ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
I thought I would get extremely bearish once the S&P 500 reached my upside resistance target of 1300-1310. Yet here we are just five weeks into the year, and the deepest angst I can summon is an uncomfortable sense of “caution.” With T2108 – the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 40-day moving averages … Read more
After scanning through the latest quarterly release of the “Statement of Monetary Policy” from the Reserve Bank of Australia, I was reminded that currency traders are trying to prepare for eventual rate hikes from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE): “While financial markets continue to expect the US federal funds … Read more
When I made the case for buying CSCO after its earnings disaster in November, I was bracing myself for an extended stay at or near 52-week lows. I even planned to add more on a steep enough decline. After two weeks of slowly drifting downward, CSCO made a bottom. The stock is now climbing out … Read more
On Wednesday, Wunderlich Securities issued a trading call on solar stocks citing a correlation with oil prices. First Solar (FSLR) was the prime beneficiary of this research. Eric Rosenbaum from TheStreet.com beat me to the punch critiquing this call in “Should Solar Stocks Trade on Rising Oil?“, but I will add my two solar panels … Read more
I did not think the dollar would test the critical multi-year support line this soon. I thought the prospects for an economic recovery that is looking stronger than in competing developed economies would be sufficient to give the dollar a helping hand up despite the Federal Reserve’s best attempts to keep grinding the currency into … Read more
The iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund ETF (EWZ) broke out in early September, 2010 from an important downtrend pattern. At the time, I lamented that I missed the move because I was still playing the strategy of waiting for a 20% correction in EWZ before making a purchase. On Friday, EWZ completed a roundtrip from … Read more
When Ener1 (HEV) chairman and CEO Charles Gassenheimer appeared on CNBC in November to discuss how his company will benefit from Democrat and Republican cooperation on energy policy, the stock got a nice 4% pop on the day. Last week, HEV announced a major joint venture deal with China’s number one automotive components company Wanxiang … Read more
On Monday, Goldman Sachs added First Solar (FSLR) to its conviction buy list with a $165 price target. The market’s response was swift with FSLR ending the day up 6% and a closing price of $156.40. I wish I had received the memo because I sold off the last of my FSLR positions on Friday. … Read more
The “cooling off” of silver and gold has unfolded very slowly over several months. On Thursday, this process entered yet another phase. This time, silver made a clean and strong break below its 50-day moving average (DMA). Silver even made its first lower low since the latest rally began in late summer. Gold has spent … Read more
Currency traders appeared very disappointed that the Bank of Canada left interest rates unchanged on Tuesday. The Canadian dollar (“loonie”) immediately bounced sharply from near three-year highs against the U.S. dollar, and the USD/CAD eventually popped over parity (1.0) for the first time in two weeks on Thursday. The accompanying statement suggested that the Bank … Read more