Wild Weekly Wrap-Up, Topping or Popping?
by Phil - November 14th, 2009 12:02 pm
This was an annoying week for bulls and bears alike.
We had a very exciting day on Monday, topping out at 10,248 but I didn’t like the way we got there (low-volume, commodity rally, as noted in David Fry’s chart) and, when pressed for a prediction on TV that evening, I had to say that I felt that we were more likely to be down by Thanksgiving than up with a possible Santa Claus bounce into Christmas. What we did get for the remainder of the week was very choppy action on even lower volume.
I had mentioned in last week’s "Wrong-Way Weekly Wrap-Up" that we were partying like it’s 1999 as we broke through Dow 10,000 and S&P 1,080, despite rapidly deteriorating fundamentals. Stocks are being bought because they are going up in price (much like commodities), not because there is any actual demand for them and that is very clear from the rapidly declining index volume as we run back into resistance at S&P 1,100.
Since early September our upside targets for the indexes have been: Dow 10,087, S&P 1,096, Nasdaq 2,173, NYSE 7,204 and Russell 623 and nothing has happened to change our fundamental outlook for the better so the closer we get to those levels, the LESS comfortable we are taking bullish positions. In fact, yesterday as we got our mid-day spike to 10,300, I told members that it was sorely tempting to just cash out all bullish positions and take 20% of the portfolio 100% bearish with a 10% stop. Rather than mess around with a mix of positions, going fully bearish can allow for some spectacular gains if we crash and stopping out with a 50% loss would suck - but a breakout like that, well above Dow 11,000 and S&P 1,200 would certainly give us reason to be more bullish.
As I concluded last week: "We’re generally not happy until we see Russell 600 and the Dow Transports over 4,000 (now 3,852) and we took a 55% bearish stance into the weekend because we’ll feel a lot less silly being burned by a move up than we would if we weren’t bearish enough for a move down. It would be nice to be able to make more of a commitment but the bulls clearly have the bears cowering in fear so we’ll just patiently wait and see how far they can play things out." Not much has changed since then and we are still waiting to confirm…
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Testy Tuesday - Topping or Popping?
by Phil - October 13th, 2009 8:15 am
I told you yesterday would be fun!
Will today be funner? Is funner a word? As you know, I have been determined to get more bullish and our Watch List is growing every day as I add more and more undervalued companies that still have room to fly if we are truly going to run the S&P back over 1,100 this year. We remain skeptical but you can be skeptical and still make money, as you can see from Corey’s (Afraid to Trade) very nice S&P Chart, you can do very well in this market buying the dips OR selling the tops - we kind of like to do both…
Despite the low volumes, buyers are clearly in control of this market and, in Member Chat yesterday, I compared the situation to having a bet on the Raiders, who lost 44 to 7 on Sunday. You can start out with a bet on the Raiders (in this case, the Bears) but there’s a certain point, perhaps when the 3rd consecutive possession by the Giants (Bulls) ends in a TD, that you have tgo admit you aren’t going to win.
You have a few choices at that point: You can be a perma-Raider and keep betting more and more on your team (not smart); You can swallow your losses and leave the stadium; You can swallow your losses and stay on the sidelines and watch the game; Or you can switch sides and start betting on the Giants, maybe even recovering some of what you lost. You can keep some of your useless-looking Raiders bets, just in case a miracle occurs but what’s the sense of not betting on a clear winner when it’s right in front of you? Even if you are skeptical, that can be useful as it keeps you out of trouble as you should be wise enough to take your profits off the table.
I never understand the "fan" behavior of market players. If you see the market going up and up and up and up - perhaps it’s time to make a few up bets. Bears don’t earn loyalty rewards or get frequent-complainer points from the market so, if your "team" is getting trampled, it’s OK to switch sides - at least for a while - no one will think any less of you. In the case of our bull-market bets, we have a great opportunity to switch sides at a very significant line this week, the 2009 highs of Dow…
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Thrilling Thursday Morning
by Phil - April 30th, 2009 8:48 am
8,200!
Finally we make the target we discussed since the beginning of the month but, sadly, it took another shot of Federal stimulus to get us there. Now what? I did say at the time that I thought it would be a short-term top as 8,200 is the 5% rule bottom of the 8,650 mid-range (8,217 to be exact) that we expected to get back to in May but we didn’t expect to get there without a pullback test of 7,632. Heck, we haven’t even tested 7,900 properly since our very brief visit to 7,699 on the 21st. I didn’t count that as a test as it was brief and 1% off our mark but, since then, the market sure has acted like it aced the test and is ready to move up to the next set of levels.
As we can see from David Fry’s chart of the S&P, the S&P is hitting very serious resistance at about the 885 mark and that ties right in with Dow 8,250 and Nas 1,717, which is our first US index to hit the 40% mark. Our other 40% levels will take some work as we’re looking for Dow 8,413, S&P 946, NYSE 6,232 and Russell 514. The Dow and the Russell have the best chance of getting there but we’ll have to see as, at the moment, the Nasdaq is more of an outlier at the moment. We need to keep an eye on the Nasdaq leadership: GOOG, AAPL, RIMM, AMZN, EBAY, ORCL, INTC… for signs of weakness. If they can’t keep it going, the entire market rally may falter here.
XOM missed by .03 this morning but still earned .92 per share and seem to be forgiven for it. While profits are down 58% from last year, last year was $10.9Bn so $4.6Bn may be disappointing but oil back over $50 does allow the company to project better times ahead (gee, maybe that’s WHY oil is at $51.50 this morning). I wouldn’t touch them with a 10-foot pole as they did beat revenue forecasts by 20% ($64Bn vs $54Bn) which indicates the company is doing a lousy job of controlling costs and may face disaster if the economy doesn’t improve or if oil collapses.
While earnings have been pretty good, expectations have been really low. This is like getting all excited about a limbo contest at the beginning, when all the kids are walking under the bar that’s…
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Weekend Wrap-Up - Dynamic Portfolio Adjustments!
by Phil - March 14th, 2009 11:40 am
Was that a great week or what?
No really, I’m asking as I’m not sure yet… We had a great rally once we got Monday out of the way but, all in all, it was a hell of a lot of work to get back to where we were last options expiration day (Feb 20th). We nailed the market turn to a tee, beginning with my calls to go long on QLD, HOV and FAS while shorting the SKF at $250 (now $138) in last Friday’s appearance on LiveStock. In fact, my closing comment in Friday morning’s post was: "We EXPECT a 400-point BOUNCE along this downtrend so we’re not even impressed with anything less than 7,000 next week."
We did a little further investigation in member chat yesterday and decided that we need to break 7,450 on the Dow to actually be impressed next week. Our main concern is we get a quick spike up to that level and then a rejection that sends us racing down to the bottom so we will be positioning to guard against that next week. At the moment, we ended the day slightly bullish but would not be surprised by a drop back to the 7,000 line and we’re positioned for that, as we sold the 3/31 $72 puts against our longer puts. The $2.25 we collected from those pays for us to roll up our long protection 400 Dow points but, to the downside, put a break on our insurance at the 7,000 line (the point at which they go in the money).
By contrast, last Friday, my advice to members was to cover the long DIA puts with $70 puts at $4.32. Those are now .61 and the profits from that already paid for more than half the cost of our long June puts. This is very important to understand as we often talk about being 50/50 or 60/40 bearish but when you can offset 1/2 the cost of your 60% bearish side like this, it makes it very easy to go with the flow on a market rally. The only other stock I picked on Friday was AMZN as $62.50 for reasons I elaborated in the live show, they finished up near the highs at $68.63 but the FAS as $2.85 was a real winner, finishing up at $5.15 yesterday - not bad for a week’s work.
Of course nothing says lovin’ like a $110 dive…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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