Learning to Crawl

Today's post will be short, everyone. I had a pretty good day, actually, but looking at the charts, there is frankly not a heck of a lot to say. Some days are just like that.

The rise on the Dow today was actually kind to my portfolio - - it went up some, in spite of its bearish stance. But the hammer pattern shown in the Russell 2000 is a little worrisome. We're not exactly at the bottom of some gigantic slide, so this single candlestick isn't anything horrendous in terms of a turning point, but all the same, a hammer is a hammer, and we need to be extra cautious. For myself, I trimmed my $RUT puts pretty substantially near the bottom earlier today.


The stock PSB continues to shape up as a potentially great head and shoulders short. Speaking of which, AMR (not shown here) continues to behave very well for the same reasons.


One stock which has broken its major ascending trendline is BankRate (symbol RATE). Even though it's bounced above the line again, I consider the line broken and therefore am short this stock.


This is a fairly quiet week on the economic announcements scene, and the real excitement of earnings season is over (with the likes of Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc. behind us). So there aren't a lot of fireworks right now, and in many ways stocks seem to be stuck at a more or less equilibrium stage right now. As always, well-placed stops are the most crucial thing to have in place, should the market regain its strength in a big way and start to push higher still.