Intraday Commentary ~ 3/29/2010

Idan 1:24pm
Look at that beautiful GS retracement we were talking about… now that i’m looking at the chart, it might not reach as far down as 171 because the 20 SMA daily just rose up as support… This set up is a nice long set up. You got youself two levels of support one with the 20 SMA and one at 171, and if both break, you know that the uptrend is broken.

Daniel Shporin

11:08AM- Oil was the big winner today, up over $1.50 after breaking $81.20 (Friday’s high).  I’m done for the day, S&P doing a whole lot of nothing.

10:03AM- I’m short /es from 1168.  I booked 2pts at 1166 on 1/2 my position, and have my stop on the other half at 1168.75.  1163 would be a nice place to take profits if we got that low.

9:32AM- Energies are still up here, Oil is testing Friday’s high at $81.20.  I misplayed nat gas, but have banked some coin going long oil and looking to buy again here if we break $81.20.
S&P to open with a slight  gap up, 3pts on the futures.  I’ll wait for the 15min candle to close and play that.

8:57AM- Good Morning!  I’m pretty excited for this week, usually by Saturday night I’m itching to trade again so really I’m excited for every week.

Oil and Nat Gas are my favorite markets to trade because they are highly volatile.  I only stay in the market for a short amount of time, and these two markets have fewer false breakouts than the S&P or Nasdaq.

Oil has a wicked triple top, h&S looking thing on the daily (first chart.)  But this can also be seen a W, double bottom, with a breakout coming soon of the $83.52 high.  I didn’t see that sort of bullishness last week…but we are approaching the Spring/Summer, oil does have a seasonal tendency to rise into the July 4th Weekend.
Nat Gas has been trending down HARD since January 6th.  But this move could be exhausting, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of a pullback, maybe even a multi week one.

My 5 minute charts will almost always be trading hourly only, I like to filter out hours of overnight noise and just see a simple gap.
Oil  is opening with a gap up of about 60-70cents.  This $79-80 area is holding as support, but if we can break below $79, I’ll be selling aggressively.
Nat Gas is gapping up a little less than oil in percentage terms.  As I’m writing this, we’re seeing some big time candles near the pivot.  I’m waiting for some direction and playing the pivot.

Idan Koren- Hey, So everybody that knows me well enough, knows that i’m in a great mood… I am a Duke alumni, and we’re in the final 4 for the first time in 5 years! Can’t wait!!

I want to talk about a new position that my hedge fund took short on friday. You can follow all my hedge fund swing trades by subscribing to Alerts & Analytics. My goal is to triple the portfolio this year. So lets talk about PCAR in general and why i think it’s a short. PCAR is trading at a PEG above 4, which is about twice as expensive as i would be willing to hold a long in a bull market. It has run up from $33 to $44 in the last month or so without any retracement. And the fibs have a target right at $43.70-44.20. If you look at the daily chart below you can see that we are getting a lot of different tails on the upside, and while there is a small chance for another push higher, I decided to take a 3% short in that name in preparation for a consolidation of at least 10%. I will be adding a little more if we can reach $45.

My stops in the hedge fund are usually 10% (unless otherwise stated) and so i’d like to put a stop around the $48 level. The key to my success is diversification/hedging, I obviously took a long position in another stock too, but you can find out my whole swing trading portfolio by subscribing to Alerts &  Analytics (co-managed with Sun Tze).