Apple Breakout City!

Disclaimer:  Nothing in this blog should be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities!  Please do your own due dilligence before buying any stocks or bonds!  

      I was just checking out the futures before bed and I noticed they were down about 1.5%.  Apparently, the Greeks are having some problems with their budget...AGAIN!  They are having problems meeting their budget cutting targets to get the next tranche of bailout money from the rest of the EU.  The Greek economy is in major contraction and trying to get more money out of the greek people is like squeezing blood from a turnip!  This has renewed the fears of traders who have pushed down stock futures.  US Dow futures are down 141 pts and the London FTSE is down 1%.  The German Dax is down 2% and the Hang Seng is down 450 pts as of 12:25 AM PST.  It looks like it could be another interesting day tomorrow!  I was hoping for a continuation of the rally but it looks like we are going to head back down in the trading range we've been in for a month now.

6:36 AM PST Update

    Stocks open lower investors fret over Greek default scenario.  Investors are dumping Euro's and European stocks today as fears of a Greek default grow.  Over the weekend, EU finance ministers met to discuss the situation but failed to come up with any new resolutions and German chancellor Angela Merkel lost another regional election putting more doubt into Germany's participation in the bailout.

     The IMF told Greece that it needs to make more cuts in government spending to receive a new 8 billion bailout payment.

     "Additional savings measures were needed to cut the public deficit to a sustainable level and reduce the public sector's claim on resources—code for axing jobs and cutting pay and pensions—while improving tax collection rather than adding further taxes," said a CNBC article.

     The Euro was down by 1.5% and European stocks were down 2.5% or more.  Oil was down over 2% and even gold was down about 1% as the dollar strengthened.    The 10 year US treasury bond yield cratered to 1.96% as traders sought the safety of US Government debt.  The DJIA was down 200 pts in early going and the dollar was up against a basket of currencies by about 1%.

1:14 PM PST Update

     Markets surged in the last hour trading after news broke that Greece was near an agreement with its lenders.

     "Greece is near an agreement with its international lenders to continue receiving bailout funds, a Greek finance ministry official said on Monday after a conference call between Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos and inspectors from the EU, IMF and ECB, known as the 'troika',"said CNBC.

     The Dow Jones Industrial Average after being down 250 pts in the early going finished down 109 pts after the last hour surge.  The SNP 500 was down 1% and the tech heavy NASDAQ was outperforming down .36%.  The NASDAQ was green at one point during the day as AAPL hit an all time record high.

Stocks I'm watching

    AAPL-  Apple was up 11 bucks and hit an all time high at 413.23 earlier today.  This is trade is working out very well for me so far and if I had any more money I would be adding to this trade right here.  There could be another 10-40 dollars of upside right here.

                                  Break out city!



    NFLX-  Netflix after earlier being up 3% finished down 7%.  They are splitting their DVD and streaming services into separate businesses.

    We realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

-- Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

    If I had some nads I'd short the shit out of NFLX right now.  NFLX is a broken high growth stock and I think there is much more downside to go.

                                    U-G-L-Y you ain't got no alibi, charts ugly!

     IAU-  Gold tanked today after the dollar rose against a basket of currencies.  Gold is trading the opposite of the dollar recently.  When the dollar goes up, gold goes down.  Gold looks like it is going to chop around for awhile as it consolidates it's huge gains from the past few months.  My gold trade isn't working too well for me right now.  I won't be adding to it unless it goes past my original buy price.  I won't be selling it either.

     MCD-  McDonalds is performing real well in a bad tape up .59% at the close.  MCD is a classic defensive play in this environment and I am looking to add it to my portfolio.  It has a nice 2.8% dividend yield as well.  Problems include exposure to Europe, but they have nice growth in Asia and people like their cheap eats in this economic environment.  Their chart looks pretty as well.

                                       Its always a good thing when the price goes from the lower left to the upper right.

     DBC-  Commodities across the board got smoked today on dollar strength.  Copper fell 4%, oil fell 2.5% and gold of course fell 2%.   If copper drops because of dollar strength that is okay but if its down because of economic weakness, it's bad.

     Today's action at the end of the day makes me constructive on tomorrow.  If Greece get's their money it should be all systems go.  Tomorrow, the FOMC starts their two days of meetings to discuss monetary policy.  The market is expecting something called Operation Twist to come out of these meetings as the Fed looks to stimulate the economy.  Let's see what happens.

PS  Hey everybody, if you are interested in trading, I want you to check out a friend's blog.  It's called the Chartographer's Map Room.  This guy really knows his stuff and he's definitely a better trader than me!  So check it out if you are interested, especially if you are starting out looking to get into it, he has a lot of good advice.

http://swingtrading101.blogspot.com