Some Day This War's Gonna End

It was a good day today. At first, I was distressed to see the Dow blasting higher, well past the 13,600 mark. It was up nearly 100 points. But I noticed something. Looking at the $RUT and the $SPX, they were not at new highs. In fact, it looked like the Dow's strength was just pushing them into making a right shoulder on an intraday head and shoulders pattern. So I bought more puts.

That was the right move. The Dow went limp, soft, and squishy, and we enjoy a nearly 200 point intraday turnaround. Every single position of mine was way in the green.

Oh, please remember to sign up for MyBlogLog, which now has nearly 100 members! It's free, and it's a fun way to see the other folks that have made the trip to The Slope of Hope.

Now, I am maintaining my cautious and newly humble disposition, so I will say, in the face of today's fall, that we must exercise caution. Just look at all the recent falls in the past few months. Every single one of them was just a blip - a momentary pause - before the market shot higher still. So a grudging respect for the bulls is in order.


I mentioned Bunge Ltd (BG), and it is doing beautiful. The perfect presentation of lower highs and lower lows.


I mentioned yesterday that housing stocks had pushed up to their necklines, and I was going heavily short to enjoy the hoped-for fall. It did just that. It's nice when patterns behave as they should. Here's Essex (ESS) as just one example.


InfoSys (INFY) at long last cracked beneath its neckline. Now we can get serious about making some cash on this one.


PSB also enjoyed the aforementioned housing H&S fall.


Vornado (VNO), suggested by a reader here last week, is another honey.


Whirlpool (WHR - has that for a boring company?) is flipping direction too. Good.


And now, your thought for the day.

Sheer Energy

Another record. This is getting really monotonous.

One index that hasn't actually reached a new record, but is within a hair's breadth of it, is the S&P 500. It peaked back in January of 2000, and if Monday is up at all, it will almost certainly reach a new record closing high (and I don't need to tell you the financial media will make a huge stink about it).


The $VIX remains very, very low, indicating widespread complacency. You can see how the VIX deteriorated from 2003 through 2005 and has remained low ever since. There was a time when the normal VIX range was between 20 and 50 or so. These days, it's lucky to even stay in the teens.


Real estate has been getting hit, in spite of the market's overall strength. I've got a number of real estate shorts, one of them being AIV.


Akamai (AKAM), which I am short, went up some today, but I am still comfortable that this pattern is safely beneath its neckline.


One days like this, if you see major stocks with weakness, that's usually a very bearish sign. The CME is a good example.


InfoSys (INFY) is an even better example, since its pattern is more clearcut.


The thirty stocks which comprise the Dow 30 Industrials have obviously been very strong, by and large. MMM is no exception, although it seems awfully lofty right now, and it is sporting an impressive shooting star with today's action.


Energy has been incredibly strong. I've mentioned some oil service stocks here recently as good bullish plays. But even looking at the general OIH stock, which represents an amalgam of oil service securities, you can witness the terrific strength lately.


PSB is an other short of mine that has been enjoying the real estate tumble.


Finally, VNO is another participant in the real estate slump, and it features a really nicely-defined head and shoulders pattern.