Friday, October 3, 2008

The 826.80 downside target given here yesterday, missed by about $7, remains valid; otherwise, it would take nothing less than a print today at 864.10 to turn the short-term picture decisively bullish. You can bottom-fish at the target today with a stop-loss as tight as 825.40. _______ UPDATE: Gold easily blew out the target and stop-loss overnight and now appears bound for a minimum 811.20. Bottom-fish there at your discretion. Alternatively, it would take a pop touching 837.50 to turn the one-minute chart bullish.

Two days ago, we acquired four November 20 puts for 1.60 off a limit order. Let's try to spread off the premium risk by now offering four Nov 17.50 puts (CWR) short for 1.65, good-till-canceled. And just in case Citi turns frisky, we'll also enter a 1.99 stink bid for four January 20 puts (CMD), day order. _______ UPDATE: Perhaps it was Citi's Walking Dead status that queered its deal to buy Wachovia? In any case, having the deal snatched from its hands by Wells Fargo has caused the stock to plunge overnight by more than $3, opening some new opportunities to us. My recommendation now is to short, not the Nov 17.50 puts, but Nov 15 puts on-the-opening, at-the-market. It's hard to predict how much they'll sell for, but in theory they'll be worth about a dime more than we paid for the January 20 puts. If we are able to short the puts for 1.60 (1:1 with however many January puts you are long), we will have legged into a spread on which we cannot lose but which could yield a profit of as much as $500 per spread if Citi heads lower over the next several months. _______ FURTHER UPDATE: With Citi rallying off its lows at the opening bell, we shorted four Nov 15 puts for 1.25, a nickel off their so-far high. This makes us long the November 15-20 put spread for 0.35, a position that will be a winner with Citi trading anywhere below 19.65 come November 21. The most we can lose on the entire position is $140, while the most we can make is $2,000. We may be able to improve on those already great odds by covering the short side side of the position for a profit, then re-shorting more puts

There are larger bearish patterns at work, but I've highlighted in the accompanying chart a lesser one that yields a minimum downside target at 10149, 442 points below yesterday's settlement price. Since the midpoint support at 10544 has already been breached, the lower number should serve as a minimum downside objective.

Yesterday's well-engineered rally took out an important midpoint resistance of weekly-chart degree, hinting of more upside to as high as 84.96. That's a Hidden Pivot as well as the 'D' sibling of the midpoint, 80.43. We'll stipulate that DXY close for two consecutive days above that last number before inferring that significantly higher numbers impend, but the bulls clearly have momentum -- not to mention the central banks of Europe and Japan -- on their side.