ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
The shorts in Cisco (CSCO) had it right after all…even if they were a bit early. Short interest in CSCO surged in late August close to 52-week highs. When I noticed this in mid-September, I made a somewhat complicated case for using this as a contrarian signal to go long the stock. CSCO trickled upward … Read more
I was about a month premature and about 19% in missed gains when I flagged the potential start of a parabolic move in silver. Or perhaps my definition of a parabolic move should have been more expansive. Either way, silver’s behavior over the past four trading days definitely has taken on the tipsy look of … Read more
Intel (INTC) and Microsoft (MSFT) have been tech laggards for some time now. However, over the past week, both stocks finally breached the all-important 200-day moving average (DMA) line of resistance (charts at the end of this piece). While MSFT is struggling to add to its small post-earnings gains, INTC has completely reversed the post-earnings … Read more
Like my friend TraderMike, I am extremely surprised at the timing of the market’s latest breakout. I too would have thought a breakout would come immediately after one of our three main news items of the week, not in between! I agree with TraderMike that the nature of this breakout leaves open the real possibility … Read more
The Federal Reserve announced its plans to drive quantitative easing (QE) part 2 by maintaining the reinvestment of “…principal payments from its securities holdings purchasing…[and purchasing] a further $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month.” The New York Fed … Read more
While many gear up for the elections and the Federal Reserve, I am bracing myself for a barrage of earnings from solar companies. Thursday night, First Solar (FSLR) kicked off the earnings parade in disappointing fashion as the market reacted by taking the stock down 9%. It seems that the market agonized over two main … Read more
The market has essentially maintained a holding pattern while awaiting the results of next week’s trifecta of news: the elections, the Federal Reserve’s announcement on quantitative easing, and the next employment report. So I was quite surprised to realize that for almost three weeks my favorite technical indicator, T2108, has been dropping. On Thursday, this … Read more
Prices soared for solar stocks in September. In October, volume has soared…but prices have swung sharply downward after a very strong start to the month. In most cases, solar stocks have lost all their gains for the month and then some. This trading action is creating buying opportunities, especially where uptrends and/or critical technical support … Read more
Three and a half years ago, I concluded that options for Google (GOOG) should be sold, not bought, ahead of earnings. This advice seemed to generally apply ever since as GOOG tended to move just enough after earnings to devalue near-the-money calls AND puts. Friday’s 11% post-earnings pop was a rare, and impressive, exception to … Read more
Three weeks ago, I generated a list of stocks that demonstrated strong buying volume over the previous five days. During those five days, the S&P 500 finally broke out above the June highs but volume remained anemic and unimpressive. I figured focusing in on the stocks that did exhibit good buying volume during that important … Read more