Love So Deep, Kills You In Your Sleep

I'm no better. I just know I'm not any better of a person than any of the bulls that frequent this board.

When the market is roaring higher........when bears like me are getting slaughtered .........it's only natural that you gloat. You announce how the market is just going to keep going up forever. You wish for the destruction of all the bears. And you offer up reasons why It's Different This Time and there will never be a down market in your lifetime.

So - as the kids say, good on you, because I'm no better than that. The market is a battlefield. Wiser souls - of which many claim to be, but hardly any of them are - are truly neutral, and they position themselves to try to take advantage of the ebb and flow. Mere mortals, like your humble narrator, tend to be more dogmatic. History - and human nature - tend to make the vast majority of them bulls. And a vanishingly small number are bears. So - join hands around the campfire, and let's sing!

I hate you. You hate me. We're a trading family. With a big fat drop, and a knife from me to you. This one day, you get the screw.

So allow me to remind everyone of the disposition just four trading sessions ago. Last Friday, June 1st. Hardly a blip in time. The Dow had made another lifetime closing high. Let's review some of the comments offered up:

Permabull NewEquity wrote: I just bought 100 DIA calls mid-day for the ride back up through all time highs. No resistance at all and we should break 14k Dow in the next 3 weeks according to my tech analysis guy.

John (B) predicted, regarding the S&P 500, whose closing price today was 1490.72: "Putting these numbers in my model, the 500 fair value today is 2,300...and based on earnings for next year, fair value would be about 2,800."

And, lastly, Beanie11111 declared the bottom for a number of stocks: "...AKAM has bottomed...SBUX has bottomed.....WFMI has bottomed." As a follow-up, in the mere four days since that post, those stocks have declined 3.2%, 5.9%, and 6.5%, respectively. So I guess some people have different understanding of bottoms than others.

Suffice it to say, the past three days have been very good for me. Indeed, I had trouble deciding what charts to show, because they are all gorgeous. Every single one - every one - of my dozens of positions pushed way higher today. I even made some very profitable intraday option trades - both long and short! - with the Russell 2000.

The Dow fell 1.48% today. And, after the regular market closed, the ETFs on the indexes just kept falling. The DIA wound up down 1.96%.

I actually would not be surprised to see a very short, very sharp drop first thing in the morning followed by a rip-roaring push up. Looking at this channel, it seems to me the selling is a touch overdone (on the very short term) at this point. You hear me, fellers? I'm not saying we're going to enjoy another 4th day plunge. Nice as it would be.


Zooming in closer, you can see what I mean. Now, of course, all trendlines are eventually broken. And if the one shown here is decisively snapped, it could be a new ball game. But the past 11 months have made me paranoid, and although the last 3 days have been sensible, I still don't trust this market or its participants.


Akamai (AKAM) hasn't plunged as fast as I hoped, but it's doing OK. It's still a very nice pattern, and I've got some nice green on this one.


CSX is way the hell above its trendline, and it is sporting a cute little head and shoulders pattern to boot.


CVX would definitely pop up if the market strengthened, but that would just give me another opportunity to add to my bearish position.


I closed my Deere (DE) puts today at a nice profit. Not because I think the stock is going to be strong. But only because I'd like to re-enter them at a better price, assuming the market "recovers" some in the very short-term.


The Asian markets are having a touch of reality. My EWM (Malaysian market) short is doing nicely. I daresay the Asian markets will kind of freak out during their Friday session, which might make our Friday session interesting as well. But, if forced to bet, I'd say we'll probably close higher, Asian freakout and end-of-week jitters notwithstanding.


InfoSys (INFY) finally cracked its neckline, although it still seems to behave stronger than I'd like to see. Would you plunge, already?


JC Penney (JCP) - on which I bought puts yesterday - had a nice fall due to weak retail sales. Of course, a true break of this neckline - - - the pattern is only just forming now - - - would make these puts fantastically profitable.


Merrill Lynch (MER), along with my other investment bank shorts, soured (for the bulls) today.


Oh, a couple of final comments to two users before the video. TomTheTrader, please stop posting your URL. I consider that an ad, and I'm going to be more consistent about nuking comments that are ads in any way. And Gary - for goodness sake, we get it. COT, COT, COT. Message received and understood. Lordy. Oh, and as for you readers that only show up on big down days like this......shame on thee!

Anyway........

The Slope of Hope

First off, as you can see, I've dolled up the site a bit. After I added MyBlogLog (for which you really should sign up - it's pretty cool, and it's free) I decided to spruce things up a bit, including the title of this blog. Perhaps you haven't heard the old saying about how markets climb a Wall of Worry and fall down a Slope of Hope. But that's where the title comes from.

On the plane home, I started reading Ken Fisher's The Only Three Questions that Count. I like it a lot so far. You might want to check it out if you enjoy Mr. Fisher's writing in Forbes.

Today was another weird day on the market. It was weird in that, once again, my totally bearish portfolio gained value in spite of another triple-digit climb on the Dow and another record high. And it was also weird that, yet again, really crummy economic news came out, yet the markets cheered. What a bunch of psychos. Oh, well.

BBD has been mentioned here as a bullish play, and it's looking stronger than ever.


I also like (bullishly speaking) CRDN.


I have avoided copper for a while, but I think I'm going to acquire some puts on Southern Copper (PCU) based on its location within this channel.


John Deere (DE) is something on which I already own puts, and I like the look of this huge bearish engulfing pattern, particularly since it was in the context of a big "up" day.


Real estate is getting even weaker, and KRC is another good short within that world.


Lastly, I hate to bore you with another ONT chart, but I continue to be amazed how well this stock is doing. It was first mentioned by a reader in this blog at the point where the arrow is showing, and I agreed with her bullish take on the stock a few days later. Since then, it has more than doubled, and on amazingly strong volume.


It's nearly midnight, so I'm off........see you at the regular time tomorrow afternoon! And remember to sign up for MyBlogLog - it's a kick!

'Til Tuesday

It's really simple.

Tomorrow morning, the CPI will be released. The market will react. If it reacts poorly (which means down, which is a good thing), it's party time. If it finds the report vigorous and exciting for some reason, that's a bad thing for us. Because, simply stated, today made a lot of sense to me, virtually all my positions went up, and all my charts are positioned for juicy profits tomorrow. But a perverse reaction to the CPI could muck that all up in no time.

I said last week that Massey Energy (MEE) was looking like a good short, given its head and shoulders pattern. One person wrote in that evening's comments section.....

I'd stay away from shorting MEE... One of these Merger Monday's it's name is going to be on the "acquired list" and that's going to suck for anyone short it. Crappy management, but great reserves, and the coal bidness ain't going anywhere soon....

Well, the stock took a big fall today, and based on this pattern, there could be plenty more room to fall.


Indeed, some of the put options on this went up literally thousands of percent. Not bad!


On a more bullish note, another stock I've been mentioning as a beautiful buy is ONT, and it continues to do terrific. Check out the strength of that volume!



Because the market is so complacent right now, many puts are being sold on the cheap. Check out this chain from earlier today for MMM. Just look at the October put. For 63 cents (if you strip out the intrinsic value)......63 cents per share!......you get the right to sell the stock at a fixed price of $95 any time between now and October. Even more interesting is the fact that time premium is just about zilch.....July is the same as June....is the same as October! Incredible.



The Major Market Index ($XMI) does a nice job of showing where this market stands. If - - and I say if - - the market even freaks out a little at the morning's CPI, tomorrow is going to be a fantastic today. Today was really good, only because I was running around buying puts when the Dow was up 50 and everything else was basically stalled. I knew it wouldn't last.


I've got to blast off to a meeting, so I'm just going to throw you raw symbols now, all of which I have either puts on or I am already short. Here we go.....AKAM:


BEN:


CROX (can you say fad?!!?!):


CRR:


DE:


EWM:


INFY:


MMM:


RIMM:


WHR:

Crazy Train

Time for a shameless plug. My book is rolling off the press right now. You can click here to go to Amazon if you'd like to pre-order a copy. I paid my way through college writing computer books, but it's been a very long time since I've had the thrill of seeing something I've written in a book store. I hope people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


I've drawn a channel representing the NASDAQ 100 (which, in spite of a really strong general market today, is relatively weak). As you can see, we remain very much at the high end of this channel.


I've pointed out the huge divergence between the major indexes and their RSI. This holds true for $OEX as well.


Tomorrow is going to be really important. If we fall tomorrow, today may have been nothing more than a retracement. If we push higher, than we're probably looking at the umpteenth time that the bears have had a little hope injected into their system only to have it ripped away. Today's rise can be explained away. Any more rise could not - - we'd have to concede to the bulls yet again.


Capital One (COF) is still a possibility, even though it's holding up far longer than I ever expected.


John Deere (DE) remains at the high end of its channel, and it actually fell a bit today, in spite of a very strong Dow.


HealthNet (HNT) is approaching both its former high as well as the upper range of an upward-sloping trendline.


Interactive Data (IDC) has a rather toppy looking pattern and is worth a look.


Like I said, tomorrow is key. It was a very tough day for the bears today. Let's see if hope gets yanked away or is allowed to linger just a bit more.

Double Top

In honor of the late Anna Nicole Smith, we will direct our attention to another artificially-inflated bubble without much intellect behind it which no one thinks will die so young: the U.S. stock market.

The $VIX is forming a pretty decent inverted head and shoulders pattern. I've drawn the neckline here. Clearly it would be beneficial for the bears for the $VIX to push its way above this neckline, thus completing the pattern.


The S&P 500 remains beneath its broken trendline. The huge divergence between the price action and the indicator is quite intact, with today finally registering a small downturn in the market after several days of doing basically nothing.


Much the same can be said of the Dow 30.


John Deere (DE) is at the top of a sharping ascending channel.


And Cummins (CMI), mentioned here recently, has put in a possible double top.


I put Boston Properties here (BXP) not to suggest it, but merely to marvel. It's incredible - simply incredible. Much came be same for any of the components of the Real Estate group (wasn't there supposed to be a deflating bubble? Guess that's just residential....)


Bear Stearns (BSC) is finally losing a bit of its steam.


Aetna is obeying its Fibonacci retracement very nicely.


Reynolds Aluminum (RAI), also mentioned here recently, is dipping.


MTW seems to be in a series of lower highs and lower lows - often the makings of a good short position.


MTH looks like it has fully retraced to the neckline of its head and shoulder pattern.


And the same can be said of MDC.


The DJ Real Estate (IYR) equity is breathtakingly high - - which just goes to show stocks sometimes have no trouble defying their resistance lines!