It's true - the market (as measured by the Dow 30) was up for the 8th day in a row today. This hasn't happened since 2003. So the press is all over that.
Less touted is the fact that today, for instance, the Dow was up all of 4.71 points. In percentage terms, that's the equivalent of a person with a six-figure income rushing home to tell their spouse their gross salary is going up $37.45 per year. Whoo hoo!
One quick note on American Home Mortgage (AHM) before we get started in earnest..... the stock continues to tumble. The tough part - and this is always much tougher than picking out opening positions - is when to close it. I took a look at a long-term chart, and the next really meaty support level is literally in the $6.50 to $7.00 range. Does that mean the stock will go that low? I have no idea. But this short position looks even better today than it did yesterday.
As for the market in general.....same story from me. Take a look at the DIA graph below. The bulls just keep wrenching things higher, but we're still below that busted trendline. Looking at this one graph, it seems the bulls are losing steam. But we know how easily they can recharge those locomotives, don't we?
I've been impressed and surprised by the strength of energy stocks. I have a substantial investment in natural gas fields, so I'm happy to see NG prices creep higher. But my feeling a few days ago that oil stocks were topped out was off the mark.
What's tough about buying into hot stocks is that it's difficult to see them going higher. But they often do. Here's a great example....Entergy (ETR), shown below, had pushed into a new high of about $78. Not that many months before, this has been a stock trading in the high 20s. It's hard to get excited about getting into a stock that has risen hundreds of percent like this.
But look what happened after the breakout (shown with the same horizontal line). This sucker just kept climbing. I admit that I am lousy about getting into stocks pushing into new highs.....it just seems too risky. But the fact is that this is how fortunes are made. Technical breakouts on strong volume often indicate many more gains ahead.
But when thinking about energy stocks, it often helps to at least have a passing awareness of what the commodity itself is doing. The main one, crude oil, has a long-term chart shown below. Obviously oil has had an amazing push skyward since the late 90s, blasting off about 600%. I'll leave it to you to decide where you think oil might go next. I truly have no strong opinion.
Looking closer, it could be argued that there's a head and shoulders pattern in the recent history. Not a textbook-beautiful one, but a visible one nonetheless. That would suggest future weakness. But, again, I truly have no strong view on where energy prices might be going.
Having said that, here are a few energy-related stocks with impressive charts. Dril-Quip (DRQ):
Schlumberger (SLB):
And Questar (STR).
A couple of mentions that are not directly energy-related.....first, I got bounced out of Continental Airlines (CAL), but I'm still eyeballing it. I've inched the neckline up a bit to accommodate the price move. This is not as clean a pattern as it was, but it's still worth watching.
Lastly, Sears Holding (SHLD) continues to be amazing (for bulls). I've mentioned this beautiful cup with handle pattern before. I have no position in it now, but if I were long, I would be delighted. This is an amazing-looking chart.
That's it for today. Let's hope the market gets a little more interesting soon. Otherwise, we'll have a 9th up day in a row, and it'll be +0.35 on the Dow.
This week kicks off the Q1 earnings reporting season, and finally we can focus on the real basis of stock value - - earnings - - instead of obsessing whether or not the Fed will adjust rates or not (which, to me, is the most bizarre obsession imaginable).
Last month in my March 19th posting I mentioned American Home Mortgage as a good short play. Last Friday, a market holiday, they dropped an earnings bomb, and today the stock was down over 20% at one point.
What's fascinating to me is how, once again, Fibonaccis predicted a resistance level. The 23.6% Fib level for AHM is $22.43. Today's high price.....$22.45. Remarkable!
The S&P 500 is sporting a neat little shooting star today. Nothing dramatic, but at least the market closed well of its highs. This market's rationale for pushing higher is getting weirder and weirder. I saw a headline today which said - I'm not making this up - "Market Rises on Interest Rate Worries." Huh? So let me get this straight. The market goes up if interest rates are believed to be going down. And now the logic for going up is that they might go up? Insane.
Google (GOOG) is acting pretty interesting lately. I bought some puts on this one today with a stop price of $484.25
As big as IBM is, I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it here. As you can see, in spite of the steady rise of the price for the past five weeks, the volume has been getting more and more feeble. Hardly the stuff of great bullish plays.
JC Penney, purveyor of the country's finest fashions, is a candidate for shorting here as well. What I love about these huge, relatively slow-moving consumer companies is that you can usually pick up the deep in-the-money January 2008 puts for the same price as the August 2007s!
Lastly, the NASDAQ 100 (QQQQ), which has the advantage of penny-priced options, closed its February 27th gap perfectly today. The low just prior to February 27th was 44.74. The high today.....44.73. Picture perfect.
For some reason, a lot of people wrote me directly over the long weekend. I received many interesting notes - - all but one of them very friendly. In fact, one of them is so interesting I might ask permission of the author to discuss his theory.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by. See you tomorrow afternoon!
Six up days in a row on the $INDU. I'm glad this week is over. Hopefully, after a three day descent, we'll be resurrected a la Jesus on Monday. Who knows......
It's the same story I've been citing on the major indexes. Although we're pushing higher and higher, we're still under that major trendline that was broken on February 27th. I've circled the highest target area. Of course, if we cross above that tinted zone (the former high in February), it's time to return to aluminum siding sales, door-to-door.
Here's an interesting chart for you. These are three moving averages (50, 100, and 200 day) against the $NDX, but I've hidden the prices. I've put an arrow at each recent instance where the 50 day crossed below the 100 day while the 200 day was still moving up.
Now let's take a look at the same graph, but this time with prices. I've highlighted the price action (all the way to the turnaround point) after each of these instances. Interesting.
I am deeply disappointed - and maybe even a tad disillusioned - that the indexes have pushed past their late March highs. That's not good. It indicates more strength on the bulls part than I anticipated. My waning confidence makes me consider that it is a real possibility we could push onto new highs this month.
The $XMI graph still gives me some hope. The spurt from July to February made sense. In fact, I mentioned late last summer how bullish the $XMI looked, because it was emerging from a pretty substantial base. But there's no base this time. This is a retracement.
To lift our spirits from such a crummy week, I offer not just one but two videos - - and no clowns are involved. The first one might be handy for that big Easter brunch you are planning. I present.......Pickle Surprise:
The next one requires a bit of explanation (assuming you survived the one above). Marissa Mayer is one of Google's earliest employees, and she's one of their VPs now. As such, she's very, very rich. But she also sports what most be earth's most bizarre laugh. Yes, a person can be young, pretty, and completely loaded.......but future prospective husbands may still take pause at living with this laugh the rest of their lives. Click Play. It must be heard to be believed.
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