Tag Archive for 'UYG'

Another nothing day

Published on November 17, 2009, 11:02 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

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. :cry:

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. 8O

Wild Ride!

Published on October 27, 2009, 12:14 am in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

All the plays I was thinking about last night were good: UUP TBT UYG, and I was able to work them in both directions. The markets were really wild as they started to the upside and then came crashing down. It was a trader’s market, but also very tiring.

I think the tech issues have been resolved this evening, Be back tomorrow. G’nite. 8)

Banks continue to close

Published on October 26, 2009, 7:46 am in Intraday, News, Opinions and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

FDIC Friday brought the closing of 7 more banks, bringing the list to 106, the most since 1992 and there is still 2 more months to go through.

Bank failures hit 106 for year; many more are weak

All this goes on while the banks and the government get and make more money.

2009 US economy: largest transfer of wealth to financial/political elite in global history.

I think I’ll be looking at bank and dollar and interest rate ETFs for some action today: TBT UUP UYG XLF. Futures were up overnight but began to weaken as the spotlight turned to European, and now, U.S. markets.

Reality sets in?

Published on September 23, 2009, 10:13 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

It was an uneventful trading day, until the FOMC meeting concluded a little after 2PM…..then, well, it got real interesting. The markets were making a slow grind upward prior to the announcement and then quickly took off upward doubling its day’s gain in a matter of minutes. You could hear the bears groaning as their stops went pop, pop, pop.

Then reality set in as traders realized there was not any revealing or new news in the Fed statement! Duh! Haven’t we already priced in all this bullshit? The markets then spent the next 90 minutes diving fast and hard. You could smell steak grilling as the bulls had their stops popping on the way down.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I have maintained fairly bearish positions for the last month…..and you know that for the past week I’ve had problems with my internet connection. That mixture put me in a precarious position today. I was nursing my position most of the day between internet outages. About 2 o’clock, prior to me setting some emergency stops, I lost my connection…cable internet down….cable TV up (it is the same cable isn’t it?). So I’m cussing up a storm as I was watching CNBC and waiting for the internet to come back. It took about 15 minutes this time and I’m still sweating. My positions were all down TZA QID and UYG puts….but not as far down as I thought they would be with that market run up. So I let them stay…..and by golly gee willickers, they ended up smelling like roses. Yeah baby! :lol:

I did close OPXA early in the day after a fantastic move. It was drowning well underwater last night, but resurrected in the pre-market and reached its high of the day early in the session. After taking profits it had a very nice and orderly pullback and re-entered. So I have one long position in a sea of shorts.

Tomorrow we have jobless claims, always a market moving number, and Durable Orders on Friday. So there is still action to be had this week. If it acts out like my dreams, I’ll see a corrective action this week before we get some quarter ending window dressing. Then a nice crash in October. Well, it could just happen that way y’know. 8O

It’s a Duck….

Published on September 21, 2009, 10:50 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

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….

Again….

Published on April 15, 2009, 6:55 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

…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 :oops: 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.

Buy the dips?

Published on April 5, 2009, 3:24 pm in Trading and Weekly. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Have you noticed how the market sells off just slightly and indicators correct to oversold…ready to turn again and go up? And that’s a bit different in our previous bear market rallies when volume was big on the downside and small on the upturns. That’s a big change from a couple months ago when we needed to see a 400 point dive to nudge the indicators into oversold, then some low volume upticks to get it overbought. And we haven’t seen the VIX with a 30-handle close since January.

On Friday we closed having the best 4-week gain in 70 years :!: And the big markets have closed above major resistance lines. So if the Nasdaq can stay above 1600 and the S&P500 above 800, I think we’re still good to go…to the upside. Oh yeah, and the Dow above 8000 ;-)

The only bad part is that people are getting bullish. Yes it makes us all feel good, but it also usually means a bear is waiting for us around the corner. Yes, trader sentiment is a contrarian indicator. So have we started a bull market or do we still need to test that “devil low” in the S&P in early March…666. I don’t think that would look good for the Prez and his administration (nor the Plunge Protection Team).

This week has been outstanding for my long-term/IRA accounts, more so than for my trading account. I try to siphon off trading profits and put them into long-term accounts…mainly because the retirement program as an entrepreneur is lousy :oops: But, that aside, I made some wonderful profits on DNDN, UYG and URE this week. DNDN is a speculative play waiting for the end of April for FDA announcements. But, on Friday some “announcement of an announcement” made the stock pop and I had to take advantage of it for a quick 100 percent return. Still have a position waiting for the FDA rulings that may give me a 1000% return in seconds. While I do trade URE and UYG on a regular basis, I’ve had some sitting for a month since those outrageous lows in the beginning of March….and again I just have to take some off the table when they double.

My trading account only had one “real” winner in RIMM….who had spectacular earnings report and guidance. This was a strict earnings play. It was tempered by some losing plays in the S&P futures (ESM09). Every loser was a counter-trend play. That is going short when the index was long….and vice versa. Monday was my worst day when I kept trying to go long even though the index was putting in a trend day down:!:

So before I go looking for some new plays, I have to review my mistakes and successes in all my trades. I also review some winners that I didn’t find in my scans, and see if I can modify them to pick up some of them. It seemed quite a few have slipped through the cracks for me anyway. Check these tickers out…I hope you caught them: TM HMC SHI JKHY DGS ZZ ASH SNE. Check out their charts. If you had got into any of them a month ago, you would be breaking the bank :lol:

I’m going to work on refining some scans, then check into the futures markets and the early Asian market open. Happy Trading.

If you were anything but long,

Published on April 2, 2009, 9:25 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

…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 :oops:

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.

FASB

Published on April 1, 2009, 9:10 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

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 :mrgreen:

Never short a dull market…

Published on March 31, 2009, 9:30 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

…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 8O 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 :oops: 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 :!:

Banks down, Banks up

Published on March 30, 2009, 9:45 pm in Daily and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Well it was a rough start that lasted all day. I couldn’t get a good handle on the S&P futures (ES) so I didn’t play along at all. The only trade I made was adding to my UYG position late in the day.

The big banks took it on the chin, and thus, FAZ really took off. But not all the banks were hurting. FITB SBNY ABCW are a few of the regional banks that did alright on a down day. A couple other tickers were doing well for an ugly day: SHFL EEE ARIA ANV QCOR. Now to see if they pan out tomorrow.

Overall it was another low volume down day, but support levels did hold, like $30.00 for the QQQQs and the 34ema for both the DJ30 and SP500. I’d say the low volume pullback is not bad…at least not yet. Futures are in the green this evening and so are overseas markets, at little bit anyway. So let’s watch those banks again and see if they start moving up

Rough start?

Published on March 29, 2009, 8:53 pm in Trading and Weekly. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Friday was a mediocre consolidation day, with the lowest volume day in the month of March…but then, the entire week was low volume. The banks were a bit lethargic and the rest of the markets followed suit.

But, trading was profitable :-) I had several great trades in ES, ending the week in positive territory for my P/L….which barely made up some lousy trades in the banking sector. I had a run in with FAZ during the week, which left a bad taste, but made it up with UYG. Still holding some UYG, but stops are in at breakeven…so it will end up a good trade no matter what it decides to do on Monday.

Some financial stocks came up on my scans this evening which I’ve added to my watch list for tomorrow: NFP TEN AIB WBS … along with some techs: RNWK ATML TNL.

Futures are moving to the downside this evening, along with the overseas markets. The government is showing its hand in business management, firing GM CEO Wagoner. I think we start off on shakey ground Monday morning :-(