Trader Mike

After I covered all of my shorts today I was convinced that I should take tomorrow off and not press my luck. That’s because so many stocks seem oversold after all this week’s selling. I was also seeing things like the QQQQ breaking its July low, the SOX breaking to a new 5+ [...]

Here are some of the better looking swing trade setups I found going through my scans last night. They all happen to be shorts this time. My entry & exit rules are the same as always.
Note: Whenever I post swing trade candidates I always get asked if I’ve gone [...]

As I see it today was nothing but a battle over control of the 200-day moving averages on the indices. The S&P 500 and Dow popped over their 200s early in the session and were cruising along until selling kicked in just before 2:00. By the close only the Dow remained above its [...]

Things are looking good for the bulls this morning. Intel had a good earnings report last night and this morning’s CPI seems to be a non-factor.

On Today’s Calendar:

10:30 — Crude Inventories
2:00 — Fed’s Beige Book

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic
Potential swing trades:
It’s hard to find many stocks [...]

We’ve got some strength this morning thanks to folks taking the news of even more write-offs in the financial sector as a bullish sign. Go figure…
On Today’s Calendar:

10:00 — Construction Spending
10:00 — ISM Index

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic
Potential swing trades:
Here are a few charts that caught [...]

Note: I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning so there won’t be a watchlist tomorrow. Look for post-Fed charts tomorrow evening.
Given how much angst there was over the Bear Stearns fallout I think the bulls have to be happy with how little damage was done to the indices today. The S&P [...]

Skittish. Confused. Insane. One or maybe all of those words describes the current market environment. For days now we’ve had mini-rallies sparked by some seemingly good news which have been met hours later with selling based on seemingly horrible news. That cycle repeated again on Friday when, at about [...]

The ISM Services report really threw the market for a loop today. When services make up some 90% of the economy you really don’t want to see weakness there. What we saw today was simply recession fears:

Signs of a recession. Both the 41.9 business activity reading and the 44.6 summary number represent the [...]

There’s not much to say right now. We’ve just got to wait & see how the market reacts to the Fed decision this afternoon.

On Today’s Calendar:

2:15 — FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic
Potential swing trades:
See one of the recent ‘Chart Reading‘ posts for [...]

Here we go again. The futures are getting clocked thanks to Apple and another round of rumors & worries about bank write-offs. I figured yesterday’s lows would have to get retested but I didn’t think it would be this quick. There’s no gap fade in my plans today. Maybe I’ll [...]