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COMMENTARY for Saturday
TODAY'S ACTION for Friday
Rick's Picks for Friday
Expect more sloppy action in the days ahead, perhaps with a mild downward bias. My do-little forecast is based not on dueling impulse legs, but on bullish and bearish targets that are not getting achieved. Although Wednesday’s selloff ”should have” come down to at least 920.40, the actual low was 927.60. And while yesterday’s bounce “should have” exceeded 940.50, it went no further than 939.40. Night owls looking to scalp a few points can try bottom-fishing at 932.90, stop 932.40. Bulls should take encouragement from any rally exceeding 940.50. ______ UPDATE (2:45 p.m.): Today’s sharp upthrust is encouraging, especially since it came off a low that failed by 80 cents to reach our 932.90 correction target. However, for bulls to move into position to trample sellers, they’ll need to push the futures above two prior peaks on the daily chart that have yet to be challenged. They lie, respectively, at 962.70 (July 27) and 969.90 (June 10). An unpaused rally surpassing those two peaks would greatly shorten the odds of a sustained move into autumn.
During an impromptu webinar yesterday, we calculated that our $13 strangle will have recouped about half its value if the stock reaches a 475 target that looks like a decent bet. Even so, bid/asked spreads were too wide on way-out-of-the-money September calls for me to recommend buying them, at least right now. _______ UPDATE (September 11): We’ll book a $1300 loss on the strangle, which will go down as the worst trade in the 12-year history of Rick’s Picks/Black Box Forecasts. We went into the trade with relatively little experience trading options on a $450 stock, seduced by the seemingly low implied volatility of GOOG puts and calls. In retrospect, it would appear these “cheap” options were priced very knowledgeably, so that they more than discounted the risk of an explosive surge above $500 (or below 270, the strike price of our puts). Despite this, we have no trepidation about trying again, since Google has demonstrated no special ability to fool us a second time. We’ll be looking to recoup every dime of our loss in the next round, so stay tuned!
Our very own Duke, self-styled trader and family man, nailed the high in the chat room yesterday and thinks it could have been THE top, so we’ll need to pay extra-special attention to the pullback that has ensued. The intraday peak was at 994.00, a bit shy of the 999.50 Hidden Pivot I had suggested using as a minimum upside objective. I wouldn’t quibble about a few points, although a print at 1002.00 would have presented a real problem for bears, since it would have created (and might still create) a fresh, bullish impulse leg on the weekly chart (see inset). The selloff so far has been ineffectual, since it would need to hit 962.25 to damage the hourly chart. My gut feeling is that the weakness into the close will abate — that it was simply a consequence of too many traders expecting yet another short-squeeze in the final hour. In any event, we’ll set an alert at 962.25 today, come what may.
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SIDE BETS for Friday
Wednesday’s surge to 79.66 merely tied a previous peak, so we should view this rally cautiously. However, a print today exceeding 79.78 would put bulls in the driver seat, at least for the near term.
Let me reiterate a 173.10 target that will be worth shorting if and when Goldman gets there. Alternatively, I’d sound a bear alert on a print today or Monday at 155.51.
This Just In... for Friday
An essay by Egon von Greyerz of Matterhorn Asset Management perfectly captures the insanity of these times, most particularly the belief that printing press money will spare us from economic disaster. Click here for the complete essay, from which I have extracted the following:
“The US is haemorrhaging financially and economically. It has lent or committed almost $13 trillion in the last 18 months to prop up the financial system. The estimated government deficit in the current year is almost $2 trillion or 50% of the budget. All the money committed so far has only achieved two things: Firstly it has created some short term hope which together with totally illusionary sightings of green shoots have generated a small stock market correction (which we forecast in our January Newsletter) and some belief that the crisis is ending. Secondly, all the funds printed so far to save the system have gone to Wall Street but has done nothing whatsoever for the real economy. Every single sector of the real economy is deteriorating whether it is production, unemployment, corporate profits, real estate, credit defaults, construction, federal deficits, local government and state deficits etc.
“And what is the government doing about it. They are doing the only thing they know which is to print more money. This is total lunacy! How can any intelligent person believe that printed pieces of paper can solve an economic catastrophe? If that were the case we could all go home and write out pieces of paper or use Monopoly money to spend in the shops or repay our debts.”
Hidden Pivot Webinar & Tutorials
The next Hidden Pivot Webinar will be held on 6/30 - 7/1. This two-day event is designed to teach you the risk-averse trading strategies Rick has taken to his seminars around the world. Once you have learned his proprietary secrets, you will approach trading and investing with enough confidence to make your own decisions without having to rely on the advice of others. For more information, or to register, click here.
Rick’s Picks Weekend Edition
by Stephanie DeMaria on August 1, 2009 12:01 am GMT
As California Goes, So Goes the Nation?
As California goes, so goes the nation? We had better hope not, since the state’s economy is imploding so swiftly that it threatens to take cities and towns from Eureka to San Diego down with it. Consider the plight of El Monte, a city of 125,000 in Los Angeles County that recently cut expenditures to the bone in order to close a $9.5 million budget gap for the fiscal year begun in July. Working frantically against an inflexible deadline, local officials furloughed most of the city’s 375 workers, laid off 17 police officers and closed down an aquatic center for all but four months of the year. Then they got the bad news: Sacramento…
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Junior Golds Offer ‘Ridiculous’ Leverage
(Following is the fifth in a series of article on gold by Chuck Cohen, a financial consultant and investor based in New York City. At bottom are some specific stock recommendations.)
Very few Americans own gold in any form. Even though gold’s price has risen each year since 2001, about the only time we hear gold mentioned is in the ubiquitous “cash for gold” TV commercials. Don’t you wonder who has any gold or jewelry left to sell? The way it’s shunned, you might think gold causes swine flu or greenhouse emissions. It is most baffling to me to see our profligate nation diligently avoiding the most rewarding investment of…
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Should They Risk Missing a Payment?
You can see the fine hand of government at work in the homeowner rescue package that has been struggling to get off the ground since its inception last spring. The goal was to reduce foreclosures by lowering mortgage payments for homeowners who were struggling. But struggling how badly? For would-be lenders, that can be a tricky question to answer, and they are understandably reluctant to commit to the program without clear guidelines from the federal government. As it stands, some homeowners are being told…
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Just Buy the Dips to Make Big Money
The lazy drift of stocks has become almost too boring to watch, although we dare not avert our eyes for fear of missing Wall Street’s next wilding spree. During the last four sessions, the broad averages have hit bottom early in the day after easing lower overnight. In each instance, the Dow Industrials were down about a hundred points before the selling dried up. Then, four hours worth of see-saw action ensued. Finally, in the last hour or so, with…
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NYSE Embraces a Ruinous Idea
Sadly, another venerable American institution has lost its way: the New York Stock Exchange. We read the other day that the Exchange is building a fast-trade hub in northern New Jersey that supposedly will help secure its future in an increasingly electronic world. But raising capital for companies that could conceivably help Build a Better Tomorrow is nowhere on their agenda. In fact, “fast trading” will be about as helpful in achieving that goal as placing five hundred slot machines in the NYSE’s lobby. Instead…
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