Time to Hedge A Little As Homebuilders Surge to Multi-Year Milestones

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 19, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) In 2010, the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) rallied sharply only to peak in parabolic fashion in April. That Fall, I reaffirmed my belief that housing would bounce along the bottom … Read more

T2108 Update (August 30, 2012) – Minor Breakdown Ahead of Jackson Hole

(T2108 measures the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages [DMAs]. It helps to identify extremes in market sentiment that are highly likely to reverse. To learn more about it, see my T2108 Resource Page. You can follow real-time T2108 commentary on twitter using the #T2108 hashtag. T2108-related trades and other trades … Read more

Chart Review: Breakouts, Breakdowns, And In Between: GOOG, FSLR, BIDU, INTC, JOY, CAT

The stocks market’s slow action hides all sorts of dramatic action in individual stocks. For this chart review, I take a look at a range of performers. Google (GOOG) has broken out to fresh five-year highs. First Solar (FSLR) has more than doubled since its June lows. Baidu (BIDU) has sold off for over a … Read more

T2108 Update (August 29, 2012) – Pavlovian Market Tap Dances Between Breakout and Breakdown

(T2108 measures the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages [DMAs]. It helps to identify extremes in market sentiment that are highly likely to reverse. To learn more about it, see my T2108 Resource Page. You can follow real-time T2108 commentary on twitter using the #T2108 hashtag. T2108-related trades and other trades … Read more

RBA Identifies Australian Dollar’s Support from Foreign Demand for Bonds

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 21, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) released the minutes of its last monetary policy decision during which it seemed to declare a soft landing for China. I took particular interest in … Read more

A Hypothesis for the Connection Between the Australian Dollar and the S&P 500

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 20, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) A reader recently asked the following questions in response to my last piece on the relationship between the Australian dollar and the S&P 500 (“A Bearish Divergence As Australian Dollar Stalls … Read more

Fed Minutes Revive Pressure On the Japanese Yen

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 23, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) The minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting seem to suggest that members are starting to coalesce around Janet Yellen’s analysis that monetary policy should be more accomodative (see “Yellen’s Case … Read more

British Pound Breaks Out After Uneventful Summer Olympics In London

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 27, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) After three months bouncing up and down in a wide range, the British pound (FXB) is finally breaking out against the U.S. dollar (UUP). This follows a very uneventful Summer Olympics … Read more

Wide Options Skew Heightens Risk of Trading Yelp.com Lockup Expiration

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on August 27, 2012. Click here to read the entire piece.) Yelp.com (YELP) has a float of 16.59M shares and shares outstanding of 61.2M. According to Eric Savitz, 52.7M shares (Class B) are available to start trading on August 29th as Yelp’s … Read more

T2108 Update (August 24, 2012) – Pavlovian Market

(T2108 measures the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages [DMAs]. To learn more about it, see my T2108 Resource Page. You can follow real-time T2108 commentary on twitter using the #T2108 hashtag. T2108-related trades and other trades are posted on twitter using the #120trade hashtag) T2108 Status: 67.2% VIX Status: 15.2 … Read more