A lot has happened since I've been gone

    Hey, everyone...if you are still checking my blog, thank you so much.  I know I've been slacking and been lazy.  I'm going to try and be a better poster from now on even if I don't post everyday, I will try and post at least 3 times a week from now on.

     Today was quite a good day in the market's actually the past two days were quite good as we gained back almost everything we lost from Wednesday's huge selloff.  I actually thought after Wednesday we would continue downward back into the old trading range because the selloff was so powerful with 99 stocks dropping for every 1 that gained.  The bulls still have some fight in them as they wrestled back control of the market the past two days.

     As of now, we are still in a trading range market albeit a higher range than we were earlier.  On the SNP we got 1220 as the low end of the range and 1290 on the high end.

 
On the chart you can see our old trading range between 1120 and 1225 and our new one between 1225 and 1280 which we have been in for a couple of weeks now.  The bulls are buying in the 1220-1230 area and the bears are selling up around 1270-1290.  I don't see any catalyst to push us past 1280 right now although economic data is coming in good.  As long as Europe is dysfunctional we will stay in the range.

     My only position right now which I told you about last time I posted is in gold via IAU.  This trade is working out very well for me as I have a 10% gain so far which puts my trading account in positive territory for the year.  Gold has caught a bid on persistent eurozone worries and after it's nice technical bounce off the 150 day moving average which has been long term bull market support.

Gold is in a nice rising channel right now and if you were so inclined you could buy at the bottom of the channel and sell at the top.  I'm not that nimble so I'll pass on that trade.

     I have not been doing much trading recently as the market has been too headline driven for me to play.  I am not nimble enough to trade the 60 point range so I'll just watch from the sidelines with my gold.  If you put a gun to my head and said pick a direction for the SNP I'd say we are headed down and now would be a good time to lay out a short position.  But with positive seasonality, the bulls are going to be looking to prop this market into year end so it is tough to short now.

     I'll be checking all your blogs in the next few days.  Sorry for disappearing.



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!

S&P 500 breakout

      Sorry, friends about the late post today.  My internet was down this morning so I could not post as per my usual.  I am really getting pissed off at my poor internet service.  It's has been down at least 6 hours each of the past 4 days.  I call tech support and of course they have no idea what's going on.  My line is a good distance away from the main office so that is why it's always going up and down.  I'm going to call them and ask for a free upgrade and if they don't give it to me, I'm going to get a new ISP.   Anyways, on to the markets...

     Today was a very good and powerful day for the indexes.  I'm calling the breakout on the SNP 500.  This should lead to more follow through buying next week.

 As you can see on the above chart, SPY finally popped above that little red line which had been like a brick wall for over 2 months now.  It is okay to buy stocks here and I will probably do some on Monday.

Apple misses earnings shares are crushed

     Wall Street's golden child AAPL missed earnings for the first time in four years yesterday!  Profits were 7.05/share which came in below analysts expectations of 7.39/share.   The stock is down 4% in early trading after being down as much as 8% in after hours trading yesterday.

     Now AAPL is notorious for low balling guidance so analysts are always trying to figure out how much more they have to up their targets from AAPL's guidance.  Last quarter AAPL predicted they would make 6.40/share.  Analysts had raised their targets all the way up to 7.39 before earnings.

     AAPL disappointed on iPhone sales selling 17.1 million iPhones while analysts were expecting 18-20 million.  Sales were especially disappointing in September as consumers awaited the new iPhone 4S.

     iPad sales were 11.1 million which was disappointing to analysts as well.  iTunes had revenue of 1.5 billion in the quarter.  The company sold 4.89 million Macs in the quarter.  Revenue from the AAPL stores was 3.6 billion.  iPhone 4S sales were 4 million in their first three days!

    Wall Street was disappointed in the past quarter but I don't think it's anything to get scared about.  After all that was LAST quarter's results...what is more important was their guidance which they raised to 9.30/share for this upcoming quarter.  To me, the stock was unfairly beaten up.  AAPL is not one of those high flying momo stocks with a 50 PE.  AAPL is still growing, raised it's guidance and isn't that expensive to boot.  This pullback is a good buying opportunity.

Down and dirty all day long

      We have had one hell of a rally in the US where prices have risen 14.1% on the SNP 500 since bottoming October 4th.  We had been rangebound on the SNP 500 for the past two months but it now looks like we are going to break out of the range and head upwards.  It has been a truly remarkable rally.

        US stock futures are up and Asian and European market's are as well on a continuation of positive momentum from the past two weeks.  US Dow stock futures are up 81 points as of 1:15 AM PST.

     The Hong Kong Hang Seng index has also had quite a rally.  It is now 18,800 after rallying nearly 3000 points in the past week and a half.  That is a years worth of gains in less than two weeks!

     European bourses are up as well across the board with the FTSE, DAX and CAC all up over 1%.  It looks like we will get more rallying tomorrow.  I plan on buying some AAPL when I wake up.

Google blows away expectations

     Our favorite benefactor Google, reported monstrous earnings yesterday and the stockholders are reaping the rewards today.  Google was up more than 6% today after reporting a 26% gain in profits from a year ago.

     Google makes most of it's money from search ads and it has 76% of the US market and even more of the rest of the world.

     The number of clicks on ads rose 28% from the year ago period and the price they charge per click increased 5%.

     Google +, Google's answer to the Facebook threat increased it's user base to 40,000,000 increasing from 10,000,000 in July.

     Google is also grabbing a larger share of the smartphone marketplace with over 190,000,000 Android phones active worldwide.

     Google's profit for the 3rd quarter was 2.3 billion on sales of 7.51 billion.This equates to profits of about 8.33/share.  Google is a cash machine.

     Market's are up on this good news continuing the positive momentum of the past 2 weeks.  As of 8:00 AM PST the DOW is up almost 1%.  The SNP 500 keeps bumping it's head on the 1220 level.

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?

Stocks blast off on European hopes

     US stock futures are up this evening as German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to have a plan in place by the November 3rd G20 summit to address the slow motion train wreck that is the European debt crisis.  There will include a European bank recapitalization and a plan to deal with the Greece mess.

     Stock futures were up over 100 Dow points as of 10:30 PM PST.  The euro was also up by more than half a percent.

     French and Belgium officials also pledged to backstop the failing bank Dexia.  Merkel and the European leaders pledged to do "everything necessary" to stem contagion from the crisis.

     This week starts off the third quarter earnings season with Alcoa reporting after the bell Teusday.  The earnings reports will go a long way to show the sustainability of the recent rally.  Pepsico, JP Morgan, Google and Mattel all report earnings next week. 

A Nice Jobs Report

     Markets are up in the early going after a better than expected jobs report eased fears of a recession in the US.  The government non farms payroll report showed  that 103.000 jobs were created in September, a number greater than economists had forecast.  Economists were expecting 60.000 jobs created.  The unemployment rate held steady at 9.1% as more people rejoined the workforce.

     In some more good news, payroll data for July and August were revised upward by 99.000.  Remember that horrible payroll number from August were we added a big fat 0 jobs?  Well, it was wrong.  Everybody panicked over that number but it turns out the US economy isn't as bad as the market thinks.  The economic data we have been getting recently are consistent with an economy that is slowly growing and not an economy going into a recession.

     Stocks have reacted well to the news with the DJIA up 75 points in the early going as of 7:47 AM PST.  The other major averages are mixed.  European bourses are all higher by more than 1% and the Asian indexes closed green as well with the Hang Seng up almost 10% in the past two days.

Quiet and observant day in the markets so far

     Steve Jobs was a true visionary whose loss will be felt for a long time in the company he cofounded with Steve Wozniak and the products he pioneered.  Steve Jobs changed all aspects of our lives.  He was a tech geek and his life was computers.  He is the type of person that epitomizes the entrepeneurial and innovative spirit of America.    He will be missed.

     After the frenetic activity of the past few months, today has been a quieter day so far.  I believe that traders are not making too many big moves in observance.  AAPL stock has not sold off like many believed and was actually up a little bit as I type this.  I was hoping for a huge selloff by idiots so I could purchase some shares on the cheap but it didn't happen.

     All markets are green so far today.

Support is holding for now

     World markets are selling off once again today but strong support at 1120 is holding on the S&P 500.

     As you can see from this chart, the 112 level has been support for the last two months on SPY which is the ETF that represents the S&P 500.  Every time prices hit this level, buyers have come in and sent us back higher.  That is why it is called support.  I'm of the opinion that that we are finally going to break through 112 and head lower.   Generally when we break through support, more people start selling and we head dramatically lower.  If we can hold support here, we will probably head higher back to 1200.  We are in a trading range market for now as long as support holds.  If we break support, look out below!

Market Recap
    The big story today was gold which fell 100 dollars!  Gold has formed a double top formation and there could be more downside on the way.

   

    The reasons for gold's selloff is that hedge funds are selling their winners to raise cash.  Also, with the dollar strengthening gold's appeal as a currency hedge is lessened.

    There will probably be a buying opportunity coming up however so I am going to keep my eye on gold.  The Chartographer has a great post on gold here and basically called the top in gold.  I am real glad I sold my gold yesterday, I would not want to ride out this kind of move.

     Stocks finished today in the green with technology stocks showing strength.  The Dow was up 38 pts but the S&P 500 was up 7 and the NASDAQ was up 28.  Support at 1120 has held for now.  Overnight, SPY hit a low 110.85 but we bounced back smartly from there.  We could be heading back up the range, however, I don't know if there is strength enough for us to power to 1200 again.  But we could have a little rally from here to 1160-1170.  

     Foreign stocks did good today with European and Emergent Markets stocks doing well after getting obliterated yesterday.  I thought the selloff was way overdone on foreign stocks and so dipped my toe in yesterday and bought some EM's for my long term portfolio.  That is working out well so far as EM's are up about 2.5% today.  You can track Emergent Market's stocks with EEM.  My friend the Hasidic Plumber likes to track the Brazilian Bovespa and the Argentina Merval and you can track those with EWZ and ARGT or the Argentine Merval index if you like.

     I was away from the computer all morning so wasn't able to track the stock market and did not do anything with my portfolio.  I am definitely looking to get back into AAPL and start a position in MCD at this time.  I like stocks that have shown strength and AAPL and MCD are two of the strongest stocks in the market right now.  Cyclical stocks like CAT and energy stocks like XLE have really gotten bombed recently.  XLE is an energy index and CAT or Caterpillar is a good proxy for global growth.  These sectors are so weak it's best to stay away from them right now and stick with tech and consumer staples.  Utility stocks are also strong right now.

     Being at the bottom of the range, it would seem like a good time to get back in and set a stop at the recent lows.  I will probably do that on Monday, although I will be away from the computer that day as well. 

     

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!