Archive for May, 2010

Excuses excuses. Beware of Greeks bearing bonds.

Posted on May 10, 2010 by WHC Bassetti.

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2010-05-08-spxHere is the stop for the S&P.  It is equivalent to the Dow stop of 9729, and as can be seen is out of reach of even a black swan day — a black swan day which was essentially meaningless.  The market was looking for excuses and fastened on the Greek tragedy (or tragi-comedy).  Angela has managed to be teutonic for long enough to throw the fat in the fire.  Dumbkof.  It is unlikely that the markets would be in such a tizzy if she had not dithered so long to solve the Greek problem.

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Dizzy yet? Maybe it was all just a computer mistake. Some comments on a crazy day.

Posted on May 06, 2010 by WHC Bassetti.

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2010-05-06-induAfter watching the bungee markets (and being deceived by some of them) we learned that part of this day’s market action may have been caused by computer problems and part by a misplaced decimal point.  One story at least has it that a trader tried to sell $16 million of stocks and it got transmitted as $16 billion.  Whether these stories are true or not, who knows.  What is true that contrarians and short sellers managed to bomb the market as they have been wanting to do for some time.

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Slow nags in claiming races — plungers only. CRXX, DNDN

Posted on May 03, 2010 by WHC Bassetti.

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2010-05-03-crxxCRXX with a suspicious power bar.  Not cleared the high, but maybe worth a two dollar bet.

2010-05-03-dndnSomebody knows — or thinks he knows — something about DNDN.  If you bit on this you would want to put a 5% stop under the low of the high day.  Begin by betting small, add on if there is an end to a downwave.  We would buy it if we hadn’t just eaten our hedge, selling the SPXU.  Whenever we get egg on our faces we relax and rethink.

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Targets for the S&P –1415-1565. Really? Really.

Posted on May 03, 2010 by WHC Bassetti.

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$spxpnfapr10We usually make it a practice to roll our eyes and snicker when we hear people predicting Dow 36000 and Dow 16000.  Of course the Dow will go to 16000 (and maybe even 36000 — but not in your lifetime).  It went from 29.64 in 1897 to 14000+ in only 112 years.  But we usually think people who spout off these extreme numbers are either naive or just looking for publicity.

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Explaining the hedge trade SPXU and GLD

Posted on May 01, 2010 by WHC Bassetti.

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2010-05-01-induFriday we put on a partial hedge as an inept response to the present market.  We’ll probably get egg on our face and be proven impatient again.  But here is why.  As you see from the Indu chart here there is a broken short term trend line.  Now, in all likelihood this is the beginning of a sideways pattern and the thing for long term traders is just to sit and grin and bear it.  Always itchy we looked at 12 ETFs tha we follow on a regular basis and found not one buyable at this time and all of them with broken short term trendlines.  The nearest to buying was the IWM, the Russell 2000, and we wouldn’t even buy it at this point.  (We should have bought it long ago.)

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