Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Page 3 of 3

The time draws near

Published on April 7, 2010, 10:33 pm in Opinions and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , .

This was an ugly day…low volume rallies and high volume breakdowns. Are we heading for a correction or a crash? I can sure ask the question, but I have no idea about the answer…I can only play ‘em one day at a time.

I’m still sticking with my bearish positions via TZA and TWM along with some QQQQ puts and VIX calls…and boy was that stance a pain today. But it worked out by the end of the session. Patience pays. It was a great 10-year auction today, but offset by an ugly consumer credit report. The credit report won…or is that lost…with all the indexes ending in the red.

The worry over PIGS is back…just in time for an ECB Monetary Policy meeting on Thursday. And back in the homeland we have Retail Sales, Initial Jobless Claims, a 30-year bond auction and last but not least, Tiger returns to the game. So if traders are not busy worrying about interest rates or growing debt, they’ll be watching TV. 8O

Look, No Wires!

Published on April 6, 2010, 10:44 pm in Trading. Closed Tags: , .

The market is levitating on a stage, but I can’t see the wires that are lifting it. And this is a dinner cabaret, so isn’t it fun to go to dinner when someone else is buying? Isn’t that what the FOMC is doing? Free money! Free drinks! Suck it up suckers!

I’ve come to the conclusion that the market is simply never ever going to go down for more than one day (or a few hours) in a row.

Okay, enough of that BS.

So I’m still wondering what is driving the indexes up. It doesn’t matter because all you can do is react to what the market is doing…..not what you want or wish it to do. 8O

I sold the rest of the DRYS calls for 40% and UNG calls for 81%. It would have been nice if I had loaded up, but it just doesn’t happen that way. I’m happy with those calls, but still dragging along some losers….TZA TWM just waiting for the highly anticipated correction….maybe.

Although it’s a light news week, tomorrow we have Mortgage Apps, Consumer Credit and another Treasury auction….oh yeah, and Bernanke has a speech. Let’s see if tomorrow does anything different.

Green Monday, what else is new?

Published on April 5, 2010, 9:27 pm in Trading. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

It was such a low volume day I think anyone buying more than 1000 shares of a stock actually moved the market! 8)   The ES didn’t hit 1 million contracts until after the cash close. Sure Europe was closed as was about half of the Asian markets, but still, I usually look for 2 million by 3PM EST. Trading was slower than a Christmas eve!

I digress. The indexes closed in the green but it was a very boring day. I covered half of my UNG calls for 62% and half of my DRYS calls for 23%. My VIX calls are about worthless, but I still have 9 trading days to see if they perk up. TZA is looking pretty crappy but I added a few shares near the close. In keeping with my bearish bent on the markets I also added QQQ puts and TWM calls. I’ll see how far that gets me this week. Oh, and VG which I bought about a month ago, finally turned green.

It’s reading stuff like the following that gets me shaking my head and wondering “why?”
Huge 25% hike for small businesses kills New York jobs.

Office vacancy rate hits 16-year high

Tomorrow we get FOMC minutes and find out how the Treasury’s 3-year note auction behaves. Today’s auction was pretty good, with the 10-year interest rate hopping above 4% briefly, but did not cause any consternation in the equities. Let’s see if the world returns to trading on Tuesday.

I’m confused but not alone

Published on April 4, 2010, 9:16 pm in Opinions and Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

If you’ve been making the rounds you have to be in the group of dazed and confused. I’d say about 75% of the blogs I read are saying:

We’re oversold, fatigued, low volume, too many call buyers, bullish/bearish/neutral, [add your own words]. We should have a correction here but we could still move up/sideways a bit….or a small correction before new highs…or new highs before a small correction.

The other 25% are busy with their new iPads. :lol:

My opinion is that the news has not been good. Sure, markets were happy with the jobless claims and non-farm payroll reports, but you need to review the last 18 months of reports. Let me put it this way: if you put a cup of sugar into the ocean, would it taste sweet? $%@&* No!

On the flip side, my short positions have been getting chopped into teeny tiny bits and fed to the bulls. It’s not only the shorts but the longs also. I try one direction and get stopped…try the other way and get stopped again. I’m about 80% in a cash position and have a small short position via TZA and small long positions in DRYS and UNG.

Monday brings us ISM Non-Manufacturing and US Pending Home Sales, Australia has an interest rate decision and the UK markets are closed….and the futures are all gung ho green with the ES up 6 points from Thursday’s close. Indexes may still show a holiday-like volume so I’ll keep my cash position for another day.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

Working on some new stuff

Published on April 3, 2010, 4:35 pm in Tools. Closed

I’m working on a new website, this one, just moving the old subdomain to its own domain name: WTFtrading.com. Right now it’s sitting as a subdomain on my consulting company website, trading.ValueManagementPartners.com. Besides being a very long domain name, I’m paying more and more attention to What the $%@&* Trading! and I wanted to give it its own domain name and set it up for some new things, like video and more interaction with you guys. I also want to get into more details with my trading such as scans, indicators and all the particular things I look at for making a trade…that’s why I’m working on the “How” page.

It will take a while, I’m trying to clean it up and put some useful info and services onto the site. For now I’m posting duplicate entries so that you don’t have to change anything. But if you have any ideas and thoughts I would sure appreciate hearing from you.

I’m looking to make a switchover within the month, but you’ll be the first to know right here. And I’ll keep you updated as I work on it. If you want to keep tabs on me, you can just stay right here What the $%@&* Trading!. If you are already following at the old site, I’m still updating it first until I’m not.

Thanks for your support, comments and ideas. :!:

Is it too late for jobs?

Published on April 2, 2010, 1:32 pm in Opinions. Closed Tags: .

So some real people are getting temporary census jobs and I’m not sure about 81,000 birth/death model jobs, but is it not enough and too late? Pay Garnishments Rise as Debtors Fall Behind is some sort of signal….but garnishments only work if you have a job. So this is the real signal: Sharp Increase in March in Personal Bankruptcies. People are using their tax returns to pay for a bankruptcy attorney! What the $%@&*!

So with all those people out of jobs there must be a lot of empty buildings around. Warren Says to Expect Commercial Real Estate Trouble.

“So, I think we have another very serious problem that we’re going to have to resolve over the next three years.” Ms. Warren is concerned that the majority of these loans are concentrated in the nation’s mid-sized banks. Warren told Bartiromo, “We now have 2,988 banks — mostly midsized, that have these dangerous concentrations in commercial real estate lending.”

So what I keep thinking about is…..why is the stock market so happy?

Where did all those jobs come from?

Published on April 2, 2010, 10:18 am in Opinions. Closed Tags: .

You would think with all the computers, databases and real-time connectivity, the government could come up with a real Non-Farm Payroll number. But no…they still have to do models. 81K of today’s jobs number was estimated from a model: CES Net Birth/Death Model

Happy iPad

Published on April 2, 2010, 9:46 am in Opinions and Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

Although the headline reads: “US Payrolls Rose 162,000 In March, Less Than Expected,” there were a lot less census jobs than were expected, as the private sector added 123K jobs. That’s a good number, even though we need 5 times as many to make any real impact on unemployment. The unemployment rate 9.7% stayed the same but the number of workers unemployed for greater than 6 months rose. The “real” unemployment number rose to 16.9%. Once the headline was released the futures took a dive but quickly recovered when the census and private sector numbers were released. The ES futures closed in the green, up 4.25 points from Thursday’s cash close.

Friday’s report was largely in line with expectations, but economists noted it may be difficult to gauge the health of the labor market for the near future. The hiring of thousands of part-time census workers will continue through end of the summer, inflating the numbers. –NY Times

While we wait for markets to open on Monday (Sunday night for you futures traders). the other big news is iPad. The TV news is already showing people lining up at Apple stores for Saturday’s release.

Looking at the iPad From Two Angles

Laptop Killer? Pretty Close

Have a happy iPad weekend…..oh yeah, and a Happy Easter!