4:14pm
Hey guys, Nice little rally there at the end of the day; I and the traders will evaluate the charts and have a video ready by around 9:30pm today.
3:33pm
If you’re willing to risk it, Idan bought about 1000$ worth of JPM april puts, claiming that the downside was much more attractive than the upside. He was willing to risk 1000$ for a potential of what he says is $2000 profit .
3:29pm
Things look too bullish, i want to take away my trade before it gets stopped out…
3:03pm
Steve: Idan Piled in on some SPY puts (3%) at 84.26$ (50% retrace of the last strong move lower), and will look to add at the 61.8% retrace 84.34$ if we get there. If we sell off he will take profits at new lows.
2:31pm
Profits were taken… (+23%) Looking for a move higher here towards the 83.20$ resistance which is 38.2% fib retrace of the last move lower (in the last 15 minutes). The traders and I will monitor whether the market could reverse down from there. 50% is 84.30, 61.8% is 84.38$. One of those should hold. I will be out for the rest of the day. My overall feeling is the we continue to fall tomorrow unless the market sells off right at the end of the day.
2:18pm
Took half my profits off the table… Will look to take the other half at a double bottom at 83.98 ish, so that a head and shoulder forms on today’s trade.
2:10pm
Reversal as support of the 61.8% was held in place, and 2 PM time provided a nice bullish rally as the beige book came out. I only managed to take a little bit of my profits out, hoping we would continue falling. I do believe we will, but I have my stops in place if i’m wrong.
1:43pm
50% retracement hit… at 84.34$, 61.8% is at 84.21$, these are all retracements of the last move higher today from 83.80, to 84.88$.
1:35pm
XLF still strong again, make sure you have your stops in the right places. Bond yeilds still low though, and we hit a 38.2% retracement of the intraday move higher and bounced off of it…
1:23pm
Bond Yields are crashing, stock market to follow? I added some more shorts on this que.
1:03pm
Holy crap!! look at the QQQQs VS XLF 1 minute, there was a complete dumping of the XLF for the QQQQs, incredible!
1:01pm
HUGE topping and bottoming candle on the SPY 1 minute, I took a small short here, only looking to add some more if we reach the 50% retracement at 85.07$
12:48pm
I got stopped loss on the entry (-4.7% off of the PUTS). Will look to reneter at 84.75 and 84.90$.
12:42pm
XLF seems to want to breakout which is forcasted by yeilds wanting to break to new highs, but the QQQQs are holding us back due earning related sell offs. This fight should last only a couple more minutes before one side gives in. Right now, bears have the H&S on top of them. But i have tight stop in place.
12:22pm
Market found support at the intraday ascending line which looks like a bear flag before hand. It seems like a break of that pretty much constitutes a new move lower.
12:13pm
TRADE: Potential double top region here. As a h&S is forming on the SPY 1 minute. You can take a short here with a tight stop above the high region. I added SPY PUTS (3% portfolio)
12:02pm
Before I pile in some shorts I want a consolidation bear flag that is obvious.
11:59am
Market gaps higher instead of selling off, 84.47$ resistance is the ascending support that we had yesterday. 84.55$ is resistance as well for double top region and 38.2% retracement of the gap higher we had last thursday.
11:55am
Bear flag has formed over the 1 minute SPY, with an ascending support 84.22-84.25$ for the next 3-4 minutes. A break of that means we are going lower.
9:33am
Here’s my trading desk image for you guys to see support/resistance levels.
9:31am
Took my SPY puts off, i’ll look to trade the MAY ones later.
12:00am
As you may already have noticed, today is the day, that no matter what we do, we will all lose about 35% since it is April 15th, TAX DAY! I want to give a little tip that maybe a few people don’t know about yet. While my overall portfolio goal is growth oriented, I actually don’t reinvest all my profits the following year because if I lose money the following year, I will feel horrible when I have to pay taxes. Assuming I had a 100K portfolio, and made 50K that year. About 15K of it will go to taxes. That means that by April 15 or 16th I would need to have 15K readily available. Usually it is hard to estimate exactly the dollar amount of taxes you will have to pay, but by October (6 months prior to taxes) I will lock up the amount of money that will yield me 15K at maturity in a 6 month CD. Assuming the CD gives me 5% APY (obviously it doesn’t, but making things easier here), which means that in 6 months I will get 2.5%, I will lock up about 14,630$ in the CD. That leaves me with $370 extra free liquid money to invest the following year. Therefore I will invest 135,370$ the following year, and not have to worry about forgotten tax money at all.
Now that I’m done with my anecdote, lets talk about the markets.
The futures are now down about 0.6%, and we are trading below the 50% restracement line at 83.98 of the move higher last thursday. I will be taking all my profits at the open if the market opens this low, the reason is, that I have expiring SPY PUTS. If you are holding onto stock, you can maybe ride a small bump higher out, and then add to your shorts at a higher level. The next support lies at 83.42$ which is the 68.2% retracement. Also the middle ascending support line of the channel is going to be strong support tomorrow, it will ascend from 83$ in the morning to 83.30$ at the close. I will be gone most of the day again, good luck trading!
Looks like PPT is in full force at 3 pm again …
Has anyone heard/read anything relating to the JPM earnings report tomorrow? I have not, and find that fact strange, and telling.
Anyone?
I expect the banks earnings to be good, too much government involvement. That might be why the financials are doing so well today. This is going to take a coupld days to shake out.
TomH, you aren’t reading what I copied and pasted… Russell 1000 Financial Services Index
That’s not the Russell 1000. It’s RIFIN not RUI
Ok, Thanks…I’m just a little confused.
1 Cent from my Stop on FAZ. Stop is at $10.00
Don’t sell FAZ now….hold and wait. Banks will collapse as soon as all this made up BS passes. I will be adding to my position tomorrow if the banks rally on more BS news. Eventually they are going to figure this out and they will retrace.
Change stop at 9.95 or something … MM take out positions with round numbers stops … e.g 10 or 9.50 etc …
The markets are RIGGED BIG TIME!!
And they’re using taxpayer money (TARP,TALF etc) to RIG IT. What a joke!
I’d think the NAZ would prevail today, but may be proven wrong.
Looking to pick up SRS this week, especially in the $20′s.
I was embarassed to mention it earlier, but I took a long in MS and lucky for me it’s paying off now thanks to the manipulative MM’s. I think Richard is right, that you have to start thinking like them…..think like a sociopath.
That is don’t “be” a sociopath. Just “think” like one. I believe the retired psychoanalyst in me is showing itself.
anyone have an upper resistance for the RIFIN?
XLF just retraced 61.8 of the move off the top. i have it at 10.81
Stopped Out at $10. I didn’t lose much, I was averaged in at 10.08. I didn’t like what I was seeing,
i’m with Richard, I’m going slightly bananas…
You can always buy it back when it rallies again. I’m holding onto my shares and will be looking to add to my position. I think today is a head fake and yesterday is the sign of whats to come. Bank stocks are going to be running out of steam soon and with the run up they have already had I would expect to see a lot of selling and profit taking. I’ve never seen anything as overvalued as the banks are. Basically they are all broke. Shareholders will be wiped out.
Appears that Idan is shorting JPM as well. Can’t wait to see what all the chartmasters have to say about todays activity. This has got to be coming to a head soon. Hopefully the fall will be hard and fast.
Smart move. Get out of these 3X ETFs when the trade moves against you. You can always get back in later. Preserve capital in this crazy market.
It’s been said before and I’ll say it again. Someone who knows more about the banks than we will ever know (Meredith Whitney) recently said to not press shorts on the banks and FAZ tanked HUGE right afterwards. Anyone playing FAZ for anything other than a scalp right now is playing with fire.
I’m not shorting financials again until I hear her change this current stance. Of course, go ahead and short them if you think you know more than her.
Good luck to all!
Actually she didn’t have anything good to say about the banks. What she said was “I wouldn’t be shorting the banks right now” basically saying that the books were cooked and they were going to surprise everyone with their earnings. This was a one shot deal. If these banks start selling off and everyone sees that the king has no clothes then they are dead. The banks are insolvent and this was Obamas last ditch effort to prop them up a little longer.
I didn’t say that she said anything good about the banks. She said not to press shorts and she was right. If you were in FAZ that day and held, you’ve been crushed since then.
Another that she warned was against holding banks at the end of April when the stress test results come out …. paraphrasing that we should see a sell off around that time …
what she said was priced in a few days later as FAZ moved from $18 to $9
850 is 50% retrace of the move lower 865 to 835 …
clearing this significantly is going to be very bizarre.
ive rounded the numbers … but this is one number id like to stay under to confirm continued downside to OPEX. clearly Cashin’s timing of saying 805 is coming was a move to get retail’s to short so they could squeeze the crap out of them? who knows why he came out and said this. but i don’t like it
in BGU @$26.51 – expecting push up to close in green today..then hope to short at top
nice call
Buy on rumor and sell on news? JPM is up 100% since March 9th, how high can it go without a retracement of some kind?
Major wedge pattern ending with throw over, looks like a big sell off coming after earnings.
Dow 8000 within sniffing range too… Last gasp is how I feel it.
- NYSE volume 1.06B shares, about 5% below its three-month average;
advancers lead decliners by 1.6:1
- NASDAQ volume 1.69B shares, about 3% below its three-month
average; advancers lead decliners by 1.2:1.
I bought FAZ at 9.00 Monday, sold yesterday at 10.95
Just bought back in at 9.95.
Small amount, just for kicks.
Hey, it’s as good as anything else for a scalp trade.
Glimmers Of Hope?
Why Our Credit Crunch Mirrors the Weimar Hyperinflation from 1919-1923
The Reichsbank claimed that it could control the events it created, just as the Federal Reserve does now. Questionable statistics were regularly published, just as is now the case in the USA. German authorities believed, just as American authorities now believe, that the perception is more important than economic reality. Eventually, however, when the foreign cash flows dried up, reality did reassert itself, as it always does, and the German economy entered hyperinflation.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/130528-why-our-credit-crunch-mirrors-the-weimar-hyperinflation-from-1919-1923?source=hp_mostpopular
Another day at the track. Looks like I should have bet on the favorite GS. I thought he’d been run too hard and would come up lame today. Wrong.
See ya tomorrow.
————- FAZ ———– 9 MINS TO CLOSE
if it closes here … bit under $10 .. it still puts in a higher low and a higher high on the daily chart. what is everyone doing here?
closes here meaning $9.80
i am tempted for a one-two day trade
Taking profits on MS and adding a small FAZ position…..key word “small”
I warned at noon triple digit close
wow, good call..
FAZ to 55. SPX to 805 by Friday. I don’t know guys and gals. I understand the arguments for these ideas but the market just doesn’t agree.
Anymore news on JPM just picked up FAZ@9.41
FAZ … im in at $10.47 average. bought some at $10.82 and then some more… hmmmm… have to stick it out? my stops are usually at a loss around 10% .. im 9.4% in the hole.
so much for selling it with a closing threat of under $10 — will have to live with what happens by end of week.
who wrote the options on the banks? did the banks buy calls on each other that were written by another party? who the hell knows. but , this is for sure,… somebody and some groups are getting very rich in this market.
I think you’ll be ok…..just take the profits when the opportunity presents itself. I’m in at $9.63. If I get a buck and a half scalp I’m good with that.
If the SPX makes it up tp 875 look for 975 to follow.
Really? I hope you mean after a deep retracement. Danerics alternate count is a ending diagonal with one more thrust up to 875ish. He said the key was if it bounced off his trendline today (which it did). Will be interesting to see if he moves that to his primary count now.
neo is calling for a move down to 760 or move up to 975, depending on what happens at 875.
I don’t know how anyone can really call for a move to 975 (300 + point move or so in total) without any kind of meaningful retracement with a straight face but this entire move has had me in disbelief so who knows /shrug
GAVE UP 60% OF MY MON-TUES PROFITS … today… ahhhhhhhhh ..
— can’t win everyday.
feels great. hopefully that is all
Noob question: SPY options still actively trading? I see lots of activity
Options have been allowed to adjust for closing prices for about 10-15 minutes due to high volatility in 2008 trading.
Bonds went back up late day too?
Interesting day. Wasn’t around much, only activity was to put a strangle on DNDN (sold 15 puts and 17.5 calls for $1.15 premium/ paired contract). Still a lot of movement in the stock even though it finished flat for the day. Hoping for a gap down tomorrow so I can buy back my calls, then will sell 19 calls on any big move up and let it ride to opex.
A little surprised at the action, but we have to remember that Wed is usually the bullish opex day. Also, cobra had his piece last night about how when the vix is down and the market isdown (as yesterday) it is usually a bullish sign. I think he had a 60 odd some percent chance of the day ending in green, looks like his call was right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDxgW1l2eRU
Any one else having problems trading in last 30 min. on Fidelity?
out of BGU with 4.7% gain in last hour of day…seemed like a viagra style advance eod…
I wish I had listended to the few dissenters on this board earlier…..cost me some money….out of the market right now….
Bought FAZ at $50, $35, $20, $10–got out on most. Am not willing to fight administration any more, even though economy will get worse. May enter back in sometime later, but not now. It is very apparent that Obama and his pals want to make sure the wealthy become poor and the poor become wealthy! I feel sorry for the hard working souls that have no job at this point and nothing to look forward to–just another symptom of socialism. Maybe some day the real truth will be told. Regardless of my small rant, bought FAZ at $40s, sold at $105, so still above water.
Bought May 10 XLF puts @ 0.73 earlier in the day … at 0.63 right now ….
… well hopefully this is not going to go crazy and we will see reality set in end of month …
important to note… despite all the action today the chart for 3 days.. lower highs lower lows
was just thinking the same
Was out for a bit. Did I miss anything? The manipulation is getting quite annoying, yes? I filed for an extension on my taxes just to screw the IRS on a few days float.
I am into a bunch of MAY puts and feel perfectly fine about it. As the number of posts go up here, the closer to a true turn it seems. I’ll be paying closer attention as the week ends as I’ll be pretty much out of pocket next week. Martini time.
IDAN: Gutsy gamble on the JPM trade. I like it!
Al,heard that a 100 times the last couple of days.
Najarian calls for GOOG to go to 400 and it rallies to 390. What a crock. It’s a 260 when all this is over, if that.
FAZnatics hoping for history to repeat itself — see similar patterns in chart and indicators now at the start of 2Q 2009 as at the start of 1Q 2009 just before a nice pop and some nicely tradable swings:
http://www.bestfreecharts.com?emailChartID=aa699863-a834-431d-999f-b2f06d85e79c
To use that site, you probably have to supply an email address and set up a password, and install Windows Silverlight if it isn’t already installed (mine was). I will use it in the future where possible. It has a number of capabilities that stockcharts.com lacks (and vice versa), but it does very nicely for a free site, and is easy to use. Use it in a separate browser window, because it crashes now and then, but not very often.
“Hope” is a four letter word. FAZ may turn at sometime but does it come now or at 5? Or 3? Who knows. I don’t know if it is the charts, or the person reading the charts, but the “charts” got us in at 35 and above, and the “charts” recently showed an IHS on FAZ the night before FAZ plummeted 45%. Excuse me if I am reluctant to do anything at this point based on the charts, as FAZ approaches another 52 week low.
Like I said, FAS or FAZ; first to get to $4 gets ALL my cash.
yup. ok. revised…buying fas at $2 UYG at $1
Good Luck to FAZnatics, but if I had a girlfriend that treated me even half as bad as FAZ has been treating its holders, I would have dumped her long ago. Too many fish in the sea to keep coming back to a temptress that kicks you in the privates every time you let her in. Or worse yet, gives your trading account an STD. Ick! There are plenty of clean stocks “putting out” and that are “easy”. Best of all, in this market, alot of them are “one night stands” so you can have your fun without “getting married” to a position. If you are gonna trade, you gotta show the stock “who wears the pants”. Never let it dis you.
Guys, follow the charts:
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$RHNYA&p=D&yr=0&mn=6&dy=0&id=p51025771371
Comparing on what we had last week:
- If tomorrow closes green, RHNYA will completely cross the fast Stochastic and we will have another good bounce on Friday
- if it closes red, be prepared to short
All huge rallies were triggered after fast stochastic crossed in a bullish way.
Anyway, in the medium term everything is bearish. Those rallies will be short lived
Link to IRS Form 4868 to get extension until 15 Oct:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4868.pdf
You can fill it out on the computer, but you can’t save it. However, you can print it on the same color laser printer that I want to use for running off a stack of $100 bills to pay the @$$holes with, just as they print money to buy index futures and bail out incompetent dishonest slimeballs.
Brace For Hyper-Inflation
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-why-bernanke-wont-keep-his-crazy-promise-about-fighting-inflation-2009-4
Idan, thanks for your help!
Question re bull flags, as you seem to know them quite well: last 3 days on spy we have gap up on 8th and then slow move down. Does it resemble bull flag? I know volume is missing on the 8th, but still… can we see gap up tomorrow? TIA
THEORY: New administration props financials to weed out “shorts”, thus not having to worry about any new policies. Anybody on board?
Goldman Sachs Buries Losses to Beat the Estimates
That canny crew at Goldman Sachs does it again.
Last night in a surprise move Goldman announced their earnings early, showing a surprising profit of $1.8 billion, beating the Street estimate handily. The bulk of their profit purportedly came from speculative trading for their own accounts, using ‘cheap FDIC guaranteed funds.’
Goldman also took the opportunity to announce a new stock issue designed to allow shareholders to help them pay back their government TARP funds. Since Goldman is putting aside 50% of its profits for employee bonuses even now, while they are still holding government subsidies, the reasons for this are obvious.
What was not reported last night is that Goldman had changed their reporting periods to begin the 1st quarter in January 2009 when they declared themselves to be a bank holding company. Prior to that, their fiscal 2008 year ended on November 30.
This made the month of December 2008 an ‘orphan month’ that was ignored in the financial headlines.
Goldman took this opportunity to realize some hefty writedowns in that December one month report, to the tune of approximately $1.3 Billion in pre-tax losses.
So, to earn an impressive $1.8 Billion in the first quarter, Goldman disposed of their losses in a largely ignored December filing. This facilitated their share offering with the ‘wonderful earnings news’ which Matt Miller of Bloomberg referred to approximately every five minutes as “blowing away their numbers.”
However, this morning, Matt did mumble something about Goldman “maybe not blowing away their numbers.”
Goldman did nothing illegal in their management of their earnings, both in the way in which they parsed the losses into a ‘stub month’ which was ignored, or in their decision to time an early announcement of ‘exceptional profits’ with a stock offering. But the financial press handled this badly, and considering the huge debt and forebearance Goldman owes to the government and the public it was not befitting a major institution with strong ties to the Obama administration.
The only thing getting blown away around here are the shareholders, taxpayers, and anyone else who buys what Wall Street in general is selling these days.
The banks must be restrained and the financial system reformed before we can have a genuine economic recovery.
Just Trust Us, the Banks Are Fine!
It’s springtime for banks and financial stocks.
The sector at the epicenter of the credit crisis has moved sharply higher off the March lows and was in rally mode again on Thursday thanks to:
Wells Fargo, which forecast first-quarter profits of $3 billion, far beyond analysts’ expectations.
Continued strength in life insurance stocks amid reports the government will open TARP to the industry.
A New York Times story, citing officials involved in the government’s stress test, which declares “all 19 banks undergoing the exams will pass them. ”
The first two points are somewhat self-evident. The last one, however, is a continuation of what many believe is a hoax (or outright crime) being perpetrated on the American people by its government.
By presumably leaking this “news”, the government wants to reassure Americans “the banking system, broadly speaking, seems to be in better shape than many people think,” as The NY Times reports.
That could be very significant if the problem really is one of a lack of confidence, as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (and his predecessor) seems to believe. But as we discuss in the accompanying video with Jon Najarian of OptionMonster.com, such confidence-boosting measures are counting on the majority of Americans to take the government’s word for it and not consider the following:
The stress tests are being conducted with little transparency – and by the banks themselves.
The “baseline” stress-test scenario is for unemployment of 8.4%, which is below the actual March reading of 8.5%, which itself understates the pain.
The “adverse” scenario is for unemployment of 10.3%, which many mainstream economists believe is very likely given current trends – even if the economy already has bottomed since hiring lags a recovery.
The government has said banks that do fail the stress test will be given additional capital, i.e. we’re keeping zombie banks alive – just like Japan! – even as bad loans in commercial real estate and other categories are starting to mount.
“Many of the largest American lenders…probably need to be bailed out again,” The Times reports in its otherwise upbeat story.
Morgan Stanley is facing larger-than-expected losses on some leveraged loans, The WSJ reports.
Berkshire Hathaway just got downgraded from Aaa by Moody’s.
GE Capital is sitting on a bad-debt time bomb, according to Steve Eisman of FrontPoint Partners.
Despite these uncomfortable facts – and related concerns about Geithner’s Public-Private Investment Program for toxic assets – hope springs eternal the bottom for financial shares really is in.
Only in America.
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/229125/Just-Trust-Us,-the-Banks-Are-Fine!
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-did-you-enjoy-the-suckers-rally-2009-4
StockTockers?
Facebook Users Get Worse Grades in College
Facebook users have lower overall grades than non-users, according to a survey of college students who also ironically said the social networking site does not interfere with studying.
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090413-facebook-grades.html
alex, you have too get out more often….
Thanks, 3min. I’ve been waiting for a turn in the markets and decided that today was close enough. I’m going to spend some time in Santa Monica or, perhaps better suited to our times…at Venice Beach (where some guy juggles with chain saws).
Yes, a great day is socal today!
I sold FAZ at 10 today, but it sure does look tempting at $9.25 After Hours. Anybody got an opinion before I flip a coin and decide? I know Idan does the videos for free (and I am thankful for that) and we should make our own decisions, but I wish he would have his video for today up before After Hours are over so I can adjust my portfolio accordingly.
I will wait till after BAC reports next week. I do not want to fight the trend now. I donot think there is any catalyst for financials to continue the trend after BAC reports.I have tried to time the trend and got burned a few times
I agree. Personally I have come to the conclusion that financial stocks are currently not tradeable, especially if you’re trying to swing trade. I’ve had significantly more success in trading TNA/TZA, BGU/BGZ than trying to play FAS/FAZ in the recent weeks.
NOTE: FAS/FAZ kissed at $9.58 on Monday morning. So, I take the two at close of each day and average them to see how far the average drops daily.
Monday Close Averaged: $ 9.52 = $.08 decay
Tuesday Close Averaged: $ 9.39 = $.13 decay
Wednesday Close Averaged: $9.16 = $.23 decay
FAS/FAZ decay today was $.23 today (a 1.3% gain today if you were short both)