07
Feb
10

Weekly Video 2/7/2010

By akoptiontrader Leave a Comment
Categories: Technical Analysis and video
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Yes I am back in America, back in Alaska, and back in the mkt. Sorry for the long absence, but man between the beach, surfing, exploring, my wife and friends, I just could not find time to give the mkt. the justice it demands. So I decided not to blog until I got my head back into the game. My head is freezing cold, but I am back in the game. I actually spent some time with a couple traders in Costa Rica and learned a lot of new stuff. I will be incorporating it just as soon as I run some tests etc., but I am very excited.

Things are looking a little different this time, similar to the move this past July. A lot more volatility, and we took out a previous low, both of which occurred in July, and you know how that worked out. Back then I thought that was signaling a top, and I think the same now, but I am much more cautious this time. Now onto this week’s video.

24
Jan
10

Weekly Video from Costa Rica

By akoptiontrader Leave a Comment
Categories: video

Hola Y buenos noches from Costa Rica. I realize I haven’t posted in a while, and I can’t say that will improve until late next week. I am still at the beach in Costa Rica, and have actually been very busy vacationing and scouting. Our days have been filled and I haven’t had the time to sit and watch the mkt. therefore I haven’t felt comfortable commenting on it every night. That being said, I have a feeling that we are again at some key areas on the indices, on both the daily and weekly charts. We still have some big earnings coming out, but currently we are a politically driven mkt., or so they say. I would be expecting a little up to sideways movement before we continue down more. Pura Vida and trade well and prosper. AKOT

14
Jan
10

Vacation Time!

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Categories: Uncategorized
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All righty then, I accidentally posted a video of my Costa Rica vacation from last year. It was supposed to go to my family blog. I know a few of you saw that major corniness, and I apologize for torturing you. I have a lot to do to get ready for our trip this weekend, so I doubt that I will have time to post the next couple of nights. I may try to throw up some charts on Chart.ly, if I get a chance, but no promises. I closed all my short term positions. Posts will be sparse this week, I apologize, but I think it is good to take a step back and clear your head once in a while ( don’t doubt that I will be checking the charts every day, after all Wifi was a must everywhere we will stay!) But I promised family and friends blog updates on the other blog, so I may neglect this one for the next couple weeks. Just remember, we are moving into the meat and taters of earnings season, watch for the big names and see how they do, and then look for over reactions to either side. But most of all, trade well and prosper! PURA VIDA! AKOT

12
Jan
10

The market is no place for logic

By akoptiontrader Leave a Comment
Categories: Technical Analysis, Trades, stocks charts technical analysis and vix
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Another late day rally salvaged what could have been, and looked to be a brutal day. I was looking for a bounce in the first 1/2 hour of the day, and we did have it, but it was very weak looking. Further, we then dropped again, and with that I could tell it was a good day to keep my palms in my pocket. I really wanted to short this thing, and I was very close when we took out the 1130 on the ES. but I never found a good entry, so I stayed put, and thankfully so, the way it turns out.

I probably won’t enter any more trades this week ( probably) but I will still keep on posting some possible setups for those of you not going on vacation. After hours, this mkt. had a decent rally. Tomorrow we don’t have any big e pre or post mkt. We do have crude inventories, so if you are an oil bug you can jump on that bad boy. The way I usually play that is against the first move, especially if it is quick and violent. I look for a slow rally back to where we started the move. Let’s look at some charts:

The VIX bounced as I expected, but it truly did not sustain its early day strength, giving up almost all its post open, post gap gains. Interestingly enough, it close right on the bottom of that broadening pattern. Let’s see if it offers any support, or if we are headed back down to the $16 area.

I see a lot of bottom tails and not a lot of top wicks. Usually that signifies buying into the daily lows, and is often a bullish sign. However, we did fail to make a new high for the first time in 5 days, which is slightly bearish. If we see a hammer or another similar type of signal candle tomorrow, then I think the next day we see or pretty big down day.

Bad tick taken into consideration, the SPX looks set up for a short-term down move here. I could see this dropping to the 1120 area pretty easy from here, and thus dragging the DOW with it.

The RUT is looking similar to the NAS. Something to note, the last two times we had significant down gaps, the very next day was a white candle and a strong rally. Although today’s gap down wasn’t as big, it was still one of the larger down gaps in recent history.

The NAS looks the weakest of the bunch, due mainly to the stocks I mentioned yesterday. However, it did find support on the 20 ma, and last time it touched it had a nice bounce.

The SPY found support on the top of this megaphone pattern. There was a pretty decent v spike with the selling today, if we have v follow through, I think this support gives way.

The QQQQ took out that top of that ascending pennant, but also bounced on the 20 ma. I would imagine this will offer some resistance and we see some more move to the downside here. Maybe not a lot, but some.

No comment, it’s on the chart. Kind of looks like a bull flag though.

ABT looks like it wants to retrace a little before making another run up. A couple of dojis on the top bb and I think we are heading for the $54.50 before making another run.

APOL looks like a bear pennant with decent v and the RSI heading south.

PHM failed to take out the gap and failed to breakdown out of this bullish pennant. I think this is a sign that it will likely breakout to the upside, maybe after another day or two.

The neckline on this loose h&s was taken out today. You can see it sits on the bbb and is very close to the 200 ma. Note how hard the 200 ma has been moving up as EJ seems to be slowly trending down. If it doesn’t take it out this time, I think it will be disposed of on the next test.

In closing: There was strength today, a day which had all the signs of weakness. There is still money on the sidelines, and although it makes no sense to me the mkt. still wants to push higher. I think we are at an optimum point for a minor correction here. The leaders have become laggers and with no real news or e tomorrow, it would be a logical time for this mkt. to drop a little more. There I go talking about logic again!! Trade well and prosper. AKOT

11
Jan
10

Alcoa can’t wait for tomorrow….

By akoptiontrader Leave a Comment
Categories: Indicies, SPIDERS, charts stocks trades, late night post, stock charts technical analysis and vix
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Earnings have kicked off with a resounding “thud”. AA disappointed the mkt. and now a small degree of fear has crept in. Yet the VIX was down today, because AA came out after the close. The rest of the week we will see some NASDAQ moving earnings that will be topped off with INTC on Thursday and JPM on Friday. I expect both of those to be mkt. movers.

I have to keep it quick tonight because I am so late, and may be late all week. But keep on eye on the earnings and watch how the mkt. moves. Will it sell off on bad news only to fill morning gaps and rally or will it sell off and keep selling. If it is good news, did we do the opposite. These are things I will be watching for to see what the sentiment is and where we may be heading. Often times the mkts. reaction to earnings news can be a signal of things to come, especially early on when we only have a few companies reporting. On to some charts:

The VIX broke waaaayyyyy down today. It looks like it really wants to head straight to that $16 support line. But I think we will see a pop tomorrow, at least initially in the morning.

The DOW , after seeming to be the weaker of the indices, took over the strength role today. I don’t think that will last too long as AA earnings should have a clear impact on the DOW. However, it did breakout today, while the others lagged, perhaps in anticipation of good earnings from AA.

We kind of have a weak hammer formation here, but nothing to write home about. The NAS was very weak today, held up only by the DOW strength. GOOG and AAPL both showed signs of weakness and as the Googapp goes, so goes the NAS.

I have a weird tick on my SPX so I am using the SPY instead today. Note a slight bearish divergence into this up move. These divergences have not been playing out well, but I still like to note them. The SPY is sliding up the top bb, careful not to pierce it. It is still over-bought and still rallying. I think if we see a v pop tomorrow, we see selling.

LNG looks to be breaking out. It took out the 200 on clear strength and v, a strong sign. I would look for a correction, maybe back down to the 200 ma and then some more up movement.

As I said, INTC reports on Thursday so keep an eye on it. It opened right at the open of that high candle from Oct, but failed to break above. Going into earnings, if the consensus is that they will do bte, then I think we keep rising here. If worry sneaks in, then some fast selling.

Check this out, perhaps some foreshadowing on AA. A great doji setup going into e. Maybe somebody knew something. I am curious, was this rally from Dec in anticipation of great e? If so, then I think we will see at least $14 before the move is over.

In closing: I have a lot to do this week to get ready for our trip to Costa Rica this weekend. I will do my best to post at night this week, but no promises. Watch e closely, see what the sentiment is going in , and if it returns after the initial move in the morning. Trade well and prosper. AKOT

10
Jan
10

Weekly Video 1-10-2010

By akoptiontrader 2 Comments
Categories: video
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As much as I expected to have a clear direction by now, we obviously do not. V has been average but I expected more and it has led to mixed singles throughout indices. The NASDAQ seems to have the most strength right now, but the major players don’t seem to be the ones fueling the move, in fact, GOOG and AAPL are some of the weaker ones in the sector, with a strong day Friday. Going forward, we don’t have any economic data on Monday, but some every day the rest of the week. Thursday, once again has the heaviest mkt. effecting data with initial claims and retail. Right now we are slightly trending up, the DOW is right on long-term resistance, the others have all broken through. Economically, things are still bearish but with (false) shades of improvement, the charts are still slightly bullish but still look like they are topping. So let’s check out this week’s video, shall we?

06
Jan
10

Just a chat

By akoptiontrader Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
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I had internet issues here on the road and thus will not post tonight. Tomorrow may be better. I did throw up a couple charts on twitter, mainly to show the similarity between the first three days of last year vs. this year. Last year it led to a significant down move. Now history does not always repeat itself, but it certainly bears watching. As I write this the futures are down, but we do have more data coming out tomorrow. Anyway, hope to have more tomorrow night.

05
Jan
10

Turn up the volume

By akoptiontrader Leave a Comment
Categories: Indicies, SPIDERS, charts stocks trades, late night post, stock charts technical analysis and vix
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

First some house keeping, I forgot to let you know that once again I will be traveling from Wed. – Fri. Further, during the day I will likely not be able to watch the mkts. as closely as I normally would. I will be in meetings all day, and I will look at my iphone as much as possible, but it just isn’t the same. So I don’t know if I will have my normal two more posts this week or not. Stay tuned!

That leads me to my next trip. At the end of next week, 1/ 15, we will be heading back to Costa Rica for a mini vacation. Last year I was able to post a few times from there, but to be honest I wasn’t as “in tune” as I should have been, so I kind of backed off. We will be traveling a lot this time; much more exploring and looking for some opportunities. So I doubt I will have tons of time for posts, but if I see something, I will make time. I will make sure and tweet all new posts. Perhaps I will throw up some CR pics as tweets, something different eh?

Now on to the business at hand. I really expected us to see a trend forming, and instead we get more of the same, a whole lot of nothing. At least we had some intra-day movement. I have noticed that v is slowly creeping up, but it is really moving on certain sectors. I noted the strength in energy and financials this morning, and usually these two can lead the mkt. Today, nothing led the mkt., it just was. Now last year, we had a very similar set up coming out of Jan. and that led to a big sell off. If we see a white hammer tomorrow, then we will be looking at an eerily similar set up. Now I am all excited! You know how I love mkt. history. Let’s look at some charts:

Well it looks like the VIX wants to get to that $17 area sooner than later. Considering we did not have a huge up day today, this is pretty bearish. It has been trending down like this, and I would expect some follow through to the downside, at least one day.

Normally this would be an okay start of a reversal pattern, but lately I have not been trusting it. All you have to do is to look back at Nov. to see why. It makes sense to take a breather after a day like yesterday. You can see resistance all over the place, bollinger bands, down trend, up trend, and the v is nothing to shout about, but it is slowly moving up. If the VIX drops, like it looks it might, then I could see us taking all the resistance out pretty easily.

The SPX looks much stronger than the DOW or NAS. A decent up down continuing from the previous day’s move. Right now I don’t see a technical reason for it to stall out. The boll bands are opening the skies.

The NAS poked out to a new high but could not hold it. Note how the RSI is still cruising up. Again, normally I would be expecting a reversal to the downside in the next couple of days, but the way things have been lately, I am not sure that is what we will see.

For a single candle, the RUT looks most likely to stall out this current up move. Even the RSI looks to be heading down a little. Keep on eye on this, remember how it was leading the down move, and then led the up move. This may give us a little heads-up.

The UUP held steady; I thought it may drop a little here before bouncing but it was pretty much flat and made a spin top doji which could easily signal a short-term bottom. I didn’t post the chart, but the EUR/USD looks pretty weak to me right now. If it takes out the 200 ma, we will see a big move.

There was a nice bearish divergence with v and the up move here into resistance, but v has been increasing. I will be watching to see if this resistance holds, that will lead to good short trade.

I find this chart intriguing. Huge v spike, with hang man in context. This should be bearish or at least signal a slow down in the up move. But when I looked at the 5 min. chart…

… you can see that, by far, the breadth of v came with the up move into the close. That is a pretty bullish sign to me. So in light of that, I would imagine we see another pop up tomorrow on XLK.

In closing: We are in a battle between history, fundamentals, and TA. Which one will win out? Stay tuned. Trade well and prosper. AKOT

04
Jan
10

One day does not a trend make, unless it is Jan 1.

By akoptiontrader Leave a Comment
Categories: Indicies, SPIDERS, Technical Analysis, charts stocks trades, stock charts technical analysis and vix
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Not one day does a trend make, unless it is the first day of January. Should we be surprised by such strong move today? Not necessarily, remember ony 63%  of the time the Jan 1 move was in the same direction as the last trading day of December. Also remember that, without exception in the last 10 years, whatever Jan 1 did a trend was based off of that day, the shortest one being 3 days. What I didn’t check was to see what kind of resistance those mkts. had.

Cash21 has a feeling that we will see some decent jobs numbers on Thursday. If he is right, we could really see a strong up move. I believe this because we have had this current rally with terrible jobs numbers. Sure they have been bte, but they are still awful anyway you slice it. So if we see some confirmation I think it will be plastered all over the place and money will flow into this mkt. That is also a great time for big $$ to look for selling opportunities, after playing the up move of course. On to some charts:

As I said on the video, I think that the $16 – $17 area is a very logical zone for the VIX to end up in. There is very good support at $16. Notice the RSI is making a series of lower highs, and it is in a pretty apparent down range right now. Early on today it seemed oddly strong before finally selling off.

I actually expected quite a bit more v today. Perhaps that guy who ran in through the out-door ( Raspberry Beret, Prince 1986?) in Jersey made all the traders late getting home. Either way there has been a four-day up trend in v and a clear breakout to the upside. If you note that down trending blue line we are near, that is drawn on the highs of the day in a down trend starting with the Oct 07 high. I usually use the bodies, but we have long since smashed through that. I don’t know how strong of resistance this will be, if any, but we need to be aware of it none-the-less.

The NAS gapped up and stayed up. It doesn’t look like much, but percentage wise it did better than the others, sans the RUT. And this after a beauty of a bearish engulfing candle, albeit on low v. I don’t think it is too often that bearish engulfings near top bb are ignored. So if we continue up, like we have in the past, that will be impressive.

The SPX took out the 50% fib and the up trend line.  There is a lot of open sky right here for an up move. But again, I harp with the being oversold for so long. It didn’t gap up, but is definitely showed strength today. I am very surprised that 50% fib did not offer a lot more resistance, I was pretty confident it would.

From the weakest to the strongest. Seasonally this is the heart of strength for the RUT and it is showing it. It sure looked like it was giving up the ghost in Nov, and now we have a pretty clear breakout here. Note that once again the long-term down trend on this w chart. It could certainly offer some resistance.

UUP is in the zone here, the gap zone. There was a nice little v spike with the move and it seemed to have bounced off of the 20 ma. Looking at the past buying v, I would expect to see another spike of buying if we get down to the $22.50 area. But, I expect this gap to offer support, so I think we will likely see some strength in the $22.75 area, and I may be looking to buy this there.

I have been watching this for a while; I like the re-test of the neckline, but it is now caught between the 200 ma and the neckline. A move up with some v and play up, a move down below 200 ma and short to $13.50 area.

You can see a series of lower highs and with shorter time periods. But what really intrigues me is that we have lovely bearish engulfing candle  followed by a bearish harami. This thing really looks like it wants to drop soon to me.

In closing: Based on my short-term research, I think we will see some more up move tomorrow and perhaps the rest of the week. Today may have been the bulk of it, but if we get much bte numbers during the week, it may have been just a taste of what is to come. Yes, I still think this mkt. is clearly overbought, but as I have said before it can stay that way for a while. Trade well and prosper. AKOT

03
Jan
10

Stock Market Weekly Video 1-4-10

By akoptiontrader 3 Comments
Categories: video
Tags: , , , ,

All right, I thought I would start the new year reviewing what I am doing here and answering some common questions:

Most of the charts I post are swing trade set ups. Not all of them will work, and I don’t trade them all. What I do is find charts that look like they are about to move, and then I try to capture that move. I may post 20-30 stocks a week and I try to play the 5 -10 that look like they are panning out the way I thought they would.

Before trading any chart, you need to do your own research, especially for news, earnings, splits, meetings, etc. I don’t always take the time to look for this stuff on the charts I post. In fact I usually only do it on the ones that I am considering putting my $$ into. That is often what helps me narrow down between several trades.

I base most of my trades of technical analysis, specifically support and resistance, moving averages, stoch RSI and more. I don’t always post the charts as I look at them for the simple reason that they look very cluttered and hard to see that way. I often take off several indicators etc. to keep the charts pleasing, simple, and clean.

My goal is to post Sunday – Thursday. Wed. in the winter is a crap shoot and the posts are usually short, unless there is something spectacular going on. Every once in a while I will post on a Saturday or Friday, but I try to step away from my computer and spend time with my family.

The main reason I write this blog is to keep a type of journal and to make myself accountable for my trades. Obviously I am not always right, not even close. I have learned over the years to have a bias, but to not lock into that bias so that you can’t quickly change your trade or your mind. I will always try to have an idea where I think the market is headed, not only to get into trades, but to get out of trades as well. What I post I believe to be true, I am not trying to trick anybody, I have no reason to lie, I don’t trade enough shares to influence the mkt. either way, so what you see is what I am thinking at the time. I appreciate any alternate thoughts or interpretations.

Now on to some of the questions I get.

I can’t answer all the questions I get from the meebo chat. The main reason for this is because if I am not right at my computer and you send me a message, I will not see it until I return to my computer. Then if you are not online, and I respond, you don’t get the message. If you really want me to answer, the best way is to post in the comments section. I get all of those via email, and I do my best to answer each and every one of them.

I use Prophet charts for most of the charts I post.

I know the SPX is a better overall gauge of the mkt., but I post the INDU / DOW charts because that is what you hear on the news, that is what America hears about so it affects sentiment.

I don’t mind taking chart requests and I will give you my honest analysis.

No I don’t generally research company internals. I would do it on a company that I was intending to invest in long-term, but that is not what this blog is about.

I do trade other styles, long-term investing and selling covered calls. But those are both slow-moving, 6-10 trades a year, so they are not as exciting to write about.

I post a lot of charts on twitter / chart.ly, so you can follow me there if you would like. akoptiontrader tweets You can also see them on the upper right corner of this blog.

Well that should do it for now. In this week’s video I go over my thoughts going into the new year. Yes I still think we are over bought, but we can stay over bought for a while, so my bias is for a significant correction early in this year. We have a lot of potential mkt. moving news out this week, so be nimble.

My New Year’s resolution; trade better and prosper, and I pray the same to all of you.

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Twitter Updates

  • just got back from Costa Rica and came home to -10 and lots of snow, ready to turn this car around and head back! 3 hours ago
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