April 2006 Archives

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None

We had minimal follow-through on Friday's selling / weakness. My guess is that people pulled back a bit ahead of this week's flood of earnings reports. It sure felt like nobody wanted to commit to anything today.

Surprisingly, I had a rather long list of long candidates after running my scans tonight. But once I checked earnings dates on them I had to cut the list in half. The bulk of the remaining stocks are one's that have already reported, rallied and have pulled back a bit. Those type of plays will continue to be my primary targets for the next couple of weeks.

Below are charts of the Nasdaq and the S&P 500:

I think this is the heaviest week of earnings reports so I don't want to put too much weight on any technical setups. But here's a quick look at the Nasdaq and S&P charts:

Once again I'll be focused on the earnings movers for day trades as well as trying to catch some of last week's big movers as they pull back and present swing entries.

Potential swing trades:

What a coincidence (do coincidences actually exist???) that just as I've been thinking more about money management Worden has had a run of users writing in about money management. Here are some of those letters which were published in the Worden Report (emphasis & links added by yours truly):

I love the ridiculousness of CNBC's 'portfolio' challenge. They just interviewed the guy who's currently in the lead. He's up over 100% in the few weeks that the contest has been running. How did he jump into the lead? He threw his whole wad, about $1,500,000 (29,000 shares) at NTRI ahead of their earnings report. Carl Quintanilla asks him "so not the diversified approach, eh?" The response was something to the effect of "you can't win this game being diversified." I just can't imagine anybody trading like that in real life. The risk of ruin must be incredible.

Potential swing trades:

What a day! There was something for just about everybody today -- except me. The action got pretty frantic while just ahead of Bernanke's talk and continued right through mid-day. But it was a little too wild for me so I called it quits around 11:00 without making any trades. I'm usually very hesitant to enter trades after the market has had a very steep morning move. Those moves are often followed by drifting for the rest of the session. And that's exactly what happened today. Here's the intraday Nasdaq chart:

The Nasdaq Advance/Decline line also had me a little concerned. It was negative early on, turned slightly positive by mid-day but ended negative. IBD pointed out that the S&P 600, the small cap index, was down on the day. That would likely explain the weak internals:

IBD summed up today's action well:

The final tally: a 0.5% gain for the Nasdaq and 0.3% for the S&P 500. Small caps couldn't make it out of the red, though, as the S&P 600 slid 0.6%

Leading stocks' action was worse. The IBD 100 skidded 1.1%, lagging well behind the broad market indexes. That marked the fourth down day in a row for IBD's gauge of top-rated stocks.

The market has traded in up-and-down fashion in recent weeks, beholden to the news of the day.

But leading stocks have largely held their own during that time, a good sign. The recent underperformance by high-rated stocks bears watching.

So I guess on paper (and CNBC) it was a huge win for the bulls today but it felt like (more) churn to me. I think the market continues to be confused here. And I'm not seeing very many swing setups at all -- long or short. Hopefully things will clear up soon. (MSFT's post-earnings action won't help the Nasdaq much either.)

I've updated last night's post in response to some questions & comments.

It looks like good reasons to tread cautiously today (from Briefing.com):

S&P futures vs fair value: -6.8. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: -9.2.

Futures versus fair value are signaling a negative start for stocks as another batch of strong earnings reports take a back seat to more interest rate uncertainty. Investors are showing a sense of reserve following an unexpected rate hike by China's central bank which creates concerns about slower, global economic growth. Upcoming testimony by Fed Chairman Bernanke at 10:00 ET, which could shed some light on prospects for monetary policy, is also underpinning some early hesitancy on the part of buyers.

I'm looking for shorts in some of the commodities stocks that have been running like mad. Top of my list is TIE.

Potential swing trades:

I've been doing a lot of thinking about money management and compounding of late. The other day I realized that I'd accumulated over 100 R of profits since I began day trading. (1 R = my initial dollar risk on any given trade.) More specifically it's 100 R from when I started my current trading journal on June 16, 2005. I reached 100 R on March 1, 2006 after 543 trades. So it took 7 1/2 months to reach that level. The actual number of days I traded was 105, or 21 full weeks of trading. The missed 30 to 40 days were due to vacation, options expiration and a lot of days in which I just didn't like the market and/or saw no setups that I wanted to take. (I only traded 12 days in August and 10 days in September.)

It's oil inventory report day so I'll be (happily) on the sidelines until after 10:30...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: AG, APH, BGC, CSX, CTXS, EMKR, EXP, FCS, ISE, LVS, PALM, PAY, PNK, RFMD, RSAS, STP, VMC, WFR, WWW

Shorts: None

This morning I thought this would be a busy day -- boy was I wrong. (That's what I get for making a prediction!) Sellers stepped in right from the opening bell and by the time 10:15 came around (when I usually start trading) I certainly wasn't looking to go long and I didn't see any shorts that I wanted to try. Judging by the sideways action in the Naz for the rest of the day I'm glad I didn't chase anything.

Volume picked up on both the Nasdaq and S&P today but somehow the Nasdaq managed to lose only 3 points. It's trying hard to stay around those January highs. Despite the higher volume selling this dip is well within the indices' uptrends. Things could get interesting if they drop a little more and test the multiple levels of support that are nearby.

Charts are below...

There are lots of movers this morning thanks to earnings reports. This is going to be one of those days when I wish I had a couple of more monitors to track everything. Should be a fun one today...

Potential swing trades:

Longs: ADSK, AG, ARW, CMC, CSX, CTXS, CY, CYMI, DGX, FCX, GLG, LVS, PALM, PAY, RFMD, RSAS, STP, SWFT, SWN, TXN, WFR

Shorts: None