ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
I last wrote about the Australian dollar during its worst slide since the financial crisis. At the time, I claimed that the slide was probably good for a short-term bounce, but the currency could easily go even lower given macroeconomic concerns. Since then, the Australian dollar has firmed up nicely and formed a potential “W-bottom” … Read more
First Solar (FSLR) has been stuck in a downtrend for two years (see chart below). The stock has traveled a volatile path through this trend, providing strong trading opportunities up or down. For example, a sharp two-month rally from the March, 2009 lows doubled the stock price. Insider buying earlier this year provided a convincing … Read more
At the heights of the stock market’s low-volume spring rally, Ambac Financial (ABK) soared 72% and the 105% on two consecutive days. ABK was up another 50% the next day before closing with a 28% loss. The upward surge was quite startling given ABK was pretty clear in its earnings report at the time about … Read more
For many commodity-related stocks the bounce from the March, 2009 lows to the first peak in June encompasses the bulk of their respective gains in the past 15 months. The current, on-going correction has delivered such heavy losses to some of these stocks that they are now trading at those June, 2009 prices. About 1/3 … Read more
As I feared might happen, the stock market has already fallen back into oversold territory as measured by the percentage of stocks trading above their 40-day moving averages (DMAs). This indicator, T2108, dipped under 20% and closed at 18.5%. This is the third oversold period in just a month, and this third time is not … Read more
Toyota (TM) filled the headlines of business news for several weeks as it struggled with seemingly unending revelations about its poor product quality. After about a month, sellers finally exhausted themselves, and TM began an impressive bounce. This bounce only lasted the same amount of time as the overall sell-off. TM peaked in late March, … Read more
I spent a lot of time over the past oversold period studying rules and guidelines for trading the (inevitable) bounce out of the selling pressure. The oversold period ended inconclusively, but my rule for buying the ETF for Brazil, iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund ETF (EWZ), definitively worked for a second time. When EWZ started … Read more
T2108, the percentage of stocks trading above their 50-day moving averages (DMA), hit 21% on Wednesday. This milestone finishes nine days of technically oversold trading conditions as defined by T2108 dropping to 20% or below. I am reposting below a chart of the historical distribution of durations for oversold periods as a reminder that the … Read more
Sellers stepped out of the way today. Although volume was generally low on the major indices, stocks managed large gains that made up for yesterday’s ugly close and much more. In fact, today was the kind of day I was anticipating for yesterday’s trading. Stocks in my listing of potential buy candidates for this oversold … Read more
(This is a guest post written by “Chenzo” of forexcharts.net) If any lesson was clear during the past few turbulent weeks of trading, it was that our markets are more closely entwined than ever. Perhaps this is a sign of our continuing globalization path, but the waves created by any financial event are traveling across … Read more