No much time to post. But we had an amazing day of trading today. Our entire pf is up 6% due to our exposure to GG(L), SSRI(L), UNG(L), dollar (short) and short Insurers. Ofcourse, we booked profits in a big way and we took off most of these trades at the end of the day.
We think a short term bottom (3-4) days is on the horizon somewhere. How far do we think the SPX can go to, our first target is 1190 and then the max. target is 1230. We doubt it will get there, but if it gets there, we are loading up on shorts. Our target on SPX is around 1070. We are not overtly short the market or overtly long gold and PMs now, since we are also in shock and awe.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
17 comments:
We got the bounce we were looking for and we were waiting with both hands. Another fantastic day of trading, though not as much compared to yesterday. But still our pf was up by 2% owing to long energy/ long silver.
but how long will it last?
I bought SSO yesterday at 50.60 and sold half today.
Sounds like both of you had a good day today. My stock portfolio was up 17.5% today. That's the power of leverage via ultras and margin. Of course it was down 15.8% on Wednesday, so I've basically broken even for the two days, because the 17.5% was on a smaller amount, you see. And that, my dear friends, when you multiply it by a factor of 10 is why we are in the big pile of poop we are in, to put it delicately. Lots of these hedge funds and investment banks, etc., have been leveraged for years at 30x and 40x, ever since the 1990s this process has begun, and when the price of houses began to fall and a few mortgages defaulted, the thin margins disappeared and that steep, deep leveraging took somebody down. Then the next ten guys were affected because they had loaned money to that one, and the dominoes continue to fall. Rest assured that I took some profits near the end of the rally today and I'm not so steeply leveraged right now. However, if the futures hold up, come tomorrow morning I may wish I still had all that DDM I sold today. Nah. Pigs get slaughtered, Cramer says, so Mimi was right to sell 1/2 of SSO.
Meanwhile, fertilizers may be prepared for a rebound. Worth a look. Agrium is talking big numbers potential:
Agrium
MON gave good guidance, so it has been up:
MON
Motley Fool just published an article on the ferts:
Motley
Anyway, I'm still hanging on to my MOO.
Some fun daily charts to look at for today: HANS, AGA, AIG, GS (notice afterhours too), CREE (notice afterhours too), and LEH (it ain't there no more).
The most fun chart of all to check out is LTL for Wednesday. Someone must have typed in an order incorrectly and they bought 100 shares at the open for 51% too much. For about ten minutes my portfolio was up by almost 35%, but it was a false reading, of course, because the bid/ask was way down low and some poor soul was probably on the phone with a broker screaming and crying.
LTL
Now wasn't that fun?
I don't know. I caught most of the rally and most of it way up. It was like a windfall for 2 days. My first target is 1230. 1260 is a distantish target, but that seems way too much now. Who knows?
How long will it last?-- my guess till energy/commodities holds it up. Those are washed out and may hold the market up. Also look for qqqq to 45 area. You should see another round of tremendous selling then, which should take us much lower. Even gold will not help us then.
haha, yes and they banned short selling - ridiculous. I still have one insurer short. It is going to hurt me tomorrow I think.
Who banned short selling? Only thing I heard was that the Brits banned it temporarily on financials. I wish the SEC would do it here.
Did you look at the LTL chart with the "OOPS, Oh my God, Oh no, what happened, this can't be" purchase at the open on Wednesday?
yes pretty funny, if it is not you i guess. HIL - there is a move afoot to ban short selling in the US too.
Something tells me,. the next time we rollover hell will break loose. It will be persistent selling.
Watch the volatility index and fear factor. If it comes down and stays down, if financials get enough breathing room to get their businesses going again, if people start buying houses again and the market stabilizes (loan rates are down and prices are a bargain), if consumers regain confidence and start buying again (oil is back in the $100 range), we may have seen the bottom intraday yesterday yesterday. Lost in all the noise yesterday were several earnings reports that were right on estimates or beat estimates. Most companies are making money. As one certain politician says, the economy is fundamentally sound. Stores and factories are open, people are going to work, at least 94% are. The parking lot at Wal-Mart is always full, anyway. The Mexican restaurant we ate at last night was busy. I'm staying conservative in my mutuals (70% bonds), but for now I'm still aggressively long in my stock fund, because I can get out of that posture in five minutes, or else my stops will take me out if the market takes a crash dive. But for today, I'll enjoy the rally. The beginning of a near bull market or just another bear rally. I'll let the negative, pessimists on another certain board well-known to each of us debate it. I'm going to ride this wave while they sit it out. I've already got my 24 acres of raw land covered mostly in hardwoods. The long term trend of the market is always up. All stocks don't go to zero. Not even to single digits. Got to go put in my orders before the open. Hope you guys and gals have a profitable day. Futures are still way up in the new socialist free market economy USA. :)
nice hil feld, I guess the market does have an averaging effect in the end. Was playing heavily and profitting nicely the last 2 days, Today I am sitting out until the dust settles. It is still too emotional out there. I guess, I am taking some time to settle in the new socialist america
Just about everybody on CNBC is ticked about the new short rules. I guess just about everybody that appears on CNBC must be a short. One person was asked about how long they think the short ban will last. He said he thought it would last until the election was over. Perceptive educated guess IMO.
LDK was really doing well until they floated some more shares and it tanked. I haven't visited the message board, but I bet some of the LDK faithful are seriously ticked.
Ferts had a GREAT day. MOS up 12.5%. POT up 7.2%. AGU up 11.5%. CF up 8.2%. MON (fert, chem and seed) up 5.1%. DE (equipment) up 2.2%. MOO profited greatly up 5.0%. Guess they aren't going to zero or single digits real soon. Another six days like today for POT and it would set a new high. Same for MOS. Less for CF and AGU. :)
We are past options expiration. What will Monday bring, Clarke? I've trimmed down my margin some more by selling off a big chunk of LTL today. I'm still long - ag and telecom plus some consumer staples - mostly ultra ETFs.
One of the better dividend payouts comes up in early October - T. At least 40 cents a share if someone wants to try a dividend play soon.
I did not play anything today. And amazingly, my positions cancelled each other out.
I am slightly bullish, we may have put in an intermediate as I had written. It may hold until dollar reverses its current dowtrend and starts shooting up again. The area to start looking is 76-77 on the dollar. I am guessing another 3-4 weeks of up move-drift. But I expect the move to be very choppy. It would be best not to trade, since this is against the trend motion or buy some energy/commodities till the dollar weakens further. Remember to swift like always are. The dollar could rise again soon.
Link to article on short ban
Based on that this article says and what some suggested on CNBC, one thing I'm not going to do is jump into financials. They are flying high, but if and when the ban on shorting is lifted, financials may come flying down, because they may be falsely inflated upward without shorts there to smack them down. I wish it was a level playing field with no shorting at all, but such is not the case and probably never will be again.
Still money to be made, though, even in a sideways market. Channel trading works just fine in a sideways market.
yes, my strong feeling as of now is SPX will hit 1327 or thereof. We need to take out 1313 before the next move lower. So for a short while 2-3 weeks, any consolidation move is for selling off shorts and reloading longs.
Also I expect it to be a somewhat grinding move up.
No touching financials for me too. I'd rather buy energy stocks - they are at 2 year lows some of em.
USO is looking to turn up, though the volume is some concern.
Probably this week I will do a post after a long time.
Some speculation on the LDK board that Peng floated new shares today to get some much needed cash and to allow big shot shorts to be able to have plenty of shares available to cover with under the new short rules without any short squeeze threats. If so, wouldn't that be a rip for the retail longs. LDK gets bounced down several percent on a monster 300+ up day rally while other solar stocks are soaring.
hmm it is possible. I got burnt by LDK once. I have never touched it since. that solar stock has lots of naked shorts etc.
>>get some much needed cash and to allow big shot shorts to be able to have plenty of shares available to cover with under the new short rules without any short squeeze threats.
Hil_feld,
I can understand injections of new shares to get some cash (even though with their fantastic earnings last q and great prospectives for future ones - I think they might use their earned money for extension - just my opinion...)
But what is the point here to prevent very well deserved short squeeze from happening - it's not shareholders (and mr.Peng is the largest one as far as I understand) who will be in pain in case such squeeze happens. As former shareholder (sold it just before earnings to be safe after being burned twice before) - I would really enjoy watching it!!! Could be good lesson for greedy corrupted bustards...
Audrey, you are exactly right as long as one is thinking in terms of a small retail investor. However, Peng may be learning to play the Wall Street game. If he does this play for extra cash and allows some big shot investment banks and hedge funds to get off easy with their shorts, he may make some powerful friends on the street. It may earn him some upgrades and institutional support down the road. It is all speculation that may be wrong, and I don't have a dog in this fight. I sold before the last earnings like you. I've been in and out of LDK daytrading it and short term trading it (a few days at the most) for several months now. It is great for making a few hundred bucks here and there. As we get closer to the end of the year, I may finally settle in and hold a few hundred shares long for a longer time, but maybe not. We will see. LDK is still too unpredictable, this share offering being the latest example. I prefer market cap and sector ultra ETFs which give one broad diversity with one click plus leverage. That leverage can really help. My gains to my portfolio on Friday were 15.8%. It can work in reverse also, so one must use stops and be careful. With an individual equity you can get caught with major surprises like this share offering. That doesn't happen with the market as a whole (spoken with full sarcasm intended :) but in more normal times than these past few months, that would be true).
OK, guys and gals, I wrote earlier of the "you've got to be kidding" trade where somebody got taken on the opening trade of LTL (low volume ETF). The very low ETFs trade for an extra 15 minutes and then do not trade in afterhours or premarket. The computer sets the bid/ask at a ridiculously low and high price which shuts down the market action. For UGE the price is 25 cents and $399.99 when the real price is around $63. Notice on the following Yahoo chart that shortly after the open the price spikes into the stratosphere. The Yahoo chart doesn't tell you exactly what that price is. On my Fidelity account as I watched UGE, it suddenly appeared briefly as a trade for $399.99 and that was the "high for the day" for the rests of Friday. Yeah, buddy. The only thing I can figure is that this ETF is very low volume. Everybody else was off buying financials and energy stocks and the bid/ask just disappeared and dried up completely. No one had anything entered. Some poor soul enters a "market bid". That is a mistake on low volume equities. The computer goes out searching for someone, anyone who has shares to offer. The only offer it can find is the market maker's offer which was set at the end of the day for the ridiculous price which shuts down bidding -- $399.99. So some poor soul got stuck buying 100 shares of a $63 ETF for a price of $399.99. Bummer. Can you imagine the spike in someone's blood pressure when they check their order and they see that it filled at that price. Say what? I paid what? You've got to be kidding? I'm gonna call my broker. I'm gonna call Dick Cheney. Yeah, right. Too late. Shouldn't have used a market order is my guess is my guess. Now, if only I can get some of my low volume ETF shares sold in the same manner. It happened once for, but only for a normal gain on 380 shares of a lot, but the other 20 shares filled at a whole $2.00 higher.
UGE
Post a Comment