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 Wednesday

I got my rest - didn't do much but play with my new toy - Quote Tracker. I'm pretty pleased with it so far and I think that once I have it completely set-up to my way of doing things I'll be a lot happier with it.

I did manage to double up on TLB and I sold off SOFO for a small loss. I just can't stand cheap stocks - they only go one direction rapidly and that is down. I published my whine about CRI this morning, at one time it was up over 2 bucks and finished the day about 70 cents to the good. The three Amigos, GOOG, MSFT, and AAPL were all up strong today as was small cap in general. But I'm still confused with the Q's - I don't think that spike down yesterday in the last minute was real - I'm wondering what's going to happen once the settlements start coming in. Aside from the tech most of the more mundane stocks didn't do much except bounce around all day.

For tomorrow I think we stay down. Even though the up/down ratio is at 42% that still isn't low enough to make a real difference - the INDU ATR is 80.48 so it is sliding out from below the 80 barrier for the first time in several days. This is consistent with this indicator as you may recall from the chart - there is always a delayed reaction to its going under 80 and then it always pulls out a day or two ahead of the market resuming the upward direction. I wouldn't be surprised to have another 30 or 40 points down tomorrow before resuming the upward trajectory on Friday.

The NewMOMO indicator continues to suggest a down market (except for small caps)



Because the market was so solidly mixed today I'm calling it yet one more tie - and this gets more and more bizarre as we go along. The possibility of a mixed market really doesn't exist up until this year when we seem to be having one every week or so. I'm not sure what that means but I'm not sure I like it - either the market as a whole goes up or the market as a whole goes down - this part up - part down doesn't make a lot of sense. I'll discuss this in more depth in another post and I think you will agree with me.

The coin is calling for a down day tomorrow also. So that makes two of us in the universe.

The score is Marlyn 13 - 10 and 5 and the coin is 10 - 13 and 5. Too many ties.

Nobody Knows Nothing III

Including - or maybe - especially - me.

I give you CRI - A company that took a huge beat down last week - a company that I was invested in and took the beat down with - a company that I said would never recover to where it was -



And don't I feel stupid this morning? Oh well - live and learn - next time I'll hold the piece of crap all the way to 0 (not).

Tuesday Wraps

As posted earlier, I bought TLB and if it sets up again tomorrow I'll double up. I'm holding it up to earnings on March 7th or until I get tired of it - whichever comes first.

I also had CORS and CRI as day trades and I almost kept CRI but then I read that I wasn't wrong about the earnings - they post tomorrow. What they did last week was give a little preview so that the market wouldn't be shocked tomorrow when they officially announce. What do I think is going to happen? Why should I care - I got my quarter out of them today. CORS too was looking good for awhile but I had bought that deliberately as a day trade off my "Day Trading with BOB" filter and I got 21 cents out of it after expenses. That filter is still proving to be a real winner when it comes to picking stocks for short term gains. It might also be good for long term gains but I don't hold them long enough to know.

I also took a position in SOFO towards the end of the day - this will be another swing trade. After watching it all day I decided I should probably just commit. I'm only going for a half a buck or three days on this one though so whichever occurs first - it's gone.

Both CAR and RDEN finished the day up and either one would have been a good counter play for a day trade once the market turned around.

I didn't expect that - in fact I was figuring on a dull, down day but for some reason or other the market turned at 10:15 or so. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Wal-mart's blowing the top off the estimate (imagine that) that caused the turn around since that was already known at market open.

Of course I really don't care why the media thinks it went up - I'm just certain that it is still overbought, the range is narrower still, and eventually we are going to have to have a little blow-off to get the pressure out of the prices. Not a crash - I never predict a crash - just a 100 point or so drop in the Dow, a couple of dozen in the NASDAQ and 10 or 12 in the SPX. That would be more than enough.

GOOG went up a couple of points, MSFT went up a couple of cents and AAPL is up a buck and a little. AAPL is still trading in that narrow range but keep a close eye on it - today could have been a breakout signal. If it opens higher and goes up tomorrow there is a possibility that it will put a couple of bucks in the pot before it is through. That'll make the AAPL fans happy.

BARE, the cosmetic company I wrote about on the weekend, the one with the massive secondary coming out - dropped to 32.88 and then recovered most of that - finishing only 85 cents down from the close Friday. Just can't keep a good company down - it will probably go to the moon tomorrow. And just because it has dropped 9 of its last 10 days doesn't mean anything other than it is just an excellent company taking a little nap. Of note - its turn-around this morning was a classic blow-off bottom so that isn't all bad. Just in case you have forgotten what that looks like - here it is again.



All together now, one more time - Weee are being FOOOOLED by RANNNNDOMMMMNESSSSS! Alright - that should satisfy the fundamental purists in the audience (although I doubt I have any of those hanging around).

I spent a lot of time today working with QuoteTracker - I'm not ready yet to report my findings. Maybe tomorrow. For now let's just say I'm of mixed feelings. The interface could be a little less cumbersome and the help panels a little more helpful - but I'm new at it and I always give a piece of software a good, rigorous test before I write the report.

For tomorrow I'd say I-dunno except I'm in a contest with that stupid magic coin - so I'm saying a down day is coming. The up/down ratio is neutral, about 52%, the VIX is neutral, and all four major indices as represented by their respective ETFs printed black/red candles in the last hour of trading, as did GS. Normally that would mean that an up day is coming but the INDU ATR is still below 80 and this indicator remains in the sell zone (.005 and above).



Sooner or later we have to have a down day - it is impossible for the market to keep going up without a breather. The fact that the Q's round tripped and closed red today suggests that there is a need for a nap. Now you do understand that the only thing that happens for me on a down day is that I get to do things with my Bride such as take day trips to museums and the like which is a good thing for a retired person to do. She puts up with my sitting here at this box day in and day out without complaint and she needs a break every now and then too.

The magic coin, having called today almost completely correct - says for tomorrow ... heads - bull is coming again.

The score now sits at Marlyn 13 - 10 and 4 and the coin is 10 - 13 and 4.

I hope you all are having as much fun as I am. And I hope you all are making money too.

Bought TLB

Also bought a couple of others for day trades including CRI and CORS both doing well. Considering SOFO. And watching RDEN. I might wait for RDEN to break out of this range it seems to be in (22.40 - 22.80) - maybe around 23.00.

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.