一个笨蛋的股指交易记录-------地狱级炒手

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Tuesday, April 25, 2006Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before
The saturation of green on my screen from my short positions is my simplest, favorite indicator that things are clearly going the way of the bears. (Da Bears....) Lovely stuff.

Crude has double-topped. Energy stocks are completely exhausted. And hyperbolic insanity like CRS and TIE are reversing. Beautiful.

Let's take a look at a few charts.

First is the Dow. I want you to look at something interesting (particularly you, hurricane5.....) I've highlighted in green all the bullish rises over the past 18 months or so. Do you notice a trend here?

(1) The length of each rally is progressively shorter
(2) The gain of each rally is, by and large, progressively smaller.

The most recent one is just pathetic. The "rally" lasted three days. (Constant reminder: click any image to see a much larger one).


Crude oil has reached a complete saturation point in the media. Everyone is talking about the spectacular rise in crude, in gold, in copper, silver.........and, as all good contrarians know, when every flippin' schmoe on the planet is talking about how high or low something is, it's probably time to fade the position. Crude tried to push higher today, but went limp fast.....


Look at Genentech (DNA). Head & shoulders patterns do not come much cleaner than this. I could absolutely see this heading down to $60.


A similar pattern, mentioned here many times already, is Express Scripts (ESRX). I still have no clue what this company does (and I take a certain amount of pride in that, being a pure technician). It's a stupid company name - - do they write screenplays rapidly or something? No matter. It's headin' down.


And from our Tilting At Windmills department, I humbly offer a NTRI chart once more. This dynamo rocketed higher today based on blowout earnings. I dunno; looking at the trendline, I'd like to think it's reaching its potential at this point. But I've been wrong on this one more than once before!




at 4/25/2006 9 insightful comments
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Friday, April 21, 2006Bigmouth Strikes Again
What a week! In spite of the Dow going up consistently this week, it seems broader markets are petering around. The NASDAQ in particular, falling over 1% today, is definitely showing signs of age.

Below is the $SPX with Bollinger Bands. As you can see, it's way up at the tippy-top of both the resistance trendline and its Bands. It seems a softening from these prices is just about inevitable.


The Dow Utilities, which is critical to watch since it is inversely correlated to interest rates, has its head & shoulders pattern plainly intact. I've put an arrow indicating where it has not overcome its downward-sloping trendline. The green shaded area is the price target I've set.


One contrary chart I've got is $XMI (the American Major Market index) which, if it breaks above the line shown, would give a bullish signal. It has been repelled by this line in the past, although it made a weak attempt above it recently.


Express Scripts (ESRX) looks better than ever as a short. It failed to penetrate its descending trendline, and it gave a bearish engulfing pattern today. This on top of the important fact that it's in a marvelous H&S formation.


Lastly is Unibanco Uniao De Bancos (UBB), which is in a similar pattern as ESRX. Same reasons, same prediction.


Enjoy the weekend, everyone!


at 4/21/2006 11 insightful comments
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Thursday, April 20, 2006What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
First, for those convinced I only do bearish picks, I'd like to refer tofor BankRate (symbol RATE) where I suggested buying it when it was about $20. It has, in the 10 months since then, shot up about 150%. Not bad for a bear, eh?



I'm going to let the charts do most of the talking now. Here's the $SPX. As you can see, it couldn't cross above its well-established resistance line. It seems the recent (admittedly lusty) push higher is out of steam.


Gold had a big down day today, after doing little put soaring the past couple of years. Prices don't go up forever, I guess, even in manic commodity markets.


Here's the NDX, which spent almost the entire day in the red, in spite of the Dow being up over 100 points earlier in the day. Weakness here is key. As I've said repeatedly, a cross beneath the lower trendline would be great news for us bears.

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Here's the NDX, which spent almost the entire day in the red, in spite of the Dow being up over 100 points earlier in the day. Weakness here is key. As I've said repeatedly, a cross beneath the lower trendline would be great news for us bears.


The Dow Transports seem to have topped out as well.


And the beloved VIX......can you say "overconfident"? Seems to me the market is counting on perpetually higher prices. The fear factor is just about nil at this point.


Below are the current symbols for my potential shorts (upper list) and current shorts (well, actually, they're puts, but it's close enough).


at 4/20/2006 5 insightful comments
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Wednesday, April 19, 2006How Soon Is Now?
These are the times that try bears' souls.

Oh, my fellow doom-and-gloomers, it's been a tough few days! Indeed, it's been tough since, oh, about October 2002! Ah, well. Hope springs eternal in the savage breast. And the one bullish glimmer in my black bearish heart, the stock of my employer, has been up quite a bit lately. So at least that's going well!

Let's start off with a couple of interesting short picks. One is pretty risky and the other is fairly obvious.

The risky one is Allegheny Technologies, the specialty metal producer which has been on a huge tear for three years, up over 2,500%! Check out the trendline I've drawn, which was violated a year ago. The prices have finally pushed their way back up to the underside of this ascending resistance line, and this "kissing the underbelly" represents a relatively safe place to short the stock. I'd put in a stop price of $75, because this is a very strong stock.


Another reason ATI might be a good short is that, on the whole, volume has been getting lighter. Notice the line drawn on the volume graph below and see how volume has been generally waning in the face of the stock's ascent. To be fair, the dollar volume of the stock is probably pretty steady.


One short I've had a while which is doing nicely - and continues to look promising (particularly considering its fall during the last couple of super bullish days) is McKesson (MCK). It's a lovely topping dome pattern, pure and simple.


I'm watching the Nasdaq 100 ($NDX) very closely, because a fall-away from the saucer pattern being built would be very bearish. Notice how the prior two saucer patterns were much, much bigger than the current one.......and they didn't even go up that much even when complete. What we want to see is (a) a failure for the saucer to form and (b) subsequent to that, a cross beneath the trendline shown here.

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I'm watching the Nasdaq 100 ($NDX) very closely, because a fall-away from the saucer pattern being built would be very bearish. Notice how the prior two saucer patterns were much, much bigger than the current one.......and they didn't even go up that much even when complete. What we want to see is (a) a failure for the saucer to form and (b) subsequent to that, a cross beneath the trendline shown here.


Lastly is the Dow Utilities ($UTIL, which has the ETF of UTH). The monster rally yesterday, fueled by relief over interest rate increases, pushed the price of this back to its neckline. It's getting soft again now, and I remain convinced the target shown in shaded green is going to be met.


at 4/19/2006 6 insightful comments
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Tuesday, April 18, 2006Fibonacci Friendly Apple
First off, what in God's name is happening in the market today? It's acting hysterical! I admit I don't watch CNBC, but is there some wild rumor flying around? The market's been higher all day, but at one point it absolutely strapped on turbo blasters and soared higher, only to flip around and given back a lot of the recent gain (make no mistake, it's still up big-time today, but it's acting like a maniac).

Anyway, that's not what this post was about. I wanted to offer an example of what I call a Fibonacci friendly stock. In this case, Apple Computer (AAPL).

Not long ago, I pointed out that Apple was at a resistance point and that it would make a fairly safe short. This turned out well. One reader sent me a nice note saying he had made 40% on the puts for this based on the suggestion. Anyway, as you can see from the daily chart below, AAPL does tend to "cling" and "bounce off" its resistance lines. I've highlighted some areas in particular.


What's cool about these is that they make great exit points too. Take a look at this graph, which is the minute-by-minute chart of AAPL over the recent past:


I've marked five levels on the intraday chart where AAPL does this "bounce." For the recent short suggestion, the ideal time to close it out would have been the area marked as "5". As you can see, it touched the resistance line perfect before flipping around higher.

Fibs definitely don't work with all securities, but when you find one that is Fibonacci friendly, it tends to consistently behave that way.


at 4/18/2006 4 insightful comments
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Monday, April 17, 2006Oil, Gold, Copper Stratospheric
I don't usually look much at commodities in this blog, but they've been going so insane lately it's worth a look. Remember that clicking any image makes a much larger image show up for greater detail.

Gold has been the talk of the town for a couple of years now. Here is a chart going back to the late 1970s, which includes the run up to about $875. Judging from the Fibonaccis, it seems that gold is well on its way to the $690 level.


But the real show is in copper, which is reaching levels never seen before. This kind of action would be the equivalent of Gold pushing past $2,000 per ounce. Fellow technician Michael Kahn makes a strong case for copper's rise to point to big-time inflation in our future.


Lastly, crude oil has also been pushing into never-before-seen levels. Will it cross into $80? Impossible to say. My recent bearishness on the oil services sector has not served me well, as crude's push higher and higher provides excellent support to bulls of these stocks.


Returning to the stock market......it seems we'll finally have a good reason for the market to snap out of its indecision....earnings! This week there will be hundreds of earnings reports, including IBM, Motorola, and Yahoo on Tuesday, Apple, JP Morgan, and Intel on Wednesday, and Google (plus an ungodly number of others...) on Thursday. This should provide for a lot of fireworks as the outlook on these companies clears.

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The Dow 30 continues to be weak, clearing falling below and closing below the short-term trendline. The market is not clearly bearish until and unless it crosses below the medium-term trendline shown beneath it. The circled area indicates the close below the short-term trendline.


A few weeks ago, the stock market did make an attempt to push higher, but as you can see in the chart below, it was a flimsy attempt. This particular index is the American Major Markets ($XMI), and although it did cross above the resistance line here, the crossover was weak and short-lived. It has since slunked lower, yielding doubt on whether this pattern will ever truly become bullish.


One specific short suggestion from a reader of this blog is Kinder Morgan (KMI), which has a nice pattern, as shown below. Both the major ascending trendline has been broken and a good-looking topping pattern (which will be confirmed if it crosses the horizontal line shown) are in place.


at 4/17/2006 0 insightful comments
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Friday, April 14, 2006Good Charts for Good Friday
Happy three-day weekend, everyone. No sermons today. Just a few good charts.

First up is AutoDesk. I mentioned this one a few days ago and a "blast from the past." It looks like it's losing ground (which is good, since it's a short recommendation, as all of these are). If this really starts to fall, the key question is whether it will fall all the way down to the lowest trendline you see or not. I'll leave that judgment for later.


ESRX is a high-risk/high-reward trade. It's in a pretty decent topping pattern, and I'd suggest using that descending trendline (as opposed to a neckline) as my stop-loss point.


Perennial favorite GOOG looks like it's weakening after a stury push upward over the past six weeks or so. The Fibonaccis are helpful guides, but obviously not rock solid lines in the sand.


Holly (HOC), although a big winner over the past year for the bulls, is so lofty it represents a relatively low-risk short position, as dictated by the trendline you see. It seems to have peaked for now.

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