Stocks and Breaking Bad

<------mfw I win   

     Sorry about the late post friends.  I woke up late this morning and had to get out of the house really fast and so did not have time to put up a preliminary post as per my usual.

     Anyways, before I get to stocks, did you see the Breaking Bad finale??  OMFG, I just got around to watching the last two episodes last night and it was EPICCCCCC.  This show is the definition of epic!  I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it but it was just a sick ass finale.  Breaking Bad has to be one of the greatest shows on television right now and Tio has to be one of the greatest characters.  I don't know how they are going to top this past season next year.  It will be interesting to watch.  What did you guys think of it if you saw it?



Market Recap   
     Stocks were again higher today as stocks continued their positive momentum from the past week.  There was no big news to justify this rally, just a continuation of positive momentum.  The Dow rose 100 points and the SNP and NASDAQ were higher by almost 1% as well.

     Oil was down a small amount and gold was up.

     The market's did very well today although a few cracks started to show in the facade.  AAPL which had been rallying furiously put up a pretty bearish candlestick today opening on the highs and trading down all day.  It is probably time to take profits if you have a position in AAPL.

     On the SPY chart, we tagged 122 and immediately fell back from resistance about 13 points. 122 is strong resistance right now, it will take more powerful buying to get above this level.  This level is probably a good low risk entry point for a short position.

      Some people were asking how to read the chart.  Basically, the chart measures the price of a stock over time.  Each red or green rectangle is called a candlestick.  Each candlestick measures the price movement of that particular day.  For example, the red candlestick is a day where the stock price opened at the top of the body of the red candlestick and finished the day at the bottom of the body of the candlestick.  Green candlesticks are the opposite. We opened at the bottom of the candlestick and finished at the top.

     If you look at the candlestick for October 4th on the above SPY chart, you can see we opened at 108(the bottom of the body of the green candlestick), then went even lower to reach the low of the day at 107.43 and then zoomed back upward to finish the day at around 112.50 creating a green candlestick.

     Also, the light blue lines represent the 50 day and 200 day moving averages.  It would take a longer discussion than I could give here to discuss the significance of these price levels but trust me when I say they are important levels for a stock.

     The light blue bars coming up from the bottom of the chart measures the volume of the stock for that particular day.  The higher the bar, the more times the stock was bought or sold that day.

    The red line is a line I drew on the chart which is a trendline.  Oftentimes, stocks make these types of patterns on the charts and it is useful to note them because if the stock moves up past them or down from them it is significant.  As you can see from the AAPL chart above, once we broke above the red downtrend line, we zoomed upwards.

     You can read more about candlesticks and charts here.

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!