ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Stock Market Commentary Last week opened with a gap down amid hand-wringing about the potential for contagion from debt problems in China’s property market. However, the week ended like nothing happened. The major indices even managed marginal gains after the dust settled. As is so often the case, the Federal Reserve, under the comforting words … Read more
Stock Market Commentary In my previous post I looked ahead to the Fed meeting on Wednesday as a main wildcard facing down the stock market’s most predictable trading pattern. Instead, heavy headlines about a looming financial crisis in China ground the gears of the stock market. Sprinkle in some obligatory fear about the dire warnings … Read more
One of the great features of options trading is the protection it offers against large absolute losses from surprise gaps in price from the underlying stock. That protection came in handy when casino and hotel company Wynn Resorts, Limited (WYNN) gapped down following news of a fresh regulatory crackdown in Macau, China. WYNN gapped down … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The weight of deteriorating market breadth was undermining the stock market even as on-going rotations kept the indices floating higher. Last week, the tone made one of those periodic, yet still small, shifts. When news broke that Epic Games won a key provision of its lawsuit against Apple and its Apple Store, … Read more
Stock Market Commentary August was a breeze, and the stock market strolled in September. A few pebbles rolled into the path this week. The indices delivered divergent behavior which brings up familiar themes of rotation. Most notably, the rotations pressured market breadth as small caps in particular displayed fresh signs of weakness. The Stock Market … Read more
Stock Market Commentary Pattern trading uses consistent bets on repeated behaviors in financial markets. Over the course of time, pattern trading delivers profits from the diligent application of rules based on standard, technical setups in stock charts. The persistent uptrends and trading ranges in this pandemic stock market have delivered a surprisingly long stretch of … Read more
Deteriorating market breadth flashed warning signs for the stock market once again. A signal from the currency market is adding weight to the warning: the Australian dollar versus the Japanese yen (AUD/JPY). AUD/JPY represents the divergence dragging on the stock market. AUD/JPY topped out from March to June, a period over which many individual stocks … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The S&P 500 (SPY) lost 0.7% for just its 4th down day of the 12 trading days of August. The index closed at an all-time high the previous day. The pullback looks like just one more tiny pinprick in the middle of a monster run-up during this pandemic. Yet the ongoing deterioration … Read more
Stock Market Commentary The upward drift in the stock market continued another week. The latest narrative comes from the cascading impact of the infrastructure bill settled in the Senate (I feel like the U.S. has passed this bill 10 times already!). While more wrangling lies ahead in the House of Representatives, the stock market felt … Read more
A False Breakout I started the week with Micron Technology, Inc (MU) as my favorite trade prospect. The breakout from last week was near poetry. MU enjoyed buying support most of the week as it first pushed through resistance at its 200-day moving average (DMA) (the blue line in the chart below) and next sliced … Read more