We had less than a 9 point range in the S&P. The morning lingered on the red side and the afternoon was on the green side, closing in the green….barely. So even bad economic news, less than good earnings reports and Meredith Whitney saying she is more bearish than she was last year, the markets still mustered a decent day. Good thing I don’t use logic when analyzing markets. 
Today was different in that the US dollar rose along with oil, gold and the markets….not what we are used to seeing. Maybe that inverse relationship between the dollar and the markets may be slowing down.
I started a small position in TBT and in its January 45 call option. TBT is a short ETF of the 20+ year bonds, which means I expect interest rates to rise. But if rates rise the markets may want to stop rising.
We get Consumer Price Index, Housing Starts and Building Permits, all before the opening on Wednesday. I’ve added a few homebuilders to my watchlist and will see how they react. There may be a long or short play to be had. Some banks may be in play along with the homebuilders, but I’ll just stick with UYG, SKF, FAS and FAZ rather than individual bank stocks.
Time to catch a few zzzzzzz’s. 
Sometimes I amaze myself 
Yesterday I “hoped” for a down move and a reversal…and today I got it! Sorta. I was looking for a gap down (didn’t get it) and a strong reversal (didn’t get it). But the intent was there 
My DYY positions continued down until the announcement of the Treasury auction…DYY has a portion of its assets in 3-year treasuries. It recovered a bit. The other trades I made today was averaging down in price some GS Jul 135 calls. I was about to give up and just take my losses when the market, but more importantly, GS turned up and made a nice recovery. My GS call position is sitting very nicely in the green. GS earnings are next week, so I’d like to see a move up to a great earnings report.
Futures this evening are still excited about the move up…they are continuing to the upside. Let’s see how Asia and Europe will react. Maybe that little bounce to test the June highs 
And all you FAZ / FAS traders, don’t forget the 10-to-1 and 5-to-1 reverse splits are effective tomorrow. Time to make….or lose…a lot of money fast again.
I only made one trade today….bought FAS at $6.01 and sold it at $7.24. When you’re accustomed to watching 6 screens with charts and lists and indicators, it takes some adjusting to just using one laptop screen. Yes, my cable is still out and the prognosis calls for another 2 days of laptop trading 
Tradestation takes up 4 of my screens, TCnet another one and the last is used for communications, ala chat rooms, emails, browsing. And that all is divided between 2 computers. I can’t even get close using 1 laptop. You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone! And I won’t even get into the whole speed issue.
Many nice looking charts forming, but you never know until the market is open and digesting all of its surroundings. Until then, get ready to fight another day 
…don’t short a dull market. And boy was it dull, until about 2:30PM EDT, and wow, did it take off. Isn’t this a sign of a bull market when even bad news can’t bring it down? Bad retail sales, bad CPI (unless you don’t eat or use a car), bad earnings, or any news for that matter can give the bears enough energy to tank this thing.
I sat and watched through it all. Yesterday, I made several months worth of profits on DNDN, so I didn’t really have the energy to trade….yes, a hangover 
But, with a clearer head, I would have bought the banks, especially HBAN and FITB, or the ETFs: FAS, UYG or XLF. The morning provided for some nice entries and the afternoon provided for some nice profit taking. Yes, I paper trade when I don’t feel like using real money 
Volume was down today on the upside, while it was up yesterday on the downside…a bit disconcerting. The VIX continued down, now in the mid-30’s…a good sign. The market relieved some of that overbought pressure. The Trader’s Almanac is showing that tomorrow and Friday to be bullish. In fact, April Expiration Day has been up the last 10 out of 12. We’ll see how that goes.
Wasn’t that something….watching FAS and FAZ teetering back and forth, up and down. FAS closed higher than FAZ for the first time since they both started last November. Then GS came out with its earnings report today rather than the scheduled time tomorrow….and they were good….but it may have just put us a bit overbought. The futures this evening are down, as well as early Asian returns.
Since the cat is out of the bag on GS, we still have some important reports this week: INTC GOOG JPM C MAT among others. There’s also PPI and CPI reports coming out, along with the weekly jobless claims. Oh, and let’s not forget, it’s options expiration week I think we have a wild week on our hands.
All week, everybody, including myself, kept saying how Thursday was going to be a lackluster day with everyone taking off early for the holiday….something like, “not expecting huge moves on a no volume pre-holiday market.” Not only was Thursday’s volume the highest of the week, but also the highest in 3 weeks. No bull wanted to leave early for a holiday…at least not before buying some stock. And, the Nasdaq closed at a new high for the year The Dow and S&P500 still have another 10-12% to get there.
The banks and financials led the way after WFC surprised with news of record profits in the first quarter. Gee, weren’t they about to go under about 6 weeks ago? When money doesn’t cost you anything to use, even I could make a profit
Another neat thing about to happen, maybe, is that FAS and FAZ may reach parity. Again, 6 weeks ago, FAS was at $2.32 while FAZ was at $115.50. FAS has climbed to $8.71 while FAZ has fallen to $10.49….amazing. So FAS has quadrupled while FAZ has fallen “only” 92%.
I started writing this post on Saturday afternoon….then my PC crashed….hard! It is now Sunday night and I’m now re-installing all my software and trying to remember all my passwords. This is the first time I’ve experienced a crash which did not let me back in via safe-mode. It was just dead. It’s not my trading PC, so I’m still ready to go in the morning. But I do use a separate PC for my “communications”….web browsers, email, twitter, blogs, PalTalk, IM and the like. Technology, can’t live with it…can’t live without it.
…you were wrong Except for maybe 10 minutes in the last half hour when the indexes took a wicked move down, but recovered. Everything was working well today and I had nothing that ended in the red….stock-wise. But, while I had a pretty good day in the S&P futures (ESM09), I got whipsawed in that crazy ending. I actually ended down 3 tics for the day. Not bad, considering I was down 10 points at one time
The banks worked well, including UYG and FAS, and was lucky I took profits early, because the afternoon brought about some weakness in the financials. Maybe it was anticipation of that lousy employment report we should be getting Friday morning. But of course it will stink and the futures will go down…knee-jerk style I hope. And then maybe we can continue on our merry way up the green ladder. Since it’s Friday, I’ll probably watch more than trade…but I’ll learn something either way. Happy trading y’all.
The word of the day for tomorrow…FASB….they are meeting tomorrow, and what everyone will be looking for….whether the board decides to modify the current mark-to-market accounting rules. This will definitely have market altering affects…I suspect to the upside. And then on Friday we have the monthly Employment Report, which will probably be lousy, since ADP’s report today was lousy. But look, even after that lousy report the markets still climbed upwards.
I’m still holding on to banks and financials thru UYG and FAS…and hopefully they will get a boost tomorrow. Some other stocks on my watchlist: ONNN FOE STEC NTCT FEED.
Futures are taking off this evening, as well as early returns from the Asian markets. The Advance/Decline line has been running hard for the advancers….and I think we’re in for an up day 
Published on
March 31, 2009,
9:30 pm in
Daily and Trading.
Tags: BAC, C, ES, FAS, FITB, HBAN, JPM, MSFT, SP500, UYG, volume, WFC.
…In a low volume scenario, the market can skin you alive if you’re short. And boy could you hear the screams around lunch time And after the cash close at 4PM, the S&P futures started diving to the tune if 15 points and then continued to fall when the futures re-opened for another 15 points. It’s been an ugly couple of hours in the futures this evening.
So, does this show us what to expect tomorrow? If I knew that I’d be rich Early overseas markets are up, but that may be more of a reaction to what happened during the cash market hours here in the US.
Banks did do very well today: UYG FAS FITB HBAN C BAC WFC JPM and all the rest. And of course, MSFT got an analyst upgrade and popped a good 5% today. But, like the futures, the banks were showing weakness in the after hours session.
So I’ll leave you with this: the Trader’s Almanac says “First day in April, Dow up 11 of last 14. Up 300 points in 2000 and 400 last year (2008).” Sounds good, yes? But it also said “Last trading day in March, Dow down 10 of last 14.” And we know that didn’t carry today. We’ll see. Happy Trading
Again, after a fairly mediocre trading day, the bulls come alive near the end, driving the indexes up, up and away. Something says we need to pullback and consolidate a bit. But it is the end of the month and end of the quarter…and soon the start of another earnings season. I’m thinking a non-dramatic grind up, for another 30-50 points in the S&P500 that may take a couple of weeks.
I had over 200 stocks that crossed up through their 200sma today. Haven’t seen anything like that in a very long time…a year maybe! And several more that are just shy of their 200ma. Does anyone think we may have seen the bottom of this whole mess? Maybe March 9th was THE bottom. Of course we won’t know for several months…you can only call the bottom after the fact. The top wasn’t called for several months after October 2007, almost a year actually. They couldn’t call the bear until the markets fell 20% off their highs. Well, the bull is now 20% above its lows. With a little bit of time and a test of those levels, we may be able to call this a bull rally
I learned from several of my mistakes and had a good day trading. Got my money back from the S&P futures and am still holding some financials like UYG and FAS…but I took most of the profits and have just small positions left, thinking that money managers will want to keep their value up to at least end the quarter looking smarter than they did at the end of last quarter
Happy Trading!
I was a pretty crappy trader today…I kept getting stopped out in the S&P futures (ES) and my trade in UYG was also in the red. But come about 3:30 PM I was seeing green all over
Seems like the banks took off faster than all the other sectors, so UYG and FAS screamed up and FAZ tanked. And as I always do, I reviewed my trades of the day this evening, and I found all my mistakes were because I didn’t stick to my rules…..I chased some trades….didn’t set a target for others…..just went and bought or sold at the market when wild fluctuations made me scared I would miss something. I lucked out that a short-covering rally took off near the end, but I still consider it an unsuccessful day. I write down and describe each trade, highlight them on my charts, and learn a lot about what not to do tomorrow. Making money is nice, but luck will not make me a successful trader. I get a great amount of satisfaction if the trade goes off according to plan….all the money does is pay the bills!
Futures are still continuing up this evening, with ES up another 8 points. Asian markets are up also. Now to see if this continues into the U.S. morning. Happy trading…..and if you don’t have a plan, don’t trade 
That’s how much the S&P500 went up today. And although I traded the S&P futures (ESM09) today….I didn’t get that. In matter of fact, by the end of the day, I was barely in the green, up 4.5 points. I had a tough time picking some good, stable setups. At my worst point I was down -10.75 points and struggled to recover. It was tiring 
I did do fairly well on the equities side…40% on FAS and 35% on HW. So it was a good overall day, but I’m feeling like I just drove a Jeep off-road with no shocks and no seatbelt for 6 hours
I surprised myself in that my weekend cheerleading actually paid off…..lucky, not talented. Now, if we don’t see too much profit taking, maybe a small inside day/doji/harami, even a couple days consolidating, I would be very encouraged. The S&P500 is up 21% from its lows….and by definition, that’s a bull market. The Nasdaq is up 22%….just need the Dow to creep up a percentage or two and we’d be on our way across the board.
And I’m sure that all this market enthusiasm is based on the simple renaming of toxic-assets to legacy-loans….it sounds just so much nicer 
