IWM- Or Sitting on the Horn Of a TSV Dilemma

Very nice, the "3-in-1" set up, http://www.elliottwave.com/features/default.aspx?cat=ff .

Since I'm in a "nice" mood, a very "nice" place for futures price charts and just about all the economic charts you might need, http://www.financialsense.com/rawmaterials/main.html .

This is not very "nice", calling me "amusing", but I have to admit that I've been watching and wondering about the "Dow Theory Non-Confirmation" between the Transports and the DOW,
http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wrapup.htm , but luckily some one came to my rescue and could obviously be the object of his amusement, especially with the statement "A major non-confirmation has surfaced", If The NASDAQ Leads, Will The Rest Of The Stock Market Follow? , HOWEVER, the charts in there of the DOW and NasDogs does bring up a VERY good point.

This is actually a continuation of the notes I was making about the TSV indicator in the last post, but I decided I wanted to do this seperately in order to get TSV in the title, just for search reasons in the future, so I can find it later rather easily just by typing TSV in the search bar, like in a few months when the markets take out the 09' March lows, so I can rub it in the bull's noses, and say I TOLD YOU SO, HAHAHAHAHAHA, SIGH, I'm just kidding of course (or ISSSSSSSS HE??!!).

ANYWAY (there it is again!), the weekly TSV reading for the IWM is just below the middle of the pack in that Sector TSV list in the last post, not particularly great, BUT, they are still just ahead of the Q's, SPY and DIA. I bring this up because I stopped by a site I check once in a while, the COT's Timer, http://cotstimer.blogspot.com/ , not becuase of the IWM but because of his head line article about the Small Trader's still trying to FADE this rally, I mean, my goodness gracious, I'm as bearish as any one when it comes to the macro economic challenges we face, and no one hates this over loved, over owned and over valued market any more than me, BUT, I'm certainly not standing in front of the freight train, YET! He has some other pretty interesting little items in there that are worth a read, but what cracked me up is that he mentioned an article by Stephen Vita , HAH, talk about a blast from the past, I used to really like this guy but he went to all subscription based and all that stuff, and I'm a cheap bastard, so I stopped reading him, but I guess he's posting on another blog now, and fairly consistently, so I checked him out, and his last article is about the IWM, and thin air, and 1999, and so I read it, and that kind of...................................
Well, it kind of led into a round about way of getting to those two charts of the IWM at the top, hahahahaha, sorry about that, I'm meandering, but the TSV thing has been really BUGGING ME, MAAAANNNN, at least it is on a weekly basis. I'm not picking on the IWM in and of itself, ALL the charts of the major index's look pretty much exactly like the IWM, although they are probably WORSE looking, especially the XLF, it's almost ready to cross into negative territory under the ZERO line, geeze!
ANYWAY (there it is again) the top chart is the current weekly chart of the IWM, TSV has been diverging against price since last SEPTEMBER, and when you look at it TSV acted properly when it blasted off out of the March bottom with price, but it's hit a wall since September and keeps going lower and lower, completely opposite of what the UUP chart looks like. So I went back in time (I do that a LOT) to see if it means any thing, and, yea, it CAN, it doesn't mean it WILL, just that it CAN, mean bad things. The typical comparison is to go back to the rally in 03', which is the chart just under that, there are some very exacting comparisons between the two, one is the TIME FRAMES, they are almost EXACTLY the same, the 03' rally started in March as well, we rallied all the way into the new year accept for a couple of pull backs in June-July and then October (althought the pull backs this year were a lot worse), BOTH of them made a new high in January, then BOTH of them had a pull back, and then BOTH of them made a new high again in MARCH, but that's where the comparison hits a wall. If you look at TSV on the 03' chart it actually made a slight new HIGH at the JANUARY high, IE confirming the rally, completely opposite of the current chart, but then it started to do it's divergence, making a lower high at the March high, and then another lower high in the red circle, which was the FINAL high that price made in APRIL (that's the upcoming earnings season by the way), this final non-confirmation led into the pull back that bottomed in August of 04', just before the blast off into the 04' elections (don't we have an election coming up this year????). One other difference between the two is that the first lower high in the TSV in March of 03' came with a lower high confirmation in the STOCH reading, while currently the %D is actually higher than the January high, meaning we are even more over bought than 03', although the %K has yet to play catch up.

The thing that's really kind of bugging me is that I'm using the IWM because, well, it's the talk of the town, but the main index's look even worse, like I said the XLF is ready to turn negative, even the IYT has just about the same configuration as the IWM, I just, DON'T LIKE IT, of course I can go broke trying to get in front of this thing, and since I don't HAVE TO, I'M NOT GOING TO!!!!! I could easily see us get even more of a pump into the maaaaaaaavelous earnings we expect next month, and just like the last two earnings season's I could see us selling that rally off again, you know, like after those Honest Abe "ANALYST" get done with all their upgrades they have been doing, PRIOR to the release of ACTUAL earnings, geeze, god I hate it when we rally into earnings season.

One last note on the current IWM weekly chart, before I'm outta here for the weekend, we're coming into the circled area, it's kind of an interesting area, number one we actually have a Clear air pocket here, back up to those last major rally highs we had in September of 08' (just before that guy called Lehmann showed up (actually it was FULD but who's counting)) at the whole number $75, BUT, this is also a "congestion" area, so I DOUBT (that's mean's I doubt it) we go in a straight line back up to that high, PLUS, we just had two consecutive closes outside the weekly bollinger bands, some thing we haven't had in the entire rally off the March bottom, so, SIGH, we probably get some more chop chop trying to get there, greeeaaaat, just what I fricking need, wad ever, it is wad it is, I'll just have to deal with it like a man, and stand aside, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Weekly Sector And Industry Money Flows

Ok, grrreeeaaat, we had some money flows last week, and also, ok, no surprise to me that the IWM was the "winner" in the money flow race, along with some of the other "trading" sectors, like the XLF, Q's, SPY, XLI (some body should talk to the people that decide on the make up of the DOW and tell them to get their ass in gear, DIA is definitely a laggard compared to XLI, WHICH, brings up a point about a pairs trade, long XLI and short DIA?????), but some body is going to have to explain to me that if every thing is so stinking honkey dorey, and the economy is firing on all cylinders, then what's up with the negative inflows on those bottom four, XLB, GLD (forget that one), DBC and DBA????????????? Come on, some body...... any body????? I don't know why DBC is lagging, because GAS is CERTAINLY not lagging, on my way home from my walk yesterday I noticed our service station hit $3.00 a gallon this week, this coming two months BEFORE the REAL pump in prices start's going up into the Memorial day weekend, woooooo weeeeeeee, will we see $4 again this summer??? It's always been my contention that the REAL cause of the economic collaspe was the oil spike, not the stupid Wall Street welfare extravaganza.

ANYWAY (I use that word all the time because it pisses off the "grammar" purist to no end, hahahaha), I have a chart of the dollar on there as the featured chart, UUP, not because of the inflows but because of the TSV, Time Segmented Volume indicator, which is a proprietary indicator from Worden. One thing you can do with Telecharts is to sort your list by any of the indicators you may use, and when I sort the list on a VISUAL basis on TSV the UUP is at the top of the list, meaning it still has the best TSV readings on a weekly basis, which is what the chart is, a weekly chart that is. I put the complete TSV sorted list at the top, I have SPY on there as the featured chart in order to show what a LOUSY TSV configuration looks like. One thing I like about TSV is how closely it tracks Money Flows, which is the MS indicator in Telecharts, both DBA and DBC show up towards the bottom in both lists, BUT, IMHO, TSV is a MUCH BETTER indicator, I mean, I've tried getting my arms around that MS indicator for quite awhile, but for the life of me I still can't see how it's worth a damn, wad ever, that's just me.

Just a side note, I noticed Trader's Narrative has his weekly sentiment over view posted over on the side bar on the right, that's always worthy of a read.

Retail and Transports make up most of the top inflows in the various Industries this past week.

On the negative money flow side it's no surprise to see Farm Products right at the bottom of the list, it's probably just a coindcidence that DBA was the big loser in the Sector list as well, really, HONEST, IT IS!! I see Tobacco and Cigarettes right down toward the bottom of the list, I think that here in Utah we either passed, or are right on the verge of passing, a $1 tax on each PACK of ciggies, I have no idea why big MO is not getting crushed, as I just can't imagine that smoker's are going to continue to pay these enormous costs for their habit, but MO seems to be holding up fairly well, it's a market performer at least.

Friday 3/12/10

9:00am: AAAAAAAARRRRRRUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!! This is a little late, as I'm working on some "STUFF" (a new blog to start with) and I totally froze the poor puter' up, SIGH!! ANYWAY, pretty interesting stuff this morning, we opened RIGHT ON a whole number, $47.50 (yes Virginia, .50 IS A WHOLE NUMBER), and, "THEY", promptly sold the shit out of "IT", hahahahaha, SIGH, like I've said, I can't do ANY THING when "inwestors" act so stupid by gapping us in ONE direction, and then taking it in the OTHER direction right out of the chute, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER PEOPLE!!!! In more fun stuff, bond yields were up, AND, bonds were UP, in the form of the TLT, the dollar was DOWN, AND, GOLD was DOWN, hahahaha, just your typical BS stuff.

The five minute chart of the A/D's at the top is pretty negative, the A/D differential is DOWN and the total $VOLD is DOWN, meaning the animal spirits may be "resting" today, prior to their typical Monday extravaganza BS.

On a more humerous note (I don't consider the stinking market funny AT ALL!!), and to show that I'm even handed, in rebuttal to my ragging on Jeff Saut and Barton Biggs about their "Bull vs Bull" debate, check out this video of Mish Shedlock and Dr. Doom Marc Faber in their "Bear vs Bear" debate, hahahahahahahahaha, it cracks me up, the two of them can hardly contain their obvious love for one another!! There's two parts to it, this is the first part, http://bit.ly/bAQs5V , then the second part is right underneath it.

Of course, being on the aaaaaaaahhhhhh, dubious side, myself, I love the whole stinking thing. One thing I did kind of think that was kind of interesting, is the love they have for Japan, personally I'm a little, aaaaaaaahhhhhh, DUBIOUS, BUT, I could see a pairs trade like long EWJ and short the fricking NasDogs, or some thing like that. More likely the DIA, as they are the weakest link in the Bull party going on.

6:15am: The really, REALLY, Big Caps, the DIA, continue to lag the other big caps in the form of the SPY, as the SPY broke to new highs for the past year yesterday, while the DIA has not done so, YET, but Da Boyz are trying to take care of that in the premarket as the DOW futures are up 24 points, I have no doubt they will work their "magic" and join their brethern with new rally highs very soon, probably today.

BOTH of those index's are acting like small caps though when compared to the REALLY Big Dogs, the NasDog 100, some times called Da Q's, as Analyst claim they get more and more undervalued the higher they climb, as consumers have given up on real food and buying gas for their cars, as they are buying those cheap toys the Dogs make and melting them in the frying pan for breakfast, and using the residual grease as fuel for their cars, wooooooo hoooooooo, I finally found out what I can use those things for!!

ANYWAY (sigh!), the Q's completed their divergence on the 30 min McClellan chart yesterday, finally getting under the minus 100 level and buying to cover that huge loser short trade, and now it's entered a LONG trade, hahahahaha, probably just in time for, well, GULP!, who knows! What I did was go back and look at the complete history of this indicator to see if there were other times when we had a big pump higher in the Q's but the McClellan continued to diverge lower, against the higher price in the Q's, and Lo and Behold it happened before. It happened in late August into September of 2005 when the Q's went up for 11 days, topping on 9/21, and in the next seven days we took the entire rally back. It happened again when the Q's rallied from 6/27/07 into 7/20 (IE, that's when earnings took place, IE the good old run'em up into earnings and shellack the shit out of them after they report), and from 7/20 into 8/16 they took the ENTIRE rally back, PLUS two more points just for good measure. It happened again when the Q's rallied from 11/27/07 into 12/11, then from 12/12 into 12/18 they took the ENTIRE rally back. It happened again last fall, when the Q's rallied from 9/11 into 9/23/09, and then from 9/23 to 10/2 they took the ENTIRE rally back!!

So, as you can see, there's a prior history for this kind of divergence with the McClellan indicator, when they continue to grind us higher with less and less participation, it sure gives me a warm and cozy feeling that the stupid thing just entered a new buy signal yesterday, personally, I think I'll just sit this one out, and try to pick up a few pennies here and there intraday.

Good luck to you out there in La La Land.

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

The weekly swing trade signals on the ETF's are almost all new buys, for some strange reason, with only four new short ideas.

In sharp contrast to the weekly signals, the MSW has hardly any new buy or short signals on the daily swing trade charts.

On the scan of the daily swing trade signals for the Russell 1000 the MSW came up with just about three short idea's for every new buy signal, hmmmmm, I don't know what it's seeing, but it's definitely leaning to the bearish side in the short term.

In contrast the weekly scan of the Russell 1000 remains firmly entrenched on the bullish side with nearly six new buy signals for every new short signal, so the software is still bullish in the longer term time frames.

3/10/10 EOD

2:00pm: The 30min McClellan CONTINUES to diverge against price during this runup, the high was reached on 3/1 and we MAY have made another lower high yesterday, as it's turned down again today, meaning, to me at least, the A/D's keep going lower and lower on each new high, wad ever, the "SYSTEM" is on a huge draw down because it triggered a short on 3/3 and won't cover until we cross under the -100 level, wad ever.

The weekly chart of the Q's at the top show's the next major resistance area is the high from August of 08', $48.57, ACTUALLY, we could meet resistance any where between about $48.16 and that number.

The SPY broke to new RALLY highs today, and failed to hold them into the close, HOWEVER, it's NOT a BOF, break out failure bar, OR a key reversal bar, probably just a little "TEST", I have no doubt the animal spirits in this market will take care of the old highs pretty soon.

On a personal note, I closed out all my Q' positions today, THE WHOLE STINKING BUNCH, I don't know, there must have been 11 of them or so, I'm outta here!!!! AND I DON'T KNOW WHEN I'LL BE BACK, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Wad ever, I'm working on some thing, good luck to you out there.

6:30am: Hmmmmmmm, SO, where have I heard THIS story before????
Soaring China home prices thwart ordinary buyers (AP)

I deleted the Bull vs Bull fight between Barton Biggs and Jeff Saut last night because it was to obnoxious for even ME, sigh, wad ever, one of the things I forgot to mention in the "battle" was that both of them used the old "climbing the wall of worry" and "overwhelming bearishness" as part of their bullish cases for the continuation of the rally, and I distinctly remember raging to myself that with a $VIX in the 17's and a Put/Call of .60 that there ain't a stinking fricking IOTA of bearishness in the stupid markets!!!!!
Well, Lo and Behold, good old Rob Hanna was reading my mind again (how does he do that??), and has an article this morning about the returns when the P/C is "low" in combination with a small gain in the S&P 500, Rob Hanna .

Futures are getting CRUSHED this morning, DOW down 2 points and the S&P 20 cents, but the good Ole NasDogs are UP about .11%, Ya gotta love Dem Dogs!!!

Watch Idea for 3/10/10

I ran the screen of the S&P 500 to see who had the worst returns for the one year anniversary of the great BS market, only ten had negative returns for the past year. I have MON on the chart, BUT, there's some pretty interesting names on that list above, if I were an "investor" I might think about starting with this list, as far as who might outperform over the rest of the year, IE the old return to the mean type of stuff.

Worden had a whole bunch of recommendations on their site tonight, I like ZLC, it's moved back over the 50dma, TSV is going off the stinking chart, it's sitting right at that high from a week ago, and "could" be good to go MORE! That's just my personal opinion of course.

Also, IBM has joined MSFT on the LAGGARDS list, that things not looking to hot.

Also and Also, I ran the "SECTOR" list through the yearly returns and only two, TWO, didn't have positive gains last year, UUP and SURPRISE, TLT. Nothing like the good old ALL THE SAME MARKETS for you asset allocator's, hahahahaha, the exact same thing when the markets went down, THEY ALL WENT DOWN TOGETHER TO!!!

I hate the "markets".

3/9/10 EOD

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGUUUUUUHHHHH!!!!! Woooooo Weeeeee, is there some bull shit going on in this market or WHAT??!!!! Number one, I absolutely cannot do a damn thing about an open like that, my main opening play is a "Trap Door", in which "INVESTORS" act rational and do the normal thing, that being, that when the market is gapping DOWN, or UP, they act normal after the open, and continue the selling in the case of a gap down, until after three to five bars they exhaust their selling, and you can take a shot at stepping in and buying a counter trend rally! What "INVESTORS" DO NOT DO, is buy the shit out of a gap down opening, like they did on that 5 min chart at the bottom, they just don't do that, so who ever bought the shit out of the open was some body other than "investors", what a crock of shit, I mean, after I adjusted a few of the positions, I just shut it down.

By the way, this is the absolute truth, the top picture is the snow storm at it's worst when the market was getting toward the top of the rally this morning, and the nice sunny picture was this afternoon when the market was collasping and actually went negative, the sun came out, I mean, I'm trying to quantify this so I can use it as a trading system, FOR SURE!!

By the way, that was a GREAT SAVE by "some body" going into the last half hour today, when we dipped down below the $46.64 break out point on the 15min pivot chart, Woooooo Weeeeeee, the whole day would have been a massive BOF, break out failure bar, if it hadn't been for "WHOM EVER" it was that saved it, hahahahaha!!

Anyway, that was probably your last great buying opportunity on that pull back, we probably end up with 200 straight trading days higher into the end of the year, I hope you caught it.

The Transports and the Q's took out the yearly highs today, the DOW and SPY DID NOT, a little bit of a divergence there, BUT, I have no DOUBT that who ever pulled off the save will take care of that in the coming days.

UN-BEARABLE

Geeze, I didn't see THAT one coming, I'm talking about a big over night snow storm we got here, it's still snowing this morning, WILL IT NEVER END!!!!!! What really pisses me off is that we were just starting to get dried out, and I was looking forward to maybe being able to get out to the Ranch in the next week, sigh.

ANYWAY, if your a Bear (and what common sense, INTELLIGENT individual isn't), this market is UN-BEARABLE!!!!! My favorite long term indicator, the A/D lines on the top chart, continues to defy me, as it's broken over the January highs as I noted last week, we won't be CLOSE to getting back into Bear market mode until that thing does some kind of divergence like it did at the all time highs in October of 07', sigh.

Futures are getting crushed this morning, DOW down about 27 points, as hope springs eternal that "investors" will come to their senses and dump this absolute BS market, but sigh, and Atlas, I feel it may just be a setup by Da Boyz to try and suck in some pollyana Bears and then take it to them after the open, maybe breaking over the January highs in the next few days, which would confirm what the A/D's are saying. The SPY, in the middle, had an interesting little tight doji star pattern yesterday, and with the negative reaction this morning, we "could" be setting up for a pull back, especially since we have four unfilled gaps immediately under us just dying to be filled, but I'm pretty sure any little pull back would be viewed as another buying opportunity. A nice pull back would take us back to the 50dma, which would be a logical stopping point, and it would fill three of those gaps to take some of the pressure off in that respect, PLUS, it would set up a higher low, which would all be pretty positive stuff, especially if "they" decide to do another obnoxious pump and dump run into earnings that start next month.

No particular reason for the chart of the interest rate on the 10yr bond at the bottom, other than it's setting up a nice high level triangle, I doubt that we will get a truly negative reaction to higher interest rates until the 10yr get's over about 5%, although 4% would be a break to new rally highs and probably start getting some "people" a little worried, like the FED.

Good luck out there today.

PS: I got an email from an astute reader that asked about the fact that if we pull back here on that SPY chart, wouldn't that set up a LOWER HIGH, and thus be negative??? Well, yea, it could, but what has happened is that we already made a LOWER HIGH, and then took it out, the lower high came two weeks ago, we then had a little three day pull back, and then took that high out, so we are now in an intermediate uptrend, to get a new down trend going we would have to pull back, make a low at what ever point, then rally, and THEN make a lower high than the high we made yesterday, and then take out what ever new low we make off the current pull back (if we get a pull back, sigh!!), that would confirm a new down trend. Of course, we could confirm a new down trend by taking out the low we made eight days ago at 109, that would make a new low following the lower high, but I think it's highly unlikely that the powers that be are going to allow such a severe pull back like that to happen, although a guy can always dream.

PSS: ACTUALLY, I should qualify that last statement, I'm so short term oriented, sigh, I threw the weekly chart of the SPY in at the top, and YES, should yesterday be a "top", on the WEEKLY chart that WOULD be a lower high, and "SHOULD" we take out that previous low around 105, that would CONFIRM a new, LONG TERM, down trend, but, sigh, good luck with that one.

Watch Ideas for 3/9/10

The best thing I can say about today is I won my bet with myself, earlier this morning while calcing out the run rate I bet myself that we wouldn't hit 60 million shares in the Q's, if I won the bet I got to have three drinks tonight, if I lost I HAD to have 8 drinks, unfortunately I won, hahahahahaha, 58.6 million or some thing like that.

You know, there ain't a chance in hell I would do what I do if it wasn't so entertaining, that area on the 15min chart that I circled was so stinking funny I almost fell out of my chair, for 45 minutes, 45 UNREAL STINKING FRICKING MINUTES, we "TESTED" the old high of $46.64, hahahahaha, I'm tellin Ya, it was unfricking real, bid .63 ask .64, take .64, oops, now it's .63, bid .63 ask .64, take .64, oops, back to .63, on and on and on and on, I'm tellin Ya, I ALMOST JUST BID THE FRICKING THING AT .65 JUST TO SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Unfricking real, sigh, wad ever.

The watch list tonight is to wait a few weeks and watch YHOO go SPLAT! One of the few reasons the NasDogs were the only index to finish positive today was because some outfit I never heard of UPGRADED them, AGAIN, I mean, the same stupid thing has happened for the last year, some body upgrades them, they go blowing higher, and then they do this REALLY stupid thing, and REPORT their ACTUAL earnings, and SPLAT!, hahahahaha, back into the depths of where they should be! Crimminey fricking sake, you should be able to SUE these fricking PONZI scheme fricking ANALYST when they do this all the time.

The other reason was ANOTHER upgrade for RIMM, it's been doing the same stupid thing, some outfit comes out and upgrades them before their earnings release, all those poor souls pile into it, and then SPLAT, etc etc etc etc!

Wad fricking ever, good luck with those things.

Chamber's is going to announce the next greatest thing to EVER hit society, PERIOD, some time tomorrow morning is what I hear, it will be interesting to see the reaction in CSCO tomorrow when the ACTUAL news comes out.

And the Oscar for Best Picture Goes to the Western "Scalping Gamma While Searching For Delta", also known in Beaver, UT as "Net Neutrality"

11:55am: Hahahahaha, this CAN'T be true Gomer, this uggggiiiillllllyyyy stinking low volume bear flag continues to grind higher, the Q's just hit a high of $46.64, and are trying to put on a failure bar, in case you didn't know $46.64 is the EXACT high of the December to January consolidation (some times called the March Rally High) before we coughed it up on the pull back, should be verwy verwy interwesting to see what "they" do with it, hahahaha!
Woooooooo Weeeeee, I gotta admit it, that thing gives me the WILLIES man, hahahahaha!!! http://www.answers.com/topic/willies
That's probably the scariest thing I've EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE! Even more scarier than when Big Bertha dragged me out on the dance floor at the senior prom and said "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVE"!

(Side Note: I started this earlier today, but the market has interrupted my thought process (hahahaha, yeeeaaaaa, like I HAVE a THOUGHT PROCESS!), anyway, read the article link to Dean Mouscher and I'll be back to this some time tonight or tomorrow morning with the "numbers")

You could also call the picture "BOOOOOOOORING", for I must be bored out of my mind to come up with a title like that. Sigh, I haven't watched the Oscar's in at LEAST 30 years, wad ever, and I didn't break my streak last night, however I WAS glad to see Sandra won, although it reminds me of my mortality, for I thought she was a young chick, I didn't know she was 45, SIGH!

Anyway, the boredom continues as the futures are almost dead flat this morning, it appears there hasn't been any M&A activity over the weekend to drive us higher, the ROACH's, which actually might end of being GOOD as Da Boyz may test the upper ends of BOTH sides of the support and resistance area's intraday, rather than just do that god awful grind higher.

So, I get a wild hair up my ass this weekend and decide to clean the past issues of SFO, Futuresmag, Futures and Options Trader Magazine, etc etc etc, off of my coffee table, that have been accumulating there for about ten years. I usually mark the articles in them that I thought were interesting with their advertisement cards or wad ever, so I went through all the articles just to see what I thought was interesting a few years ago, hahaha, good stuff, ANYWAY, I came across this article by 'Dean Mouscher' in Futures Mag, Scalping option gammas , and Lo and Behold I found out what I was doing.
SIGH, I some times do things that I don't really know WHY I'm doing them, it's just kind of second nature, and I don't really even have a word for what it is, but after reading the article a couple of times (I'm on my third read today since it appears I won't have any thing to do today, roachey boring market), I realized I'm doing kind of a hybrid of what he talks about, that is I'm scalping gamma in order to remain net neutral, but rather than using the under lying equity I use options to do the dirty trick, and what REALLY amazed me is that I was not paying any attention to "Gamma", I was doing it all off of the Delta's based on my finger counting methods, which is all my limited, and rapidly eroding, brain power will let me do.
This caught my attention because my Delta was getting all out of whack in the Q "positions", and I made a couple of big moves in the June position on friday to try and bring them into line a little better (I still haven't completely filled the September position, YET, although with volatility this low I will probably finish it today), but what's really bugging me is the stupid short call positions, which is all I'm left with on the "Gamma" side since I unloaded the short puts, IE I'm to one sided, which is because I'm counting on a BIG, QUICK reversal so I can cover the short calls and go the other way. This ain't happening of course, as we grind higher, which is causing me to roll the short calls higher, IE I'm losing money on them on the cover, but the higher strike covers the difference in the loss and what I originally sold them for, plus some, and to be honest I really don't care about them that much, as I never get into an options position in which I can't just let the short position be called away if I don't want to take the cover, IE I never have an options position that I can't cover on the base equity balance in my account, IE I'm NOT margined to the hilt ( IE IE, a sure receipe for disaster).

11:15am: Ok, so, for the base position I take a deep in the money long call and long put position, to pay as little "time premium" as I can, because my whole life is basically based on what I now know to be "gamma" scalping to try and pay for the premium, in the hopes that the Q's make a 10% move or so, either way, so eventually the base stike for either the call or put gets far enough in the money to start trading one for one with the under lying Q's, with unlimited profit potential should the move in one direction continue far enough, and hopefully I completely pay for the premium with the scalping so I never have to worry about the position losing any money, period. Now try and ignore whether or not it's totally stupid to take a position like this anyway, I mean, most people would just gamble on one direction or the other, which I actually DO that, but I do it to my strength, which is selling or shorting things, which I can't do in my IRA accounts on the under lying equity, but I CAN by doing it with options, IE short calls and puts (don't ask me why the dumb ass SEC deemed all this to be proper behavior for us little retail guys, it's beyond me why they do what they do), so all my scalping is by shorting options.
Anyway, these were the numbers before the start of today on the June position, you have to understand Dean's article to know what these mean, the Delta on the 41 calls was .87, Gamma was .0477, Delta on the 48 puts was (.57), Gamma (.0881). See, I was long Delta on the calls, or "gamma" as Dean would call it, and in danger of losing what I made on them should Da Boyz decide they've had enough of their fun and start taking us back down, the total Delta was +.30. Now what I've since realized from that article, is that the "gamma" only applies to the "underlying", but in my case I'm using options in place of the "underlying", and thus I don't really think the "gamma" applies to me, unless I take a "gamma" position with deep in the money counter plays, like puts in place of being short the stock, BUT, I don't like to do that, what I like to do is contain my short calls and puts to just "outside the box", the box being the limits of 41 to 48, so when I'm short calls, I'm shorting, in this case, the 49's, to make sure that in the REMOTE possibility I'm wrong (hahahahahahaha, yeeeeeeeaaaaa, like THAT would ever happen) and get trapped in them until expiration, I will still make money on the over all position.

Anyway, I'm as tired of this stupid post as you are, to get to the gist, those 49 calls I shorted have a Delta of .30, which is actually -(.30) in the context of the position, which means those calls (at least, for the moment) are in perfect sync with keeping the whole position Delta Neutral, which is what I wanted in the first place, meaning I don't have to do a damn thing if I don't want to. I only mention the whole thing because I really didn't think about it until after I read the article, it kind of stoked me out that I actually had done some thing half ass right based just kind of on instinct.

Weekly Swing Trade Ideas for Russell 1000 and ETF's

On the daily scan of the ETF's the MSW is throwing it back in the face of the PIGS hater's, as it seems to think some one is lying about Spain going broke, with a new buy signal on ESP, along that same line it seem's to be on a buying spree of the emerging/frontier markets with new buy signals on Italy, EWI, Indonesia, IDX, SingSing, EWS, Taiwan, EWT, and the UK, EWU, geeze, it just loves all those broken down Frontier places, in fact it just says to buy the whole stinking world and Europe, DFE, IEV and FEU. It also seems to think the mega caps are going to break over the old highs, with new buy signals on OEF, UKF, IVV, JKD, ELV, oh hell, just buy any thing with mega in it's name. It must be reading the news, for with the return of M & A mania Monday's it's taking a shot at Private Equity, PSP.
On the short side it's being pretty consistent, for if it thinks the equity markets are going higher it wants to be short bonds, which is what it's saying to do with new short signals on TLO, SHY and TMF. It also thinks that with the rising equity markets inflation may begin to rear it's head, so it wants to buy TIP's, which makes sense to me because every time we start to get a decent rally going in stocks, those ROACHEY energy outfits start yelling Woooooo Hoooooo, stocks are going up so let's raise the shit out of their energy costs so we can squash the American consumer and keep the rally going....................eeeeerrrrrr, hold on, wait a minute, that can't be right, won't that cut down on the consumer's purchasing power??? Hmmmm, well, no, maybe not, since the government is taking over for our corporate lack of hiring, and puting every one in the country on it's payroll, and keeping millions of people on the unemployment roles in perpetuity, they may have just enough money left to buy our little shit widget!!
Speaking of little shit widget's (I was, wasn't I??), since the tube is dead this weekend I've been watching a whole bunch of those "How It's Made" shows on one of the little known networks, the Science channel I think, geeze, pretty disturbing if you ask me, they go inside some huge factory and show the complete production line for what ever it is they making, like for instance cylinder heads, and you never see an actual human being until like the complete end of the line, it's all robots, and there may be a person at the end of it looking at the heads to make sure there's no little peices of metal hanging off of it, or some thing like that. I mean, I understand how corporations have to compete, and cut down on costs, but I just wonder how long we can continue to eliminate human beings in the process, I suppose it will just continue on and on, until the whole country becomes a giant corporate welfare state, with the robots the only ones paying taxes.

On the weekly scan of the ETF's the MSW absolutely loves any thing with Russell 2000, Mid Cap or Small Cap in it, with new buy signals on RRY, RFV, UWM, VBR, IWN, IWC, blah blah blah blah. I guess the MSW doesn't bother to read the economic reports as it seems to like real estate, URE, and it's gotten semi excited about USD.

It has one, ONE, new short idea, and that's the Carbon ETF, SGG, I guess it doesn't care to much for Waxman either.

This is the list of new buy and short signals on the weekly scan of the Russell 1000, AXL is attacking it's old rally highs with a decent looking pattern (just like the index's) and "could" be good for more, I put the new buy on AAPL on the top right chart because, well, it's probably the single most loved stock in the markets, and I guess the MSW is no different.

WHI was weak all last week, and has a clear shot at seeing $12 if it loses it's low from last week. BBT is not exactly great looking for a short, but it put on a horrendous hanging man, after bouncing off that lower support line, it could be good to go if it loses fridays low.

I have AA on the daily scan of new buys on the Russell 1000 because, well, I have a "stop" position in it and I'm hoping I can sucker some one into taking it off my hands, it's been basing for a couple of months and is right on the verge of breaking out over the base, it could easily see $16 again if it can get it's ass in gear. SLB just barely broke a long term down trend line, and "could" be good for more.

On the short side SLAB has a series of three topping tail candles, meaning it has resistance at the top level (which is the stop), if it can get under the low of friday it "may" see $44. SFD has had a nice run but put on a bearish engulfing on fridays big up day, IE relative weakness, and if it loses fridays low it could go back to the $17.50 "area".