August 2004 Archives

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float higher during the day as oil kept falling. Now it's almost like the early August drop never happened -- the S&P 500 and Dow are now up slightly for the month of August, while the NASDAQ is still down about 1.4%. The Dow is actually looking the strongest to me since it has taken out its early August high, which gives it the first higher high, on a closing basis, since June. Also of note is that the Dow closed above its 50-day moving average and the S&P 500 closed just a hair (less than 0.25 points) under its 50 DMA.

Briefing.com posted some thoughts on the current market action that are worth considering:

Floor Talk II

In talking with some of our institutional contacts, the feeling is that the high beta sectors are finding interest here based on magnitude of decline. Desks also paying attention to the cash building up the sidelines, and think market will be propelled by short-covering as money is put to work. The key question is when exactly accounts will come back into the market. Some suggest that we won't see any real sponsorship until after Sept 11th anniversary. At this point, portfolio managers will be looking to move from an underinvested position with hopes of participating in the traditionally strong back half of the year.

It's that 'the buyers are higher' theory again.

Currently holding:

Today was another basically flat day, especially on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, so my view hasn't changed at all. We've still got all the indices trying to get through their long term group of Multiple Moving Averages (MMAs) while in overbought territory. The bulls have to be happy that the market is hanging tough though. Perhaps we'll get some news soon to move the market one way or the other. Here's what the NASDAQ looks like with its MMAs:

It sure seemed like the market was going to collapse under its own weight this morning but buyers stepped up around 2:00 to push the indices back into the green. Volume picked up on the upswing, so the bulls should be happy about that. According to Briefing.com the buying was due to "short-covering, buying ahead of index changes". Whatever the reason it was a pretty dramatic change of direction. Today's action seems like a good start of another leg higher. I imagine quite a few bears got trapped today... let's see if we get any follow-through.

I just realized that some time yesterday I crossed the 50,000 visits (as defined by SiteMeter.com) threshold on this site. When I started this blogging back in April 2003 I never imagined I'd have as much traffic as I get now. Currently I'm averaging 300 visits per day and 660 page views per day. It wasn't long ago that I was averaging well under 100 visits. At least now I'm at the point where the ads are covering my hosting costs plus enough extra to buy some trinkets.

I'd love to get my average up to 1,000 per day by the end of the year. That sounds ambitious but I figure if some bloggers are getting 100,000 to 200,000 per day, like InstaPundit, I should be able to get 1% of that. Although I have to say that I've been surprised at the lack of interest in the stock market by the general population. (Feel free to help me out by spreading the word to any people you know that are interested in the markets.) Here's a graph of my monthly visits since May, unfortunately the server that my counter was on crashed in April so you won't be able to see the growth for the full 12 months:

Too bad I don't own any stocks with charts like that!

Thanks to all of you who have this site bookmarked, on your blogroll, on your MyYahoo! page, in your newsreader, etc. Here's to another 50,000 hits.

P.S. I am gonna finish my Trading 101 series in the next few months.

P.P.S. I'm always open to your feedback on how I can improve the site.

P.P.P.S. I'm gonna upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 some time in the next couple of weeks and hopefully do a redesign shortly thereafter. I've had this theme too long and it's time for something new.

Another low volume affair yesterday. The selling has created stochastic sell signals on the major indices on my charts. It's tough for me to get motivated to do much given the low volume, so I continue to just sit on my current positions.

Currently holding:

Once again my list is dominated by shorts...

Currently holding:

The indices moved very little the last couple of trading days, on low volume, so my outlook is still pretty much the same as it was in the middle of last week. The S&P 500 is acting like it wants to go tag its upper Bollinger Band and that could happen pretty quickly. But I still have to defer to MMAs first, which still show the short-term group of averages trying to push through a wall of resistance defined by the long-term group.

As for individual stocks, I'm still finding more potential shorts than longs, but I'm also seeing a lot of strong upward moves, that I'd like to jump on after a consolidation (AAPL is a good example of that). I probably won't do much trading this week though for a few reasons, not the least of which is the light volume that I expect due to all the end of summer vacations. I'll still be here watching, and running my scans, but unless I see something really compelling I'll just be waiting for stops on my current positions to be hit.

Yesterday was another one of those sleepy, low volume affairs. It's way too quiet for me -- I don't want to put out more shorts into this dullness, and I don't see many longs that fit my style -- so I'm taking the day off. Besides, there's basketball to watch. :-)

I'll post some charts over the weekend.

I've been trying to get through my scans this morning but I can't seem to pull myself away from the U.S. vs. Spain Olympic basketball game for long enough to get much done. I'll post the gappers sometime around 9:00 but the swing trades may have to stay as TBD today.

Luckily my shorts didn't move much yesterday, so I'm still holding all of them. A couple of my stops are real close to being hit though.

Here's an interesting note on Google:

08:55 GOOG Google started with Sell rating, $76 tgt at Janco Partners (106.00 )

Janco notes strong fundamentals and favorable market trends, no near-term downside catalysts, but says valuation is too high, based on its discounted cash flow analysis. Firm notes Google needs to diversify rev. base beyond paid search (98% of revs in 1H) and become more of a portal, says any deceleration in paid search would immediately show in GOOG's performance.

And so it begins...

For those of you who read MaoXian, he's now providing an Atom feed at http://www.maoxian.com/atom.xml

Currently holding:

Obviously the "short stocks/long oil" trade continued to unwind today. The market just seemed to float hi