that tomorrow will be an up day as a result.

The following figure is something I've been working on for a few weeks and it looks as if it might have promise.



I call it the "Newmomo" because it, unlike every other indicator known to civilized man is built on EMA's. It is the variance of the EMA 4 vs the EMA 21 of the 20-period normalized DIA. Or the difference between the green line and the red line as shown on this chart.



If you are looking for the routine you've come to the wrong place. Anyway this indicator (for which I have hundreds of samples not just the few shown here) suggests that whenever it went below -.005 that a market turn around should occur in the next day or so. If we couple that with my usual rap I think that turn around could start tomorrow.

The up/down ratio printed 34% which was actually up 6 points from Friday but the new 20-day high/low ratio printed 40% which is 10+ points down. The VIX is sitting at 9% over the 10-period moving average and that probably is enough - maybe a spike up in the morning to take it over the 10% mark and then a slow decline through the day into the close. Goldie (GS) and the Q's printed DOJI while SPY, DIA, and IWM all put out white candles in the last hour. The mix is good - shows that the market isn't sure what it wants to do.

My forecast for tomorrow - rain, sleet, snow and an upward moving market (weather report gratis).

The magic coin agrees - bull market tomorrow.

Neither the coin nor I got today correct so the race is now Marlyn 10 - 8 and 4 and the coin is 7 - 11 and 4.

Best Friends Forever (or Until Dawn)

Bought LQDT last Friday at 3:40 for 22.63 - sold this morning at 9:45 for 23.40 +77 cents for a trade I held about 35 business minutes.

A couple of years ago I found that the only way I could make any money consistently was to buy at 3:45 and sell at 9:45. Given the looks of the market lately we might be entering that sort of time period again.

Everything just looks way overbought or way oversold - there is no happy medium. When you have a stock such as LQDT that is just lollygagging along you can make what I call a "spike" trade and get some quick profits out of it.

Another stock that went up abruptly this morning was CIEN. I had considered taking this one as well on Friday afternoon but didn't - oh well - there's always tomorrow.

I might buy LQDT back again this mornng for a day trade if it keeps doing what it is doing - tagging the EMA 4 and going up. But for now I've made a good profit on the day and I'm happy and I may just take the rest of the day off. Less stress - happy Marlyn.

Looks like the market is going to take the rest of the day off too. SPY is down, Q is down and DIA is folding. Goldie (GS) is down, oil is down and VIX is up. A good day to just watch - I think.