The markets stumbled out of the block, but then it looked like the bulls were going to run away with it. The indexes did end in the green, but way off of the highs of the day….Which was good for my VIX calls. VIX has been green for 2 days in a row! whooohooo! So, was this a short 2-hour thing or do we see volatility pick up a bit into the end of the week?
It’s a light news week, but we do start getting some of the same old same old: Inventories, Initial Claims, Retail Sales and Michigan Sentiment….light, but enough to shake up markets and traders if they are out of the norm. Keep an eye on those inverse ETFs for the next day or two.
Four stocks today accounted for almost 20% of the entire morket’s volume, C, FRE, FNM and AIG. Total volume was up today, popping thru the 50ma….and a lot of that came in the last hour.
Remember that Equity Index futures like TF, ES, NQ, and YM roll this Thursday. By the end of the day, actualy after lunch, you will see volume start moving from the “H” contracts to the “M” contracts. So heads up. 
I traded AIG a couple times today, but nothing else. My shorts are underwater and may unload in the next day or 2 if the pain gets too great.
Gold took off as the US dollar kept climbing down the ladder. Of course commodities went up, so ETFs like DYY DAG DBA moved on up also.
The cable guy showed up this afternoon and replaced my cable modem. All worked great!…..for 90 minutes. Then it all started again…up, down, up, down…what a pain. So I called to give them an earful and I had to start all over again, how, why, what, when…..and they scheduled a return trip….for Friday! What the $%@&*
For your reading enjoyment: It’s the First Day of Fall — In More Ways than One
I spent the day trading in between the ups and downs of my Internet connection. The morning was tough, but later in the afternoon I actually had a 3 hour uptime. By that time the markets were having up and down issues themselves. The Nasdaq ended in the green but overall the markets ended lower on even lower volume.
I played AIG for a bit taking $1.50 of the toal $10 dollar run…a profit is a profit. Took some profits in TZA in the morning and then re-entered, so I’m doing the short overnite thing again, along with QID,and UYG puts. I’m hoping that strategy keeps working.
Some interesting reading: If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck,it’s a duck! WSJ reports on Obama’s Nontax Tax.
I’m outta here before the next down tick….
Bank of America, BAC, whose directors were subpeonaed today, raised its ratings for AMZN and sent it on its way to the moon….dragging the rest of the market with it. C recovered some from yesterday’s demise and the third amigo, AIG, went sailing again into the blue sky. What’s wrong with this picture? Well these 3 government-owned companies traded almost 2 billion shares.
If your head isn’t hurting yet, you have to read Forbes magazine:
Getco earns its outsize profits buying and selling securities up to thousands of times a second. This frenetic profession has come to be known as high-frequency trading, and in recent months it has emerged as the hottest ticket on Wall Street. Even as financial markets collapsed last year, high-frequency traders collectively enjoyed $21 billion in gross profit, according to Tabb Group. On the NYSE, daily volume surged 43% through June from a year earlier to 6.2 billion shares; high-frequency traders are believed to account for 50% to 70% of the activity and similar proportions in electronic futures and options markets.
This 2-man company currently buys and sells 15% of all the stocks traded in the U.S. You have got to read this entire article: The New Masters of Wall Street. It will make you sick and you will have to scream What the $%@&* 
So what’s the SEC doing? Nothing. Sure they make Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) take tests and complete all kinds of paperwork, and yeah, they bitch-slapped Martha Stewart for making a questionable trade…. but if you want to take over the stock market….sure, go ahead, what the hell…… I digress….my head is hurting.
So besides all that, I was able to trade some ES futures successfully, probably because I didn’t hold anything for more than a few minutes. My QID position from yesterday is underwater, but since it is small I’m still holding. If this damn market continues up tomorrow, I’ll just have to cut my loses…..dammit. Oh well, that’s trading.
One more story for you to read: Bank Failures Could Surge as Commercial Real Estate Losses Continue to Mount.
Enjoy all this good news out there!
It was another day for the gold bugs as fear of economic woes continues and Unemployment claims not decreasing, confirms the fear. But eventually, as in the last hour of trading, some optimism was evident as all the indexes closed in the green.
AIG reversed its course and started back up during the day and continued afterhours…up almost 14%. If it makes it back up to $50, I’ll be looking at puts again, because there is no way it can continue up. C is in a similar worthless position, and its got some screwy plans in the making. Read Citi, Big Brother and the Stock Price to try to figure out what’s going on there.
Again my trades were few and far between….it’s hard to figure this market out. This morning I traded SRS, more of a scalp, and came away with 25 cents. Then, late in the afternoon, figuring the market was going to end up, I scalped TNA for $1.01, not bad for an hour’s worth of work. 
And again I didn’t carry anything overnite. Tomorrow, with the Non-farm Payrolls report, we find out what number the government wants to put on our unemployment. And no matter what number is published, it is made up…..and we should see some fantastic swings at the announcement. I’m looking at an up day until the afternoon and then traders selling whatever they have to go flat for the long holiday weekend.
On that note, have a wonderfully fantastic weekend….eat, drink and be merry. Enjoy your family and friends. Don’t worry…the markets will be back on Tuesday. 
The markets didn’t do anything today until the last 5 minutes, when it finally showed us some downward direction. Yes they were all down, but not by much. So I’m really wondering about direction for the remainder of the week. Generally the markets are bullish going into a holiday weekend….traders are a patriotic bunch.
Because of my indecision I didn’t trade equities today….I confined myself to S&P e-mini futures, and even then not much. I scalped for a couple points in each direction, shorting at 997.50 and going long at 995.50….2 points up, 2 points down. It pretty much stayed in that range much of the day.
Volume was down quite a bit today as compared to yesterday. Looked like we had plopped back to the middle of August. Even AIG got goofy again and couldn’t decide which way it wanted to go.
And gold really took off today.Gold was lock-stepped in with the markets, but smashed that thought process today. I’m wondering how fast the trip to $1000 will be?
I was preoccupied with downloading and using StockTwits Desktop today. I like it. I feel it is better than TweetDeck with all the amenities for tracking tweets about stocks. I had got comfortable with Tweetdeck, so it may take me a while before I am completely weaned off of it. But I really like the Watchlist and Groups features. I especially like when you click on a URL it opens within Desktop. The StockTwits TV feature is also very nice. So another tool to play with. 
…it’s what you think it is While the news and reports today were showing a good economy, traders were thinking, “oh yeah, we already priced this good report in the past month’s run up. We better sell the news.” And sell they did….but not before popping some stops early on.
I got out of my short positions in the premarket at what I thought was a reasonable profit….I could have quadrupled those profits had I only held on for a couple hours more. Damn. I sulked most of the day looking at all the money I left on the table. And for the first time in a month, I sit in cash overnight….and still sulking.
That was some show though, wasn’t it? Volume was up on this down move giving it some conviction. Also, the VIX made a 12% move up, showing that risk was returning to the marketplace. A little strange though, was that all the indexes made more new highs today than yesterday. Weird! [if you use Tradestation you can watch new highs with symbol $52WHN for the NYSE]
It was also nice to see AIG getting bitch-slapped the last 2 days, backing off almost 40% from it’s highs on Friday. It lead all the financials down. But then again, there weren’t any sectors up today, although I thought I was helping the brewers & beverages sector as much as I could….hic.
Published on
August 27, 2009,
10:07 pm in
Daily and Trading.
Tags: AIG, BA, C, DUG, EDZ, FNM, FRE, IWM, SMN, TZA.
The bears couldn’t do it! The bulls couldn’t do it! So they’re all a bunch of wussies! There was no selling energy today, but with all the good news the bulls couldn’t get it together either. And volume has been decreasing each day this week….and why should it increase tomorrow, a Friday in late summer and a holiday weekend next week?
The markets went down big and recovered even bigger, but all said and done we closed near even. If BA and AIG hadn’t made any announcements, it would definitely been a down day. And isn’t it something that almost half the entire trading volume is trades in AIG FRE FNM and C? Since they are all government owned, is the government manipulating us? You bet. 
Why else would these junk stocks be up 100-300%? Wasn’t there a news conference recently when our President said, “Let me be perfectly clear, there will not be another down stock market day in my term.” [joke intended!]
Today was a very good day….all the short positions taken at the close yesterday were cashed out with great profits this morning. The big winner was IWM puts, DUG and SMN. EDZ and TZA were good, but not as great. And as I’ve been doing the last couple weeks, at the close I went short again via: DUG SMN DXD. Sure it hasn’t worked every day, but 7 out of 9 ain’t bad.
Friday morning we have Personal Income and Spending reports. Any guesses? Let’s hope it is not manipulated.
Published on
August 22, 2009,
10:00 am in
Opinions, Trading and Weekly.
Tags: 200ma, AIG, BAC, C, FNM, FRE, markets, UBS.
I stretched my luck just a bit too much. I was pummeled by the time I got up Friday morning. And since I was already in a bunch of hurt, I just went fishing (and a little bit of drinking, hic). Sure I was still positive for the week, but I was struck on how illogical it was for the market to go up. Existing home sales went up because a bunch of foreclosed homes were selling for under $100K and speculators could by them up for cash or 1st time buyers buying for some government money….the cash for 1st down payment program.
What else was crazy? Penny stocks, yes those pink sheet securities, have had their volume go up by 60 times what was trading at the March lows. And 25% of the entire stock market volume is in government stocks: C AIG BAC FNM FRE. Except for BAC, which may have some value to it, these are junk stocks.
Speaking of junk financial institutions, Guaranty Bank Is 81st to Fail ….read about the latest four banks to fail, as Friday’s are now FDIC Failure Fridays as bank failures are announced Friday afternoon after the market closes. Guaranty is the 10th largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Back to the markets….If you look at any chart of any index you’ll see that they have traveled pretty far from their 200 day moving average. And it seems that they like to hang around the 200 plus or minus a few percentage points. 
Here’s the S&P 500, click on the image to get a bigger one. We’ve had 2 breakouts from resistance levels in the last 5 weeks and we closed on Friday about 17% above the 200ma. My thinking that it is scared of heights and will need to get closer to its ground before bouncing up again. Now it won’t have to fall that much because as you can see, the 200ma is moving up…and even if the indexes come down a bit, the moving average will continue to move up. They don’t have to meet, just get a bit closer.
Finally, all you rich folk better close those Swiss bank accounts.
American citizens, who bank in Switzerland with UBS, have been given until September 23 to reveal their assets prior to facing possible criminal charges including jail time.
I’d ask for payment in chocolates and watches.
Okay, so after the non-farm payroll announcement I went short, thinking that this was not “good” news….I mean a quarter-million people got laid off in July!! I was thinking a pop, yes, but I also thought that sanity would quickly set in. But no! The markets kept going up and I was stopped out of BGZ and TNA fairly quickly.
Then I sat and watched….and got my courage back to TNA again…and I got my money back and then some. The fun for me today was AIG. I took a few trips both up and down…yeah, it was fast and furious!
I ended the day taking a short market position via QID and EDZ. We’ll see how Monday turns out. 
Later this weekend I’m hoping to find out why GS and BO (that’s President BO to you!) knew the numbers the day before. Do you think their doing some front-running 
Published on
March 22, 2009,
1:44 pm in
Opinions, Trading and Weekly.
Tags: AIG, DJ30, DXO, Fed, IWM, Nasdaq, SP500, SSO, URE, UYG.
I’m looking for an up week. I think there is enough upcoming news that may bring some optimism to the most downtrodden of bulls. And if the Arrogant Idiots and Goofballs (AIG) ever get out of the headlines, we may really takeoff
With announcements about toxic assets, TALF, FDIC and public-private partnerships, if this isn’t the start of a new bull, we should at least get a dramatic bear rally. We’ve also got some economic reports this week that may be a catalyst…Existing and New Home Sales, Durable Goods Orders, 4th Quarter GDP, Personal Income and Spending, as well as the weekly Jobless Claims.
Yes, I’m cheer leading for the bulls, at least in the mid-term….but I still watch the daily trend, either up or down, and base my daily trades on that. For the mid- and long-term in my IRAs and retirement accounts, I’ve been accumulating bit by bit, dollar-cost averaging new purchases, mostly in ETFs like the financials (UYG), real estate (URE), crude (DXO) and some indexes (SSO and IWM).
And speaking of indexes, they’ve had a great 7 days:
- The Russell 2000 up 21.7%
- The NASDAQ up 17.5%
- The S&P500 up 17.4%
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average up 14.4%
So last week the S&P500 got knocked down from its January lows and the Dow from its November lows. No big deal. I think the next time we approach they will breakthrough….maybe after the S&P tests its November lows and bounces.
OK, time to check out some basketball and a few Bud Lights
Well, it was an ugly close to the week, but we have strung together 2 back-to-back up weeks. Haven’t seen that for a while! So we had some profit-taking and some consolidation of the rally…that’s not a bad thing. It was a fairly sedate options expiration. Yes there was news from GS about their continuing exposure to AIG’s problems and some news about the FDIC getting low in reserves, but overall it was a quiet news day.
I’m gonna go through plenty of charts this weekend and also experiment making some new scans in Tradestation. Thought you might like this video on the S&P and the crude oil market from the MarketClub. It’s a video looking at two different markets that are headed in two different directions. Enjoy…and have a wonderfully relaxing weekend 
