Wednesday Wraps

Well that was a wonderful day - my key stocks in the portfolio both went up a bit, I bought and sold RI in the space of 6 hours because it round tripped and replaced it with GRA - the stock I should have bought in the first place and a week ago to boot. That was the leader on the must buy list last week and remains number one with a bullet. It gained 3.15% today - of course I bought it late so it will probably lose that and more tomorrow. I added to OI as it seems to be indicating that it wants to run. I'm already overweight in GGB and left it that way.

Took two day trades, XING and TAM. XING I took off a bounce from S1 early and rode it to R1 and made 43 cents on the transaction. Just about the time I was finishing with XING, TAM printed a tweezer bottom just above S2 and I rode that one to R1 - making a buck for the effort. I discovered XING from the BOB set-up filter and TAM came from a gap down filter. Here's TAM so you can see how the trade developed. Very elegant and note that if I had waited for a EMA cross over I would have lost half the move. The arrow is what I have the software print to indicate a tweezer bottom.


And if you don't think I like QuoteTracker - you would be very wrong.

JTX opened up as I expected it would then dropped back then finished up. The specialist didn't get the short squeeze that he expected so it is possible that there weren't that many folks short the stock. It's possible that the drop was so severe that there were very few up-ticks when the stock could be shorted and also possible there just wasn't any inventory to short. It would have been a good play around 27.50 but I had other fish to fry at that time.

I think it's finally time to buy MVIS - two strong days with significant volume suggests that the big boys have finally noticed. I'm going to watch for an entry tomorrow and maybe put some in the portfolio. That'll calm it down.

The model portfolio is up to 11.56% and the bench mark printed 2.43%. It gets easier every day. The shootout is over with my Dead Cat Bounce Filter beating the Rocket - at least in this round. I don't know if there will be a second round - If the Rocket ever outputs another stock I'll do another comparison.

The three pals - GOOG, MSFT, and AAPL had a wonderful day. MSFT won the race with a 2.26% gain and that puts it at the top of its trading range again. It actually went into breakout territory but then pulled back just in time to level off with the last two highs of the past 20 days. Anyone care to guess where it goes tomorrow? My guess is back to 27.90 or so. GOOG flatened off with yesterday's gains and printed a spinner - I.E. - nobody knows what to do. AAPL, having read my critique this morning, went nowhere. Lost 23 cents. This stock has now lost 6 days out of the last 7 and is not even going anywhere as a result. It is sliding sideways. I don't know - I think there is a lot of lost liquidity in these stocks that could be used in other places to make money - but apparently the Cult of AAPLGOOGMSFT is just too powerful and knowing. Earnings are coming - here is my guess - AAPL - makes by a penny, MSFT - misses by 2 cents, GOOG - makes a profit but misses estimates. You read it here first.

The DJI ATR slipped back to 104.15 today and that is excellent - I think it will go below 100 before the end of next week. Unfortunately this guy went back up today to peek over .005% and that usually means a down market is coming -


The VIX remains neutral and the up/down ratio actually returned to an oversold - kinda - configuration - printing 46%. I told you it was an ugly day.

So we have competing up and down indications - I'm guessing tomorrow is more of the same as today with a bit of a down bias. The big guys will all take the afternoon off and only the rookies will be manning the pits. Their orders will be - do no harm.

Then Friday is a day off and Monday the 401K/IRA money starts flowing into the market.

So as not to be ambiguous myself I'm calling for a down day tomorrow - I know it is more of a wish than a reasonable guess but it's all I've got right now.

The coin is saying that tomorrow is going to be a ... heads - up day - the coin never guesses.

We both missed so the score is at Marlyn 24 - 23 and 9 and the coin is 25 - 22 and 9.

Friday Finally Wraps

Oh wow! - The only thing I made money on today was the day trade I took this morning, STRL, and also on AKS. I took STRL off R1 as it passed it from the pivot and rode it past R2. When it turned around I sold it and pocketed 39 cents. My RSI(2) < 5 filter output STRL plus many others. I put the top 10 in a Quote Tracker portfolio then watched for movement.

I sold AKS early to lock in the profits and then re-acquired this afternoon as a result of a 15-minute BOB. I was stopped out of GRA this morning but bought it back again this afternoon at the S1 pivot point as it looked as if it were going to rally there. It went down some more and then turned around. Despite the drop, TIE remained above the stop loss so I still hold it. That leaves AKS, GRA and TIE in the trading portfolio the rest either stopped out, or, as in the case of XING, sold off.

Costly day all told but if it weren't for stop losses and the two profitable trades I took it would have been worse.

The market is seriously oversold but the dip buyers should be out next week as it is time for the 401K money again. The three friends (GOOG, MSFT, and AAPL) all lost with MSFT being the winner as it only dropped 11 cents. GOOG continues going down and someplace down here it has to hit a rally spot.



It could be trying to close the gap between 420 and 460 and maybe 420 is the rally point. It is, after all, still 100 points higher than it was a year ago so there is no need to panic just yet. It also has dropped though the EMA 90 and the last time it did that it hurried back up and passed through it again. Next week the 401K money hits and if GOOG is going to move it will move then.

I'm still not certain what happened to gold and silver this week - generally in a market decline you would expect to see them become more valuable because that's what the gold bugs want to have happen (you can tell that I'm joking - right?). If the gold bugs really knew what they were talking about gold would be over $2000 an ounce right now. Obviously a lot of people who have huge sums of money don't believe that gold or silver are viable investments and would rather put their money into something with real value. Today that was CAPS -



Just 1 among 1788 other stocks that went up in value today - of course none of them was in my portfolio. That makes the up/down ratio 22% - that is deep in oversold territory.

This morning I ridiculed Jimmy Crack CP once more and showed you FRO and DGX. After I put them up they both flattened out and pretty much stayed right where they were for the rest of the day. Still the stock he "nixes" is the one going up while the triple buy is going down - I feel sorry for the DGX buyers - especially those who bought because he said buy, buy, buy.

The model portfolio is down 2.04% and the benchmark is down 1.03%. Not a good showing. But Monday will be better.

Here's some good news - at the end of the day the Q's RSI(2) was 1.26, the DIA was 2.35, and the SPY was 2.02. Most of the stocks in my model portfolio are under 5. Earlier this week we talked about setting a filter that only keyed off of stocks that were RSI(2) < 5 when the SPY was also RSI(2) < 5. Well - guess what - we have a real time filter beginning Monday. This ought to be pretty good.

This indicator is really, really, really oversold now - this is lower than it was back in the summer last year. Not by much but enough.



Take it all together and it spells up on Monday. Of course I'll be going against all the wimpy traders who passed around a rumor all afternoon that the market was going to collapse on Monday. But as always - if you aren't fearless you don't belong in this business. And, needless to say I'm not perfect either - but either way the market goes you have tools to take advantage of it - so do so.

Meanwhile the coin says ... heads - also looking for a bull market.

Having missed today by more than a little the score is now Marlyn 16 - 14 and 5 and the coin is 14 - 16 and 5.

Going to have some great posts this weekend so come back often. I'm also going to start looking into RSS for the site - I'm sure many of you would prefer that to atom - whatever that is.

Thursday Wraps

What a mean, miserable day. The market players couldn't make up their minds whether they wanted it up or down. This is standard procedure after the beating Tuesday - every body is playing scared. As a result stocks are round tripping and we spend all day long bumping against the pivot point on the Q's -



Five times in six hours it hit the pivot (black line on the chart) - each time to rebound strongly. But as you can see yesterday was the same thing - inability to move through the pivot point. That suggests a difficult day for today.

I bought PAAS this morning and watched it go up and then it round tripped on me and I sold it off for a small loss this afternoon. That was the very first and very last time that I will buy a silver mining stock - I've always considered them to be a waste and I think this one is the biggest waste of all.

I bought TRA this afternoon and GRA and I may scale into DLX and RYI tomorrow. All I will do now is add to the portfolio on dips and let it run for awhile. Tomorrow I think I'll go back to day trading. TIE pretty much round tripped on the day too and if it doesn't get some steam tomorrow I'm going to dump it. I'd rather put the money into winners like AKS or RIO. XING came all the way back to where I bought it but I'm going to hold on to this one for awhile but I won't add to it. It has to prove itself and it couldn't even get to the pivot point today.

The model portfolio is now returning 1.23% and the SPY is returning 1.01% since inception.

The three guys (MSFT, GOOG, and AAPL) went their separate ways today. AAPL did real well, up 2.45, MSFT recovered from being down early and GOOG stayed down. I'll reiterate my message from the past couple of days in various posts - AAPL is going up, MSFT is range bound and will be forever, and GOOG is done. It had huge volume today and went nowhere.

The small caps are back - IWM made it into the green today.



That isn't unexpected the small caps have been taking the brunt of the beat-down because they have been so far ahead of everything else. But once again the pivot point was the line of demarcation. We need a break over the pivot point tomorrow and then we'll see what happens next.

The INDU ATR is above 144 which is always a good sign. I use the ATR as a proxy for volatility. When it is below 80 for the INDU the Dow 30 goes down and when it is above 120 the DOW 30 goes up. Not immediately but within days.

This indicator, NewMoMo is behaving normally - it is now officially really far down -



Any upward movement in the market tomorrow will spin this around on a dime and give 9 cents change.

The up/down ratio retreated to 33% which is violently oversold and the VIX remains more than 10% over its 10-period moving average. It must go back.

I'm calling tomorrow up. Although to be honest I prefer days like today for day trading.

The magic coin meanwhile, fresh off its success in calling today's market, calls tomorrow ... heads - bull market.

The score is now Marlyn 16 - 13 and 5 and the coin is 14 - 15 and 5.

Look at WLT Go

My biggest problem and I've written about this before is my impatience. I could have had some serious profit in WLT if I had just held on to it. It is up .84% today! Sometimes it just doesn't pay to sell.

Of course the people who listened to Jimmy Crack Corn Pone a couple of weeks ago about BHP are looking at this now -



I have a feeling that they are cursing their patience.

I added to my TIE and RIO positions and bought PAAS off the tweezer bottom this morning and XING too. I've been thinking about TRA but I'm going to wait until the DIA breaks through it's pivot point - 35 cents from where it is this minute (10:43 EST). The DIA bounced off its Support 2 this morning after about 20 minutes and is now going sideways up. It would have been an excellent pivot trade.



It looks like it is done for the moment - from here it is setting up to go down or up so if you did buy earlier you might want to set your stop real close.

Two For Thursday

I've had my eye on XING for some time looking for an entry and it printed a BOB formation yesterday. If market conditions are good today I think I will add it to my trading portfolio for a swing trade (4 days+).

I won't add it to the model portfolio - that one is fixed with the 12 stocks I shared yesterday. Of those I'm considering adding a position in PAAS to my trading portfolio today as well.

Not an invitation to speculate - just some thoughts I'm willing to share.