ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
While Friday’s Dubai-related selling left the S&P 500 flat for the last two weeks, Goldman Sachs (GS) dropped almost 3% and punched a new low for November (see chart below). This new low now places GS in its first short-term downtrend since February/March, and it marks a serious failure from the 50DMA resistance. This downturn … Read more
The stock for Toyota Motors (TM) broke below the key support line of the 200-day moving average today. Since peaking in August, TM has lost 12%. TM now looks poised for a test of the summer’s lows and perhaps even retesting of March price levels. *Chart created using TeleChart: TM is a major component of … Read more
Goldman Sachs (GS) has been a bellwether stock since the November lows. GS displayed relative strength when its March lows remained around 50% higher than the November lows. Since then, GS has followed a strong, upward trendline that led the general stock market before hitting its most recent peak in October. However, in November, the … Read more
When I examined the trading patterns in Google’s stock (GOOG) between earnings reports, I found little consistency for forming a trading strategy. For October’s earnings cycle, I chose to play one of the few promising historical patterns: 67% of the times that GOOG opened up in response to earnings, the maximum close until the next … Read more
RIMM officially began its share repurchase period on Monday, November 9. Since then, the intra-day trading seems to provide evidence that RIMM (or some other large buyer!) has gone to work purchasing shares. The chart below shows a 10-day chart of RIMM with trading broken into 30-minute blocks. The first 30-minutes of trading on Monday, … Read more
For the second straight quarter, Toll Brothers (TOL) provided a preliminary quarterly report that ignited the stock as sales volumes once again surpassed expectations. Robert I. Toll, chairman and CEO, explains: “Our fourth-quarter unit deliveries exceeded the high end of our range of guidance due to the delivery of a higher percentage of our backlog, … Read more
On a strong market day, RIMM opened up over 2% and, at the time of writing, is up over 4% on the day. RIMM’s share repurchase period begins today, and, so far, so good for propping up the stock. Yesterday, I expressed my doubts that RIMM would spend the entire $1.2B that its board authorized, … Read more
Soon after Google’s earnings I bought a November 570/580 call spread given that the year-over-year revenue growth rate finally seems to be turning around and revenue per employee looks ready to trend upward as well. I am finally getting around to explaining the move (as I promised to do) now that GOOG has reversed all … Read more
Whenever the market sells off, it is good to track whether the selling marks any change in character in the health of the market. Back in June, the change in character was marked by the deepest oversold conditions since March. Those conditions deepened into July and helped provide the fuel for the next strong leg … Read more
Speculative stocks typically get hit the hardest during corrections in the stock market, and solar stocks definitely qualify for a beating. In the past 4 days of selling, TAN, the Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy Index, is already down 10%. Solar stocks have been big laggards this year as TAN is now back to even on … Read more