Weekly Sector, Industry and Russell 1000 Money Flows

Bonds, the dollar and real estate were the only sector's and asset classes seeing negative money flows the past week, BUT, the chart of UUP, the second from the top, doesn't look very negative to me (IMPO), TSV and MS both continue to be very positive, it's in an up sloping trend channel and the 20ma is about to cross above the 200ma. On the other hand the TLT, right under that, is in a clear down trend channel with some very negative price action during the middle of the week, undoubtedly due to the Beaver County, eeeeeerrrrrr, Greek, fiscal problems. HOWEVER, down at the very bottom MS is putting in a positive divergence, TSV hooked up with the little up day on friday, and it may have stopped going down right on the center line of the linear regression channel. All in all, I'd say it's up in the air, my personal preferrence is for bonds to collaspe so I can get my eventual 18% like we got in 1980, and shut this stupid thing down and retire. On a personal note I actually started to partial back into the Vanguard high yield bond fund, VWEHX, it's just a starter position to have some thing in it, I'll only add to it if we continue to go down at a decent rate.

I have the Q's on the main chart, way down at the very bottom MS continues to be in a very negative configuration, but as Sysin pointed out TSV managed to pop above it's down trend line, which is "usually" a buy signal, although it hasn't quite gotten over the Zero line. HOWEVER, it's a pretty negative looking pattern, the price action off the bottom has been very over lappey and choppy, the %K on the STOCH is close to over bought, and we are running into the first of a lot of over head resistance, the first being $44 which is a triple top on the 60min chart at the top of the page and also the area of that down trending 20dma, which has done a minnie "death cross" of the 50dma. Once we get through that the next area of resistance comes in at $44.75 which is in the area of the 50dma and a double top on the 60min chart going back to late January. Just to show I'm not always nothing but negative, we have broken over the down trend line, and if I put on my best "dreaming" hat, I can make out the wisp of an inverted head and shoulders formation on that 60min, if I had to "guess", I'd say it looks pretty positive, the really good part about this is the uptrend line in blue, that's the very clear demarkation line, if we get below that we could start back down pretty fast. The "REALLY" good part is for "inwestors", you would naturally be out of the market right now (RIGHT????), waiting to see if we can get through all this chop chop area, and your re-entrance would be when we get back over the 50dma on that daily chart, for once we get back into the big green circle at the top, the odds are we go back after the old rally highs, and hope we get another blue sky break out on the way to my eventual target of $48.

On a final note on asset classes, it's probably just me, but I find it pretty strange that the leading money flow's this week were into the defensive consumer staples sector, XLP.

On a scan of the money flows into the various ETF's it just so happened the best chart I could find was actually the one showing the best inflows, DEB, that weekly chart is a beautiful example of a PSS, Pristine buy setup, with three very clean pull back bar's setting up an inside bar right on the 50 week moving average, BUT, TSV and MS still look pretty negative. On a personal note I don't buy ANY THING this out fit puts out, I have no respect for the two guys that run the thing, in order to protect the not so innocent I won't mention their names, but it's their typical bull shit stuff, they give you a "dividend" fund, and it yields a whopping 2.71%, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What a joke.

On the list of negative inflow "leaders" in the ETF's I had to scroll up a ways in order to find the first NON short ETF's, and it ended up being the Global cooling, EEEERRRRRR, WARMING, fund, some how I get the feeling investor's are not buying into Gore's financial bonanza, wad ever, to be honest it wasn't the number one loser, that was the Global nuclear fund just under it, PKN.

On the list of the Russell 1000 money flow leaders WLT look's to be just perfect for those investor's that love to buy high, and then hope to find some sucker willing to buy it from them at even higher prices, as the analyst continue to scream about the thing being deserving of a "Multiple Expansion".

DF is the winner of the loser's category in the Russell 1000, it's been in a down trend and the down trend just got a lot better, hahahaha! Some times I just have to scratch my ass when I look at these things, the funnymentals on it look pretty decent to me, a current P/E of 9.33 with a forward projection of 8.56, the P/S is .23, and a PEG of .81, it's sales have been down, but who cares with numbers like that (I guess some body does, OBVIOUSLY). Anyway, it's bear market low was about $12.50, I might take a hard look at it if it get's back there.

2/12/10 Premarket

6:00am: Futures are getting crushed this morning as it appear's the "Global" recovery may not be all that it's made out to be, Economic Recovery in Europe Unexpectedly Wilts After Stagnation in Germany , and it's not just Germany as the EU should think about fixing itself before trying to do some thing about Greece as the entire EU is sucking the big one, http://bit.ly/cr5dJx .
DOW's down about 65 points with the NasDog's leading the charge lower, down almost 1%. We get a slew of reports at 8:30ET that were moved back from yesterday, including the important retail sales, I have no doubt the dumb ass consumer will inspire the bull's when it shows them spending money they don't have.

It was fun looking through that list of all time NFL quarterback records, one name that surprised me because it was splashed all through the record books, was good Ole George Blanda, hahahahaha, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Blanda , I remember him mostly as the place kicker for the Raider's, but also for his Brett Favre like performance in 1970 when at age 43 he took over for the injured Daryle Lamonica and led the Raider's to last second wins in the last five games to get them to the Championship game against the Colts, where he became the oldest QB to play in a championship, he also holds the record for the oldest to score points in a Championship when he kicked a field goal and an extra point against the Steeler's at age 48. It's funny to think that he started out as a linebacker for George Halas and the Bear's, and then evolved to eventually hold the record for the most PAT's in a career, making 943 out of 959 attempted point after touchdown's. There's probably nothing better in life than throwing the late touchdown, then kicking the extra point that put's you ahead, and then icing the game by coming in from your linebacker spot to sack the Quarterback and end the game, hahahahaha!!!
SIGH, of course I only HEARD about all this stuff by word of mouth, since I wasn't born until after he retired!

QB "Watch list"

I saw a couple of "articles" yakking Peyton Manning up as the "Greatest of All time" before the Super Bowl, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! People are nuts, aren't they!!
Anyway, this guy came up with a half ass decent list of the "Greatest", Whitlock: The best QB of all-time is ... .
Now, for some reason, I tend to rate any one on their "Gag Point", in any sport or position, IE, the "Greatest" ALWAYS, come through when it counts, and when it comes to QB's, there's only one bar to judge them by, how they performed in the "BIG" one, whether it be the Super Bowl or the old NFL Championships.
In that vein, in my personal opinion, you can throw Tarkenton, Marino and even Farve OUT, PERIOD, although Brett did win one, in fact, I'm almost tempted to throw Elway out, hahahahaha, he performed so stinking badly in those Super Bowls he lost, before he finally got over his gag point.
I'm glad to see this guy actually included Johnny U., I was actually AMAZED to see a couple of other list that didn't even have him on there, I mean, he still owns the NFL record for the most consecutive games with a TD pass, 47, the nearest one to him is Farve with 36, he also leads the stat's in most season's leading the league in touch downs and most consecutive seasons leading the league in touch downs, just totally amazing that some people leave him off the list.
Anyway, there's a couple of minor little QB's this guy leaves off the list, one of them won 3 NFL championship's and then TWO Super Bowls, some one called Bart Starr. Starr didn't get a lot of typical QB stat's because of the "Green Bay" sweep, but he did hold an NFL record for decades, one that showed why he was so valuable, and that was for the consecutive number of pass's attempted with out an interception, 294 straight in 1964, it wasn't broken until 1990 by Bernie Kosar, and he's still number two on the list, as well as being number two on the list for number of season's leading the league in lowest percentage of passes intercepted. He was just what Lombardi needed, very consistent, and if you listen to the individuals on that star laden team talk about the glue that held them together, Starr's name comes up all the time.

The other one he leave's out is Terry Bradshaw, I mean, he has Montana at number two, and yet Bradshaw won as many Super Bowls as Montana did, four, and Montana doesn't show up on the all time stat's as many times as you might expect, he leads in none of them but shows up in that most important of stat's a lot, the percentage of completions, but it's leadership that win's the "Big" one, and obviously Bradshaw had as much of that as any one, just incredible to me that people don't include him in any list like this.

Here's a link to the record book, http://www.nfl.com/history/randf/records/indiv/passing .

2/11/10

2:00pm: The NasDogs blew up at 9:15MT over the news that a country with a GDP the size of my county here, Beaver County, was going to get bailed out by the other tax payers of the EU. My only thought, udder Dan diskcust, is since I am the only one in the county with some fancy dancey thing called a computer, and using that weird thing called the internet, if we could just convince some one else to get with it, that would double our IT spending here in the county, and the Q's would be trading at their old highs of $120.50 at the close today!!!!

The $VXN is collasping, and I've re-entered about 75% of the prior June position, I will complete the rest if we can get back to the $44 "area". I'm getting a little edgey about it though, June may not be enough time to get the movement I need, but who knows, this crazy market may be 5% lower tomorrow, after the EU thinks about the can of worms they are opening up, hahaha!

Anyway, PFE looks like it "may" have found some support at an area of prior support, mainly from the December lows, plus it seem's to "like" $17.50 as a number, it could be a possible.

Mid-Week Swing Trade Idea's for Russell 1000 and ETF's

A daily scan of the ETF's came up with 6 new buys and 8 new shorts on the MSW, it seem's to think that clean energy and commodities have hit a bottom with new buys on PBW and DYY.
It has new shorts on the DOW proxy XLI, and the high yield fund HYG, personally I hope HYG dumps about 50% as I will be all over it's cousin JNK. It also doesn't like utilities, base metals, the BRICS, or the UK.

The weekly signals of the ETF's have two new buys and 20 new shorts, one of the buys is a 3X bear fund of the small caps, TZA, I don't touch any of the "ULTRA" funds for any length of time, as they ALL lose money over any period, but they can be day traded or held a day or two.

I show the short on the Ultra small cap SAA, but it has a whole bunch of new short signals on the small caps and mid caps in the form of VB, DFE, IJJ, IJK, CZA, and PJM, IE, IT DOESN'T STINKING LIKE THE SMALL CAPS AND MID CAPS!!!! It also doesn't like water or timber, the Russell 3000 (that's just a MINOR index!), areospace or defense, China in a couple of them, France (who doesn't???), and coal.

On the daily charts of the Russell 1000 the MSW is trying to pretty much bottom fish on HCBK and BGG, the two shorts on EL and PXD were about the best I could come up with, IE I'm not to interested in any of them at this point, at least until we get through the current market volatility.

The weekly scan came up with eight new buys and 26 new shorts, it's trying to bottom fish AYE, and DDS has pulled back to a long term uptrend line, very tight stop on that one there is. The shorts all look fairly decent, NUAN is certainly one of the most over loved stocks I've seen, it seem's like all the yakking heads recommend it, NTY could have a lot of room to fall if it loses it here.

2/10/10

The last four days on the Q's daily chart has basically been contained within the confines of that big down day five days ago, last thursday, TSV is right on the verge of breaking over that down trend line and is trying to pop it's head up over the 15ma.

The 60min McClellan triggered a short today as we failed to be able to get over that down trend line that goes back to 1/27. We also have a wisp of a slanted heand and shoulders pattern on that 60min.,

In the first green circle on the left the 15min. broke that nice uptrend line this morning that goes back to the low from last friday, and then did a beautiful back test of it on the rally off the lows this morning in the green circle on the right. We now have a new triangle on it with the low edge of it at about $42.85.

The "Squeeze" Could Be Here

2:00PM: Despite all the news driven whip saws the Q's performed pretty admirably on the 15min pivot chart at the bottom. Once we figured out the gap was pure BS and the Q's truly were worth about $5 they immediately sold us down, the nice cool part was that I guess they felt they reached fair valuation when they hit that nice lower trend line at about 9:30, just under the pivot point, the big rally after that was supposedly over news that GERMANY was going to bail out the PIIGS by themselves, then the dump after that was when Germany came out and said there weren't any stinking way they were bailing them out!!! Just your typical valuation type calls, hahahahaha! We closed just about on that trend line, if we break below it I could well imagine we see, aaahhh, lower prices.

The McClellan chart at the top went from over sold to over brought faster than I can spell either one, currently sitting at +164. I know it seem's like a miracle, but the pump after the Germany rumor stopped RIGHT AT that blue down trend line, don't ask me why, I can't explain stuff like that, you'd think the markets are rigged or some thing when you see shit like that.

5:45AM: The Q's are trading in the premarket practically over yesterdays's high, SIGH, http://dynamic.nasdaq.com/dynamic/premarketma.stm , as the "SQUEEZE" might be starting, the rumor mill is grinding trader's up left and right as the main rumor is a possible bail out of the PIIGS, again, http://bit.ly/aPVvYI , as Trichet is leaving Australia early for his ECB meeting. I certainly hope we don't get into a situation like we did last year when I decided to take a few months off for research and stuff, as it's just impossible for me to make any money when out side forces start gapping us all over the place every day on various bail outs and crooked government interventions in the market place.

Anyway, on a lighter note, it appear's the winter Olympics may be broke, hahahahahahaha, http://bit.ly/bo2a5b , ok, actually, the owner of the resort that is holding the Alpine sking events is broke, but I sure hope this is the start of the eventual end to the Olympic's as they are now presented, maybe "they" will actually get back to what the true Olympic spirit was originally intended to be. "THE CONCEPT", that having a bunch of professional NHL bum's playing the professional Russian bum's will bring back what made the original "Miracle on Ice" so special to us is probably the single stupidest idea I've ever seen, as is the whole concept of allowing professional's to participate in any of the games, wad ever, good riddance to them.

Here's some good reading for your spare time, 18 Trading Champion's share their secrets, http://bit.ly/9TRBbJ , I hope that link works, it's amazing how most of them hardly talk about technical setup's at all, most of it regards the "mental" aspect of getting your ass kicked.

SIGH, I wrote the stuff below last night, while I was dreaming I guess, anyway, I actually would like to see us rally, I think the R/R on a good short will get better if we can rally back up under that 50dma some where, and set up a nice lower high on declining volume with some negative divergences in the indicators and, well, blah blah blah blah, etc etc etc, the important thing is the low's we made the last couple of days will now become the NEW LINE IN THE SAND, when we turn back down. We have a TON of resistance and congestion over head, so trading in this environment could be EXTREMELY trickey, I fully expect that if we rally on another stupid bail out hope of the PIIGS, the sell the news reaction to what ever ACTUAL news comes out of the EU could be rather, aaaaaaahhhhhh, exciting. Uncle Ben is going to be testifying tomorrow as well, if he say's some thing totally stupid, like "I intend to get back to fiscal responsibility", woooo weeeee, the market reaction to some thing like that could be truly terrifying, hahahaha!

In the lower chart, the Weekly STOCH on the Q's has reached one of those "points", IE, it's over sold enough that's I'm starting to "look" at it. The %K on it is at 11.63, and I circled the prior areas on that chart where it got close to this "over" sold, and with the exception of the 08' October to November wipe out, we bounced from here, and of course the November bottom did what I REALLY look for, and that was a divergence. Anyway, the MACD is BAD, that cross over can last for what seems like ages, and the RSI5 at the top is not even close to over sold yet, that doesn't mean we can't bounce some where in this area though.

On the daily chart at the top, I've been looking at that red rectangle for about a half hour now, and I'm still trying to figure out what I'm seeing there, hhmmmm, give me a couple of more minutes, hhmmmm, be patient, I'm looking at it............................. RIGHT, ok, I get it, I DON'T SEE A DAMN THING THERE!!! It looks like a big BLANK spot, or DEAD ZONE, or AIR POCKET, or CLEAR AIR, or VOID, WHAT EVER THE HELL YOU WANT TO CALL IT!!

Now, the good part about that rectangle is the BOTTOM of it, sitting down there waiting for us is the 200dma, and the prior bottoms in October and November, and PROBABLY, a hell of a lot of those weird individuals called BUYERS!!!

Call me Cucca, or call me crazy, call me insane, call me weird, but some body please call me and ring the bell and wake me up when we hit that area!

2/8/10 EOD

2:00pm: Hmmmm, not a very good day for the bulls, the 15min shows how we took out friday's highs, and when I look to the left we really had nothing but clear air above us, back up toward that gap fill from last thursday, there should have been nothing there to keep the bulls' from making a better effort than they did, hmmmmm.

That 15min has a rounded top look to it, and with us closing right on the low's of the day, I can't help but think that if we can take out thursday's low tomorrow, around $42.60, things might start getting a little, aaaahhhh, exciting again.

The banks had a really bad day, BAC in particular, I really don't see why Greece is a problem, I mean from what I hear we're only talking about $80 billion, hell, good Ole Tax Cheatin Timmy will be more than glad to give our tax money to them, like he did with Goldman and the other European banks when we bailed out AIG.

4:30AM: Rob Hanna always has some interesting little stat's, and today is no different, http://quantifiableedges.blogspot.com/ . Today he's looking at what happens after you get a large difference between the number of stocks that are above their 200dma as compared to the number of stocks that are above their 40dma, at the current time 72% of the stocks in the NYSE are above their 200dma, while only 24% are above their 40dma, IE we've had a strong pull back while still in a strong uptrend, an uptrend being defined by a stock being above it's 200dma.

The reason I like Rob so much is not because he provides the trade results (the trade results come out almost 100% by the way, IE buy the market NOW), the real reason is that I'm lazy, and I know that when I repeat a thesis of mine over and over again, as in "The first pull back in a strong uptrend is "almost" "always" (those are disclaimers, hahahaha!) buyable", I know that all I have to do is sit back and wait, and let Rob do all the research work on it, and he'll come up with a quantifiable result that proves my thesis correct (or incorrect), hahahahahahahahaahhaha!!!
Anyway, little tibit's like this just reinforce my idea that this is not the "Big One", YET! All this is right now is the first shot across the bow, the main thing being that there has been "A Change in Character in the Market", this pull back is totally different that any that we've had since the start of the rally last March. January shocked a lot of the green shooter's, but they aren't going to give up the ghost until they see what happens on the ensuing rally attempt, and I don't believe they will load the boat back up unless we can get over the previous rally highs, which brings me to my "load the boat up" shorting plan. My natural inclination, which will be a loser's plan, is to try and short the rally at various area's, like if we go back up and stall right under that minnie death cross we are making under the 20/50dma, I mean, that might not be a "loser", per sec, I might hit it big time, it's just that it's more of a "gambler" mentality, which I'm willing to take a shot at because of the tight stop it will provide. In my opinion, the main bulk of the bull's won't give it up until we come back down and take out what ever low we establish during the current pull back, like, who knows, maybe friday was "THE" low for the current pull back. Once we get an obvious down trend intact, which every one recognizes, then they are going to be beating each other over the head trying to get out of Dodge first.

Talk about a change in character, the futures have been basically FLAT since yesterday, DOW down about 20 points, where's the typical monday pump Yob we've had for like 15 weeks in a row?????? Anyway, CVS reported this morning, it appears they missed a little on both the top and bottom lines, I only bring it up because this is Karen Finnerman's favorite "value" play, she get's practically giddy every time she mentions it on Fast Money. Karen is the complete opposite of the other players on the show, as yea yea yea, she's a hedge fund manager, but she's so "girlie", that is, very conservative and a "value investor" at heart, having this dumb ass plan where she "invests" in things she likes for the long term, and then spends all the rest of her time protecting her positions, hahahahahaha, can you imagine THAT, I thought what you were supposed to do is invest in some thing, then watch it lose 80% of it's value, and then sell it!!!!! Geeze, well, you learn some thing every day.
Good luck out there in La La Land today.

My "I'M SCREWED" list for trading

Since there ain't diddly fricking squat on the tube today, and it's fricking snowing, and I was thinking about some thing this morning while I was reading and righting (eeerrrr, wrighting, whiting, wad ever), and I mumbled one of my most favorite terms under my breath to myself, "I'M SCREWED", I thought I'd do a list of them for my future referrence, in no particular order, although I usually mumble the first ones more than the last ones:

I'm Screwed, IF:

I DON'T HAVE A COMPLETE PLAN FOR THE TRADE: This includes the rather minor thing (which I consider LEAST important) like the entry, and ESPECIALLY the most important thing, what I'm going to do when it goes against me, BECAUSE IT ALWAYS DOES! Plus all the following items.

I CHANGE MY TIME FRAME DURING THE TRADE: An example is entering a trade based on a nice setup you see on a WEEKLY time frame, and then panic and exit based on what happens on a five minute chart, even though your original stop may be many points away, this one comes from...........

NOT HAVING ALL MY MOO COWS GOING THROUGH THE SQUEEZE CHUTE IN THE SAME DIRECTION: Jumping a weekly trade on a five minute chart comes from not having my time frames lined up properly in the first place, I see this great setup on the weekly chart and just have to take it, not even bothering to look at the daily, 60, 15 and 5 minute charts, for if I have all of them looking just as good as the weekly time frame, I won't HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT JUMPING IT!

NOT SETTING MY POSITION SIZING BASED ON THE TIME FRAME: I can go ALL IN on a trade based on a five minute chart, as I only intend on being in the trade for like maybe ten minutes, but I certainly DON'T want to tie all my capital up on one trade that I may be in for months on end, which leads into..........

NOT HAVING SET POSITION SIZE PARAMETERS: This may be one of the single most important parameters, and most often over looked, and it's to bad, because it's probably the EASIEST SET OF PARAMETERS I CAN MAKE FOR MY TRADE SETUPS! My position sizing is ALWAYS determined by my stop, thus if I determine that the MOST I ever want to lose on any one trade setup is like, 1/2% of my total capital, and I have $100,000 in my account, that means the most I am willing to lose is $500 on any one trade. Thus, on that weekly trade above, if it's a $50 stock I am trading, and I determine that a "logical" stop would be under the last pivot, which is $5 lower than the current price, then I could only take 100 shares of that stock in the trade. I mean, I could take a .50 cent stop, and take 1,000 shares, but on a $50 stock the odd's go up pretty fast that I'm going to get stopped out on just a minimal shake out move with a tight stop like that. Of course, I can do a "drop dead" stop, where I've studied the stock and watched it, and all the parameters are lining up on the weekly, daily, 60min., 15min., down to a five minute time frame, and I feel this is IT, this things going to go up, and a 50 cent stop is more than enough room to prove me right. There's a lot of ways to determine my position sizing, the more important thing is to HAVE a set of parameters, and stick to them.

I DON'T HAVE A FUNNYMENTAL REASON FOR ENTERING A TECHNICAL SETUP, OR VICE VERSA: I don't believe in Funnymentals of course, I think they ALL LIE, but, I check the supposed fundamentals all the time, and of course a fundamental reason doesn't have to be the P/E or wad ever else bull shit, it could be a MACRO reason, wad ever, it doesn't matter, what matter's is that having BOTH of them in alingment will help my CONFIDENCE, the confidence to stay with the trade, the confidence to easily push the intimidating mouse button, and the confidence of TWO stops, either the set in stone technical stop, or the fundamental stop if they don't make sense any more.

NOT HAVING SEPERATE ACCOUNTS FOR SEPERATE TIME FRAMES, OR MIND GAMES: I hate TradeStation in this respect, I can't seperate my visual accounts in it, or at least I haven't taken enough time to figure out how to. My account manager always shows ALL my positions, and personally, I DON'T WANT TO KEEP WATCHING SOME TRADE I MADE ON A WEEKLY TIME FRAME ALL THE TIME! I take the trade, set the stop, and forget about it, other than checking it on a chart once a week. So TS is my gambling account, mostly for day trading and option swing trades, which I'm always monitoring since it's my charting platform as well, and my InterActive Broker's account is for swing and position trades, and some gambling, as I can create seperate little folders and tags for them and not have to see them all the time, and of course Fidelity and Vanguard are for my retirement and fixed income accounts, which I hardly ever look at, I might check them monthly. It's mostly just a mental thing, but not watching those long term trade's all the time will keep me from jumping stop's or exits on them, just because there may be red or green blinking fricking lights staring at me all the time.

CHASING THE COW: We got two bull's that we keep around all the time for breeding stock, and they end up on the Beaver butcher block every two years, or we sell them, cause they start, aaaaaahhhhh, DATING, their daughters, anyway, they are a kick to watch, all they ever do, IS CHASE THE HOTTEST COW AROUND! Both of them, hahahaha, that's when they get into fights of course, or start knocking down the younger bulls who are trying to be just like Daddy. Anyway, this should probably be filed under KNOW THYSELF, and I'm not comfortable chasing stocks, and when I'm not comfortable, I usually make PISS POOR DECISIONS! The way I look at it, if I missed it, I MISSED IT, there's a million other things I could be doing, other than trying to be the bull with the biggest balls, and jump into that 10% gapper. Don't get me wrong, I know of bunch's of people that make big bucks chasing those things, I just happen to know, that IT'S NOT RIGHT FOR ME! I know that my best trade's come when I get into some thing that just screams at me to GO, usually some thing with that tight stop that I love to have, usually off of pulls back's in strong stocks or rallies in weak stocks, there's no better feeling than to all ready be in the hot stock that the other bulls are now chasing, and being in the unenviable position of having to decide how much to take out of the trade, boy, is that a bitch, hahahaha! This sequence should also be filed under the 80/20 rule, of which I'm a big believer in, that being that you make 80% of your gains in 20% of your trades, I've seen myself do this year after year. The trick of course is to not lose every thing during that lousy 80% of the time when you aren't doing to hot, geeeze, what a fricking grind, it usually ends with me saying some thing like I'm quitting, or going on vacation, or getting drunk, wad ever, any thing to get away from what ever it is I'm NOT doing. Kind of related to CHASING THE COW is I watched this, aaaaaaahhhhh, "analyst", on Pimm Fox's show friday, and I swear, SWEAR, he took 15 minutes telling us all about the great things about this one particular stock, on and on and on, and all I could say to myself, was, geeze, this guy sure sounds like he's trying to "SELL" me some thing! The point being that if I am buying some thing based on what some Wall Street, "SALEMAN", is spouting off about, then I TRULY AM SCREWED! Wall Street's whole reason for continuing to exist, is their ability to SELL their stocks to retail investors like me, and I mean that literally, they LITERALLY sell you the stock that they own, and they do it as close to the top as they can! And then they sit back, and buy it back from me, like when I was so happy to sell it back to them last March 9th.

Ok, since no one wants to volunteer I'll add another one on 2/8/10:
MASTER OF NONE: What's missing of course is the first part of that phrase, JACK OF ALL TRADES, and this is actually a BIG one, I can think of three parts to it right away.
Number one, and this relates to the Position Sizing idea, is TAKING TO MANY POSITIONS! I can hardly think of an easier way to lose money, than having so many positions open you concentrate on some positons at the expense of other positions. My personal way of getting around this is to seperate my "trading" and "position" ideas, I'm always concentrating on the trading ones, while my "position" trades are set in stone, with prearranged position sizes and stops.
Another is ignoring the KISS principle, keep it simple stupid, I only have so much concentration and staying power during the day, and I use it up very rapidly flipping all over the place trying to control to many positions.
A third bad thing this produces is neglecting important little items when taking positions, like when is earnings coming up on a particular stock, are there upgrades and down grades coming out of the crooked analyst's, is the entire sector starting to lag the market, did the CEO just run off to Mexico with the secretary and the companies money, did the CFO just quit, the idea being that taking a position in some thing involves a lot of TIME investment, not just capital, and my time is very important to me, as I don't have much of it I can waste.

I'm done, there's other things, in fact feel free to tell us all one of your own personal favorites, I'll add it to the list here, and keep it up on the blog, so we can come back and refresh our beliefs once in a while when things aren't going to hot. I'm mostly interested in the unreal "mental" things we do that screw us, not the technical things like when to enter a stock, or exit, I mean that's stuff that's just mechanically wrong and can be easily corrected, it's those continuing mental mistakes we make that really screw us.

Weekly Swing Trade Ideas for Russell 1000 and ETF's

Lot's of differing views in the WackOsphere this weekend about the key reversal day in the markets friday, some of the more interesting ones are one that Sysin pointed out at Trading the Odds, http://www.tradingtheodds.com/ , Quantifiable Edges, http://quantifiableedges.blogspot.com/ , VIX and More, http://vixandmore.blogspot.com/ , Cobra http://cobrasmarketview.blogspot.com/ , Woodshedder Technical Analysis with WOODSHEDDER , plus my normals like The Elliott Wave Lives On and the sentiment post at http://www.tradersnarrative.com/ , blah blah blah blah, etc etc etc, I'm ready for the week now, I'M TOTALLY CONFUSED, HAHAHAHA!
Speaking of Captain Kirk's volatility stops (I was, wasn't I?????), I have the TradeStation coding for those if any one is interested.

This is the complete list of the weekly short's on the Russell 1000 I forgot to add in, as noted down at the bottom.

Hhmmmmmm, I just can't, for the life of me, figure out what the MSW is trying to tell me, about what it thinks about the longer term prospects for the market!!! Hahahaha, I've seen it make some pretty emphatic statements before, but I have to admit, I don't really remember it being so slanted in one direction, I'd say this is a contrary "sentiment" indicator, but I don't really think the damn software cares about human sentiment in the least.

Just out of curiosity I totaled up ALL the signals, the new signals, confirmed signals, and continuing signals, and it's on 12, TWELVE, buy signals, and 244 short signals! This is far and away the most bearish I've ever seen the software get, I mean, well, I really don't know what to say. Being a damn contrary "investor" type, I'm tempted to go against the stupid thing, I mean, it can't be this fricking bad, CAN IT????

I put four of the weekly charts up there, but it don't matter, you can just about pick'em if you are so inclined. The one I'm watching over the longer term, will be JNK, I have HYG in the lower left corner, but they are both pretty much the same, I won't really get interested in JNK for quite a while, like, if we try to challenge the March lows, at that point I think JNK was yielding about 16%+, and the REALLY good part about these two items, is that they just follow the market around most of the time, IE, they are market performers, so not only will you get the big dividend yield, but you will catch most of the market move as well. Also, it tracks the Q's really well, and as such, you can use the Q's to HEDGE your position if you are so inclined, IE buying cheaper puts on the Q's, rather than having to pay up for them on JNK, as the 40 cents a month dividend is built into the JNK puts.

In contrast to the weekly scan of the ETF's, the daily scan is fairly split, and doesn't have nearly the total number of signals on it, 13 total buy signals and 38 short signals.

I made a mistake on the picture I took, there's actually 6 more new buy signals that aren't showing up on the picture, UGL, GMM, GML, FDV, ECH and QAI. Almost all the new signals are on a lot of those weird, low volume type of ETF's that I'm not really interested in, the EWJ short at the bottom is one of the more liquid ETF's, but to be honest I'm not really interested in that as a short, it look's like the same reversal bar we had in most of the other markets. I put the Q's on there mainly because, well, they're the Q's, but mostly I find it interesting that the MSW didn't change it's signal, or stop out, it still think's there's more down side for them.

On the daily scan of the Russell 1000 the MSW seem's to agree with the turn around day we had friday, doing some thing I don't see it do very often, and actually spitting out some signals on some of the big cap names, and even more rare, BUY signals at that! It has new buys on BAC, CSCO, HIG, PRU, and FCX, I have the charts of FCX and BAC on there because FCX is a favorite among the Mojo crowd, and of course one of my VERY few core positions is in BAC (don't ask me why, I have NO STINKING IDEA WHY!). More interesting to me is the new buy signals in two of my favorite smaller cap stocks, the best smaller bank stock in the market, HCBK, and an energy stock I made money on early last year, SD (for some dumb ass reason I always go back to stocks I made money on, and avoid stocks I lost money on, pretty weird stuff). Now, SD "could" be a little dicey, the good stuff is it made a very nice key reversal day friday with the market, it took out the low it made in December under $8, and closed at $8.37. If I took it here, I'd have my stop under that friday low, in "anticipation" of a possible Big "W" formation some where down the road. Now, the BAD stuff is the weekly chart, that same $8 number is also the low it made during the July pull back with the market, and what it now has is a very obvious head and shoulders formation going back to July, very obvious, so it just reinforces the idea of the stop under $8. BUT (that's my last "BUT", I promise), it's March low is only around $5, and looking at an extended picture of the weekly, it's in a basing pattern going back to 2008, after it got completely thrased with the rest of the energy stocks during the collaspe of 08', falling from $69 down to that $5 area.
Those two short signals I have on the chart were about the best I could see, MRVL and NAV, and I don't like either one of those.

In keeping with it's bearish view of the weekly chart's of the ETF's at the top, the MSW is equally as bearish on the weekly charts of the Russell 1000, coming up with 6 new buys and 44 new short's. I forgot to add the complete list of the signals here, thus I have them at the top as noted.
On the buy side CAG and COO actually look like very nice SHORTS to me, HAH, take that MSW! Anyway, I have BGP as a special situation on the charts because not only is it an "option" stock at $1.16, but that famous Hedge fund shorter Ackerman is all over this thing as one of his favorite long plays, he says there's not way in hell it's going broke (unless it does of course, hahahaha), and is a prime take over target, wad ever, it might be worth some pocket change. Every one has probably used some thing with a Briggs and Stratton engine in it at some point in our lives, and BGG may have found some support at a longer term uptrend line, after putting in a nice tight harami type candle last week.

I have HUM and PG on the short charts, but almost all of those on that list look the same (with a few exceptions), so you can just pick your favorite from that bunch. AAPL is NOT one of those exceptions, it looks like a decent short to me, although you would be fighting the world in that one, but QCOM may be one of the exceptions, it look's a little over done to me, I'd wait for the eventually rally before taking a shot at it.