November 2005 Archives

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.

It's been a good few days for me. I had my second biggest profit today since I've been daytrading and last Tuesday was my third highest day thanks to that CMED trade. Today should have been a record day but I bailed out of my shorts a little too soon as that 3:00 head fake got me. I made 14.15 R today. So on an R-Multiple basis my birthday was still much higher with a 18.59 R return that day. (I've increased my R since then. It used to be 0.33% of my equity, now it's 0.5%)

Google was the big winner for me today with a 5.8 R profit. I jumped in it once it broke under 420, thinking that would be decent resistance being a nice round number & all. Also the candle it was making at the time (10:42) provided me with a nice stop loss point at its high. I covered half the shares about 30 minutes later at 412.18 and the rest at 409.87 just before 3:00 when I fell for the okey-doke. I left an easy 6 points on the table. :-(

Here's the daily chart followed by the intraday:

Here's ISRG, which I shorted yesterday as well. Yesterday I shorted it at 113.19 and covered at 110.59 for a 5.17 R gain. Today I shorted it as it fell back from the 115 area at 11:07 AM. My entry was at 114.16 and the exit was an average of 111.71 for a 3.24 R gain.

I'd still rather play the short side but you know me -- I'll take whatever the market gives. There are a couple of price target increases that have my attention this morning. SanDisk (SNDK) got upped to a buy (from hold) at AmTech and they raised their price target to $70 from $50. Also, for the second day in a row Apple (AAPL) had a price target raised to the upper 70s -- 77 in this case, also AmTech. You know how I feel about AAPL right here so I'm much more interested in playing SNDK today given its recent slide.

I'll also be watching GOOG (and YHOO) today to see if I can snag a few points on the down side. :-o

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

We finally got another day of selling in this five week rally. One positive for the bulls is that volume was on the light side today. The Nasdaq actually looks like it could find support right in this area since it's right on its trendline. Still, for swing trades, I'd rather be a buyer once stochastic reaches oversold territory.

This following chart is the % of S&P 500 stocks that are above their 200-day moving averages. It's showing a bearish divergence with the S&P. (Although according to 'How Markets Really Work' that divergence may not be a big deal.) Brett Steenbarger notes a similar divergence in his weblog today based on the current new highs being well less than the number of new highs made in July:

Jeff wrote:

I was wondering if you could comment on AAPL. It seems to me like an evening star may be forming, but today's little advance in the face of the negative market seems encouraging.

IMHO, today's action seems like a classic last gasp as the really late buyers stepped in on the iPod-Christmas-sales-bandwagon. (Disclosure, I sold the last of my AAPL last week.) Apple did have good relative strength today but that doesn't make me a bull here. It's at the top of its trend channel and could easily pull back to 60.

One of the things I like about candlesticks is that they can reveal a different picture than just looking at the fact that the stock closed up for the day. Today's candlestick, which is between a Hanging Man and a Belt Hold, shows that there are a lot of underwater buyers today. They can quickly become overhead resistance if AAPL slips over the coming days. (Assuming those buyers were real longs and not covering shorts.) It very well could turn into an evening star-like pattern tomorrow.

I hate to sound like a broken record but I'm still of the opinion that over the intermediate-term this market is better sold than bought right here. The indices are gapping up this morning and long time readers know that I really don't trust gaps in the direction of the trend after a run like we've had. If I was still swing trading I'd certainly be using my #1 rule today.

Having said that, I do recognize that the market can keep floating higher from here, especially since it's month-end and there may be some mark-ups going on. I have some longs to watch today but I'm very ready to go short if the market does start selling off.

Potential swing trades:

Long: CKFR, DST, GENZ, ISIL

Short: SHLD, SPC, YHOO, SNDA

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I doubt if I'll do much today since it should be a relatively low volume session. There are some interesting gappers this morning though, especially those that are gapping down. (Yes, I still have my bear costume on.)

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

I've been beta testing a new free service called StockTickr for the last few weeks and am very impressed with it . For you Web 2.0 fans, think of it as a cross between del.icio.us and an 'old school' online portfolio tracker. It allows you track stocks via your own keywords so that they're easier to find. For example, I have stocks tagged with things like "WaitingForPullback" or "50DayMovingAverageBounce". Those labels allow me to easily find stocks that I might want to trade given a certain situation.

Here's a note from the stocktickr blog:

We hope that stocktickr will change the way people trade stocks by providing a way to collaborate on stock picks in a way people can trust. Message boards are littered with “pump and dump” schemes and have turned into excellent sources of completely unreliable information. stocktickr aims to put a little trust and reputation back into stock collaboration.

stocktickr is currently in working (albeit beta) form with occasional invites floating around. Watch this blog and others for invites that become available over the coming days.

In true Web 2.0 fashion the tracking/tagging portion of the service is free. There are additional features, such as a trading journal complete with expectancy calculations, that will be available to paid 'Pro' accounts. You can sign up to be notified when the service goes live on the stocktickr home page.

Convera has done well since the last time I charted it. Here's the current chart for Chris:

It's month end today so the million dollar question is do they mark 'em up or continue to snatch profits? I won't be surprised to see some mark-ups, especially late in the day but I still think there's more downside to come over the next few days. I'm looking at the 2,200 area for potential support on the Nasdaq.

Keep in mind that we get the oil inventories report at 10:30 today.

Potential swing trades:

See one of the recent 'Chart Reading' posts for some potential swing candidates.

Potential day trades:

Here are two blogs that I added to my blogroll over the last week or so:

• Trader-X, which has a ton of example trades and good trading commentary. I suggest you start with the links in his welcome post.
• Ticker Sense by Birini Associates, Inc. This blog is less than a month old but it's off to a great start.