December 2005 Archives

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too tempting for the sellers not to take advantage of. I know a lot of the headlines make today sound like a great day for the bulls but from what I saw today they have to be getting extremely frustrated with this action.

We had doji patterns made on the indices yesterday so I'm watching yesterday's highs for a confirmation of a reversal.

Oh yeah, oil inventories are released at 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

Here's a chart of Century Aluminum (CENX)

Here's Nike (NKE) which is trading pretty much right on its 50-day moving average after disappointing earnings last night:

I got the following note about SNDK:

Can you tell me what the charts say for Sandisk (SNDK). Looking to short on any rally above 59 for a move lower to 55 or lower?

I see nothing in the chart that would tell me to short SNDK at 59. In fact, since it's clearly uptrending (it's above all of its moving averages) I'd say it's a buy-on-the-dips, not a stock to be shorting. I could see trying something like that if it was bouncing between 59 and 55 repeatedly but that's not the case...

And last but not least, I was asked about SIRI:

What do you think about SIRI? I have been playing the $6.50-$7 range for months now with trade triggers (ameritrade) but it seems to have more money flow on the sell side lately...is thing ready to go lower, or is my range still in tact?

It looks to me like the range is a bit wider than 6.50 to 7.00 -- more like 6.00 to 7.50.

Heads up -- volume and volatility may be affected by the New York transit strike.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

The indices finally got some of that downside action I've been expecting. The technical damage was a lot worse on the Nasdaq than the S&P though. The Nasdaq looks like it's confirmed a triple top but the S&P is still about 10 points from completing a similar pattern.

I have to post a chart of Google after the very wild day it had today. I knew I didn't like the drifting higher on low volume that the stock did over the last week or so. Now it's looking like a potential double top.

We've got a lot of stocks gapping up this morning but the stock that's front & center on my screen is BIDU, which is gapping down. On Friday it finally broke down under that wall of support at 67.50 so I'm watching closely for an entry to short it.

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

I didn't find a whole lot worth posting as most stocks are just trapped in a trading range. I'm still of the opinion that the indices are rolling over -- if ever so slowly. I'm also still expecting an increase in volatility. Note the Bollinger Band Squeezes on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which also indicate that we should get an expansion in volatility.

(Update: I forgot to mention the volume. I wouldn't make too much of the volume increases on Friday. That was due to all the index rebalancing on Friday as well as expiration.)

In addition to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, here are charts of the Eastern Europe ETF (RNE), Nasdaq Stock Market (NDAQ), NetFlix (NFLX) and Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE):

This CHL chart is a tough read because of all the gaps. You'll often see 'gappy' charts like this when looking at stocks that trade a lot on foreign exchanges. I don't like to use candlestick analysis on these type of charts because there's so much missing information due to the overseas activity.

So on this chart what stands out to me is that the stock is in an uptrend with respect to its 50 and 200-day moving averages. If I wanted to be long, I'd look to buy near support. I see support levels at 24, 23 and 22. But since 23 and 22 are both below the 50-day moving average I, with my swing trader hat on, wouldn't touch it down there. A longer term person may still like it since it would still be above its 200-day moving average. In either time frame I'd like to see stochastic closer to oversold territory before I jumped in.

This is my last post for the year. I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from both trading and blogging -- I don't want to see a computer for a while. Regular posting should resume around the second week of January.

Once again I'll continue my tradition of not making any New Year's resolutions (sorry Michael Taylor!) although I do have some goal setting to do for 2006 (and beyond). I'm going to spend some time analyzing my trading journal to find things that I need to improve upon. One thing that I already know is that I need to trade more. (And to think that I was concerned about over-trading when I switched to daytrading.) Some of the most glaring notes in my journal are about trades that I didn't take. There are about 10 trades that I've noted that would have been huge winners that I didn't even attempt.

The other thing that's telling me I need to trade more is my expectancy. I'd like to make at least an average of 3R per day. Dividing my desired profit per day by my expectancy per trade tells me how many trades I should be averaging each day. So I either need to do a lot more trades or catch a few of those big R winners that I let pass me by this year.

I also know that I need to add some different strategies to my repertoire. There were too many choppy and/or low volatility days that kept me on the sidelines -- especially in the late summer/early autumn period. So I'll be doing some work to see if I can find some strategies to make money on those days... OK, I guess I'll shut up now before I end up writing a book here.

I really appreciate that all of you keep coming back to the site. Hopefully it'll continue to be useful in the future. I've also got some site changes to contemplate during the break, the biggest of which is a better way to do intraday updates. I think a chat room would be more effective (and easier for me!) than the current method. That would also keep me from feeling like I'm talking to myself. If anybody has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

I hope all of you have a Happy New Year! I'll "see" you all in January.

P.S. My market prediction for 2006 is the same as my 2005 prediction! :-)

P.P.S. For those of you who are new to the site take a look through the archives and/or the Subject Index. There's also a ton of material in the links archive.

(Looks like I have server issues today, I've been trying to post this for 20 minutes now...)

Another day, another Google price target increase. (yawn!)

Potential swing trades:

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

Potential day trades:

We had another one of those days with a huge rally during the first hour and that was all she wrote. Luckily I learned a long time ago to be real cautious of early huge runs like that -- especially on no news. I guess those quick gains were just too te