Happy birthday to me!

    Well, it's my birthday today and I'm going to use my blog to make myself feel better...so shower me with your love friends!  I am the big 34 today and plan on celebrating by not drinking any alcohol at all!  This is a big change from previous birthday's where I was shitfaced by 9am and lying in a pool of my own (what's a good synonym for vomit...) stinkpot by noon.

     Nah, I'm kidding, I never really go all out for my birthday's.  I just hope my friends and family remember and someone leaves me a nice happy birthday message on facebook.  Speaking of which, let me go check facebook real quick!  Here you can enjoy this while I'm gone...

     I'm back!  Hmm, no facebook birthday wishes, BRB killing self.  Nah, just kidding 3 messages already from some wonderful friends!  As if I already didn't feel good enough with the market up today.  Wow, things are going so good for me right now I can't help but wonder what calamities God has in store for me later on.  I guess I believe in one of the great Al Bundy's philosophy's...

     "Hooters, hooters, yum, yum, yum. Hooters, hooters on a girl that's dumb."

No, not that philosophy!  

     "The minute a Bundy has good luck he immediately starts building up an equal amount of bad luck."

     Yes, that's the one.  I've got to be building up a buttload of bad luck right now the way my good luck is running!  Never mind that, let's get to the markets...

     Markets were mostly higher today on European Debt crisis stabilization after central banks around the world stepped up to provide liquidity to the European banking system.  The Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, the Swiss National bank, and the US Federal Reserve will all be providing dollar loans to European banks.  This is easing fears of a Lehman like financial crisis and liquidity crunch in the European banking system.

     The Euro surged on this news to a high of 1.3934 and European stocks were broadly higher with the London FTSE up 2%, the German Dax up 3% and the French CAC up 3% as well.  
 
     The DJIA was seen higher by over 100 pts in early going but was paring gains as of this writing.  Gold was down big as well losing 43 dollars to 1783.

Economic Data
     Economic data was poor today overall with weekly jobless claims climbing to 428000.  This measures people who have newly filed for unemployment this week.
  
     CPI or the Consumer Price Index came in hotter than expected with producers passing price increases along to the consumers.  The increase was .4% which puts us at a 4.8% annualized inflation rate, above the Fed's target of 2-3%.

     The New York and Philly Fed survey's came out worse than expected as well.

Stocks I'm Watching
     Netflix- NFLX cratered 40 dollars today on a lowered forecast for subscriber growth.  Apparently, more people are cancelling their subscriptions after the recent price increase.  Netflix is trading at 169 dollars today down from 210 yesterday. 

     Apple-  AAPL is once again probing resistance and looks like it wants to break through.  It is trading at 393 up about 1% today.  I went ahead and bought myself a nice birthday gift of AAPL stock.  It has not broken out yet, but I think it will.  Although my technical analysis is rudimentary, I don't think you are supposed to buy the breakout until it is confirmed.  But to me, it looks great right here and I feel it will be confirmed soon.

     Gold- IAU is tanking today on the easing of fears in Europe.  I definitely did a bad trade with this one.  I did not have a great entry point.  Luckily, I bought a very small amount so it's definitely not killing me.  I will ride out this dip as the European debt crisis is far from over.

     Small caps- IWM is underperforming today in a good tape.  This is not a good sign for the rally for me.  As you all know, I watch the small caps for signs of risk aversion and people may be booking their risk on profits here.  IWM has outperformed all week so one bad day might not make a trend but I hope to see more strength here into the close.

3:38 PM PST Update

     Today was a great day for the bulls.  Markets ended up 184 pts today as this is the fourth day in a row the market has been up.  We have some nice momentum now and I expect we could head up to 1240-1250 on the SNP 500.  The European situation seems to have stabilized and I look for the bulls to try to keep the momo going.  I bought some AAPL today for a trade and set a 5% stop on it.  I think it's going to breakout and is up 3 dollars in afterhours.  I expect there could be 20-50 dollars of upside here and look to get in on some of it.  Let's see what happens.
        

Market rally continues into the new week

Local weather forecaster Kaj Goldberg is a little excited about Hurricane Irene...   

     The major indexes continued their recent rally into the new week as two major Greek banks merged and consumer spending reached its highest level in 5 months.  At 1:00 pm Pacific Time, the DJIA was up over 250, the S&P 500 was up 33 to 1210 and the technology heavy NASDAQ was up 82 points!

     Small caps stocks were outperforming with the Russell 2000 up over 4.5% to 724.  Gold prices were lower by $30 and the 10 year bond yield rose to 2.27% as people sold gold and bonds and put money to work in stocks.  Oil was up 2% to 87.50.

     Financial stocks rallied as Greece's EFG Eurobank and Alpha bank merged to shore up their finances.  This alleviated fears of a complete meltdown of the Greek banking system.  Banks and insurance companies were the top performing sectors in today's trading.  Insurance companies rose after damage from Hurricane Irene was less than expected. 

     Stocks were also supported by word out of Europe of a radical new plan to recapitalize banks.  The program would be similar to the TARP program implemented in the US during the 2008 credit crunch.

     "The government's of the healthier European banks could inject new capital into the banks, while the most extremely pressured banks could also receive backstops for their debt, (just as happened in the U.S.)," according to John Carney of NetNet blog.

       If true, this could be a game changer in the European debt crisis.

      European shares rallied smartly on the news with the German DAX up 2.5%, the French CAC up 2.4% and the Spanish IBEX up 2.6%.  The British FTSE was closed today for summer bank holiday. 


     Market action today was very positive.  Stocks steadily rose throughout the day and finished on their highs.  This type of action usually bodes well for tomorrow.  Interestingly, small caps are outperforming once again and over the past few days the small cap index has risen over 10%!  I was looking at small caps to lead a sustained rally higher and it looks like we are getting it.  We could rally for the rest of the week until we get unemployment data for August on Friday.  This data will confirm or deny the rally.

     Technicians I follow say that this 1210 level is important because it is where the rally failed a couple weeks back.  We are sitting on that level right now on the S&P.  If we can break through this level convincingly on good volume, the rally should continue.  I'm of the opinion that it will so I'm looking for the SNP to trade up to 1240-1250 in the next week or so.  If the double bottom pattern I outlined last week is confirmed we could even rally up to 1300, but I consider that unlikely in this environment.  Let's see what happens....