Do not consider any content of this site to be advice in any
way. Put another way, you don't pay for access to this
website. If you
construe anything you read here as advice then remember it is worth
every penny you paid us for it, and we consider that to be the extent
of our liability for your own bad decisions. You
are expected to make your own decisions for your own reasons, and to
take complete responsibility for your own actions. All
investments involve risk, all investment strategies will involve
loss. If you cannot accept losses and cannot tolerate the risks,
then try something else... Sky Diving?
We don't give advice. We share opinions, outlooks, and
plans. We will frequently share what we are thinking and doing in
terms of our current investments, plans for investments, and outlook
for investing. This is just documenting our own opinions for our
own purposes; if you find it useful then great, just remember that
whomever makes investing orders for you is the one responsible for the
orders entered and executed and the resulting gains and losses.
Our perspective and opinions may not be appropriate for you.
We may not reveal all the details of a technical strategy. We
may only refer to some strategies by name, even code name. This
is to protect intellectual property. We share what we are doing,
but will not share the details of a strategy without the permission of
the owner of the intellectual property. We share more details
with friends and associates, their ideas are valuable. We will
share that we are doing
something, but are not
obligated to explain how it
works. Since we may not be sharing all the details you need to
duplicate what we describe, attempts to copy what we are doing will
certainly underperform, and probably involve loss.
We have been learning a systematic approach to managing our investments. Originally introduced to us through Business Week, we are learning from Investools and some other sites. We will share here what we are doing, and what is working for us.
Why are we sharing this? Because there is nothing here you cannot find as easily as us, on your own, and much much more. Nothing here can produce a significant influence on the market. There are some technical strategies and methods we may share only in basic description, perhaps only by a name. This is to protect intellectual property, either our own or that of associates we are exchanging investment ideas with. In small and illiquid markets certain strategies can easily be manipulated. People are protective of their ideas and we simply will not share any ideas here without permission.
This is not investment advice, it is testimonial, and
documentation. If it
provides insights you find useful, you are welcome to them. There
are as many different approaches to investing as there are people
investing in the market. Investools does not prescribe a
particular approach, they provide a foundation of knowledge and tools,
and the advice of instructors and coaches to help you determine rules
that suit your own tolerance for risk.
The tools we are using beyond the Investors Toolbox at Investools
are the Think or Swim desktop
platform. This trading platform provides Think Back allowing one
to get stock and option pricing for years past, and not just closing
prices - the tool allows you to determine the theoretical price of
options based on the market at that time. The platform also has a
powerful trade analysis tool, allowing you to visualize the sensitivity
of a position to price movement, and to add simulated trades to adjust
the position. Once the adjustment is determined then orders can
be created and executed.
We use additional sources of information to guide our expectations
of the market environment, some ($)
are subscription fee sites:
Comments are in chronological order, most recent at the top.
7/7
I removed the market posture section. I'm just not updating
this page enough to maintain such information with any meaning at all.
We will need to refine the Vertical
Credit Spread strategy. Some of the technical studies are
used for screening more than for trading decisions, and should be
referenced differently.
We are also starting into a project to define our complete trading system.
This includes technical studies and procedures to determine trend, and
then select an appropriate strategy for the conditions found, then
provide rules to employ that strategy.
4/3
Sorry I haven't bothered to update this much recently. There
have been changes.
We stopped our subscription to Bob Brinker's Market Timer. Historically he has
been pretty good at identifying market bases, fair
at market tops. He did kind of miss the 2007/8 crash, 'nuff
said... We replaced his once a month newsletter with the John
Murphy Market Message at Stock Charts
and you may note Bob was at the bottom of the list above, while Murphy
is near the top.
We pulled Evil Speculator
because he went subscription for the Zero Indicator. We don't
want to become dependent on some technical study which does not have a
published formula.
About a month ago we started using the Investools Coaching
again. I would have to guess that the lawyers explained exactly
what the word advice means in a legal sense related to investment - in
my own words advice translates
to you should take this trade.
A couple years ago we could not get coaches to help analyze trades or
strategies because, they said, it would be advice. Now that is no
issue - call them with a question, a strategy, or an exercise you need
help to work through, and they will. They are now dedicated to
helping you understand how to make good investing decisions, how to
formulate your own rules, and how to adhere to them.
As part of this we have completed a backtest study of a Vertical Credit Spread
strategy. The exercise had us estimate the results of over 200
trades over 5 years, we refined the rules, set up a protocol for
running the tests, revised some aspects of the rules as we found
issues, analyzed some of the worst of the losing trades and corrected
some errors. The corrected results yield a system where 45% of
the trades executed without any adjustment, and only 20% losing trades
with an overall average return of over 11% per trade where the average
trade lasts under 38 days with an annualized return on risk of almost
112% which SHOULD be interesting to just about anyone!
One of the things that came out of this is an expectation for the
performance of a strategy. This allows us to evaluate our real or
paper trades periodically and decide if it works with the current
market. If our results degrade over time we will be able to
detect this and adjust the strategy in some way, or take it out of play
for a while. Technically the market is still trading in a range,
so
verticle spreads are a good strategy.
We have positions in several sector ETFs now, filling up our 8 IRA
etf slots, but that leaves us only about 50% committed in the
market. We are waiting for a break above the January lows, or a
retracement of the recent run, before committing more funds to bullish
trades.
Unrest from the masses is making the congress jittery. Rabble Populism is
leading to legislation which completely defeats the funding programs to
try and save the credit system. My personal belief is that most
people have never been in a position where nobody else may be able to
unwind their work without doing serious damage. Few people have
been in jobs they were about to leave and have management ask them to
stay long enough to wrap things up. Very few have ever taken a
job for practically no salary and their pay is virtually all
performance pay. In short, I don't think most americans are
qualified to judge many of the bonuses paid to retain people over the
last few months. This is a separate issue from executive
compensation - boards need balls - and that is about as likely to
happen as congressional reform. I don't understand how people who
tip 10-15% for food service that is passable can balk at 0.1% being
paid to a few of the people who actually generated revenue to stay in
their offices long enough to wrap things up in an orderly manner.
This march of the torches and pitchforks over $165M could now cost over
$300B - now THAT is how America saves.
2/10 - When I updated this I should have pointed out the Trades Page
is not updated yet, I'm working on how to present the information...
After listening to the banker testimony in 'DC today I understand
why those who fail at productive contribution to society govern...
The most absurd question today: How can you have the gall
charge fees to loan money given to you by the taxpayer? - Maybe
because there are costs to loaning any money, they do actually pay the
people doing the foot work, they need to hedge against the loan, these
are legitimate business expenses.
Another question was what were they paid in 2007; responses were
around the same salaries as 2008 (typical $600K-$1M) plus bonuses in
stock, options, and cash, most noted that the stock is substantially
reduced and the options are generally worthless. Then the
questioner made a snyde remark that this might explain the myre we're
in to some extent. - They all just told you their compensation
from the year 2007 was significantly cut or effectively eliminated in
2008 and you think that explains why they plotted to destroy their 2007
bonuses?
1/9 - Swing and a Miss. The president spent 2 years running a
nearly flawless team which rarely sinned (the archery term) more than a
little. Geithner at least shot in the general direction of the
target, but delivered nothing of value. The volume on the
sell-off was above average, but VIX did not seem to move in proportion
- we are generally at the trend line...
2/8 - In September those who govern failed to pass legislation to
back up the banking system, the DJIA was down 777 points following the
vote. When the legislation was finally passed there was a brief
rally, but then realization of the depth of the crisis was rising to
the surface - consider how far the market would have fallen if there
was no TRAP trap? That was an emergency funding to help stabilize
the credit market. Now we await 2 equally vital bits of
legislation. One is intended to stimulate the economy by creating
jobs and modifying our national infrastructure; the other is intended
to free the banking system of the bad debt created by creative
financing.
We are still free market capitalists; we strongly dislike government
involvement in the markets. We are fiscal conservatives; we
strongly dislike big government spending. Nonetheless,
unregulated banking practices with witless and spineless directors who
either did not understand risk, or just couldn't say no, created a
problem that the free market can only resolve with bankruptcy.
Government banking has a chance to get us over the hump, provided the
credit practices that got us here are reformed. We suggest
supporting the idea that shareholders take back their companies,
explore United
Shareholders of America even if you don't sign up... Goldman
Sachs has the right idea - lets get out from under the TARP as soon as
we can, so does Bank of America, JP Morgan, well, everyone who has a
chance... The rest will recover or go bankrupt.
Remember that what is really worthless on their books is the mark to
market accounting. Nobody knows how to manage a CDO, so they are
being marketed by the desperate at pennies on the dollar, so everyone
has to mark down their mortgage portfolio like the desperately
bankrupt. This is actually absurd. It is true people who
cannot afford their mortgages were granted debt they cannot repay, but
like a bad trade their debt can be adjusted and most can be made
profitable if held to maturity. Backing primary mortgages helps
protect a basic concept of the American dream, and will boost
confidence and morale. Not backing speculators on their flipping
schemes which imploded is also the American way - they deserve their
bankruptcy as much as the bankers who gave them credit... Most
primary mortgages will ultimately be repaid.
As to the infrastructure. Only the government could have built
the Interstate Highway System, and look what it has done for our nation
and economy. That system needs repair and upgrades, this will
provide jobs in the short term while the economy recovers. We
also need to transition our energy infrastructure, and sadly only the
government can provide the guidance to make that happen. Creating
a new energy infrastructure will take decades and provide new and
different jobs and an entirely new economy. This will ultimately
be a fantastically profitable investment in our culture and our future.
Unfortunately, though, we are gravely concerned at the inefficiency
of government. The chances of the right things being done are
reduced and the cost of getting there will be greatly inflated.
The lesser Bush often said that he didn't see it as the role of a
president to be a leader (to tell people what to do). In fact the
role of government is to lead, by taxes and credits, funding where it
can work, and generally rewarding the kind of decisions that adjust our
course into the future.
Extending that metaphor, we have run aground. The tide has
lifted us into the currents, but damage is being assessed and extensive
overhaul is needed. This will take time, but there is not an end
to prosperity. There is not an end to greed, either. We
need to prevent what happened, but there will be another bubble and
another crisis, another recession and it, too, will seem like the end
of the world.
1/31 - Something to notice. In August and September you saw
rallies with
ever weakening volume which ultimately lead to the fall off in October
with relentless selling in unheard of volume. In January you may
have noticed buying volume beginning to increase while selling is
weaker and weaker. If you look at Friday 1/30 on 15-minute bars
you will see the lsat 3 bars on SPY were strong buying, 50 million
shares bought into the close on the last Friday of the worst January in
market history. The longer the market holds a narrow range the
more violently it will move when it finally breaks out - the only
question is direction, but we have already had a 50% drop without a
significant bounce so probability for this break is up. The low
to mid 800's in S&P seem to be a low-risk entry point - buy now
with a close stop below the November lows, and hang on...
1/28 - Are chart patterns broken? The Pattern Site has an article in
the Blog discussing a long term study of the effectiveness of chart
patterns. It suggests that patterns are not as reliable for
setting target prices anymore. As an engineer with a passing
interest in quantum mechanics I remind you there is a principle that if
you observe a thing then you affect a thing. A little bit of
chaos works here, too: Millions of people making decisions for
varied reasons... Chart patterns exist in a vacuum - that is to say
they existed before anybody knew about them. They are the natural
result of investor decisions causing support and resistance in the
market. With more and more people using these signals, and their
own interpretations, it would change the attractors (chaos) in the
system. People will set targets based on interpretation of the
patterns. Some will deliperately set a lower target to improve
the chances of reaching their more conservative target, more people
learn this trick and use it, thus changing the price point at which the
system, as a whole, changes its mood and affecting the system in a
minor way.
1/25 - Once again, taking our small losses around S&P 880 would
be feeling much better right now, that is what the rules are for.
If you're getting shredded in this, don't feel bad.
The rules are there for a reason,
sometimes the market changes and our rules need optimization, but
abandoning them has always been a bad idea. We will have problems
as
long as we don't have the discipline to follow them.
I'm taking Retracement Levels
off the list of useful websites. They have gone PAY TO
PLAY. I look at the list of people I have learned from, and whose
websites are listed above.
Certainly Ivestools charges for access and for classes, they charge
quite a bit, actually. They also provide access to a list of
outstanding mentors, coaching, and an outstanding database searchable
for a variety of criteria more flexible than I have seen anywhere
else. That one I'll pay for as we still benefit from the access.
Investors Business Daily is also a subscription. Not nearly as
pricey as Investools, and not as directly helpful, but if you're a
do-it-yourselfer they've got a lot that is useful. Consider that
as much as we are paying for Investools, we are still subscribing to
IBD.
Market Timer is also a subscription. I question its value more
and more for my own needs. Before everything we learned in the
last few years it was invaluable. Bob's advice has always been
sound and reliable for his target audience. His target audience
is not people as driven as we are to learn how to manage our
investments on our own. His target audience doesn't know the
difference between a trade and a day trade. His opening for the
show on October 11, 2008, said he could not
possibly have forseen the global collapse of the financial system.
Ignoring that for a moment, his model of the market was proven last
year to not actually include the price performance of the market
itself. It also does not seem to include the Credit Market, which
was the rotten core we all bit into last year. These last three
are real heavy shots against the cost of the subscription.
All the others are all free. The people running them make
money from trading, not selling help. They share their thoughts
and knowledge freely, as we do. There is more money in the
trading than in the selling of the knowledge. Unless someone is
exceptional as a collector and distributor of information and
knowledge, it's probably not worth paying them for their investment
advice.
Retracement Levels provides an educated guess as to where the market
is likely to reverse in the short term. I'm not sure it is worth
about a dollar a day to access statistical data which amounts to an
educated guess that if the market has already run 'this far' then it is
likely to reverse 'around here' when this is reasonably clear in the
absence of precisely computed numbers. It's information we don't
feel we need now...
1/23 - Sold Put Credit Spread on IWM today, we'll buy calls around
46... Until then we'll stop out of the new trades below recent
lows.
The credit spreads we have entered are very near the money at
current prices. Our stop orders are based on having made a new
stock buy around these prices. We'll add new long calls trades
when the market breaks above recent highs.
1/22 - Not buying new directional positions yet, but we sold Put
Credit Spread on XME today, we'll buy Calls around 28... Until
then we'll stop out below recent lows.
1/21 - This is why we chose to ride it out. Getting out
yesterday would have truly been a huge mistake. I don't think
things have really bounced yet, but I think I'm right about this being
a place to buy rather than to sell, therefore holding is still the best
course.
That said, there are 2 things we could have done to avoid the bad
buys in the last couple weeks. First is having orders frozen
until after the first hour or so of trading. Second is using 2%
as the trigger instead of the limit. Either of these adjustments
would have prevented the positions we are in now.
1/20 - We undercut the 1/15 low in the major indices today.
I've been trying to decide when to take our losses and re-enter
later. Speaking mainly of $SPX now, we closed right around the
bottom of the trading range for, well, the last 8 years...
Recently only Nov 20/21 were below that, Nov 20 was down all day, Nov
21 was up all day, right back to here. If I was not in long
positions now, I would be entering long positions now. If we exit
trades now, one solid up day and we lock in half our losses before we
can act. If we exit below here and above 740 we'll almost
certainly lock in losses and buy back in at a higher price. The
only conclusion I keep coming back to is that it would be stupid to
sell now, or anywhere above 730 or so. So once again, taking our
stop at 880 would have been a pretty good idea.
1/16 - A couple more long positions triggered this morning around
market open, then things started to get painful. The close was
higher than yesterday, but the long shadows are encouraging.
One thing I've been looking at, we should have sold calls on
everything we could have at the confirmation of the first bearish
candles. Even stuck where we are, the short calls on everything
would have provided a few thousand in compensation for the frustration.
1/9 - A couple more long positions tripped this morning at market
open (1% above the high of yesterday). More than half way to the
end-of-year lows, and not sure we'll be nimble enough to get in before
the markets are back above these prices, we are going to ride it out,
but it's going to be uncomfortable...
1/8 - It looks like there is some support here, we took a couple
long positions across the IRA's today near close.
1/7 - Thinking about taking profits over the last couple days as
things slowed down, today everything stopped out in the first minutes
after market open. At first this was frustrating, but it became
clear this was probably a good thing.
2008
12/28 - I've described how we retooled, and the rules we are using
now, but not what our posture is on the market. There are few
clear strong technical signals, but here is our posture:
We think that even with weak trading there is a clear support level
around 860 on the S&P 500, failing that then around 845. Use
the calculators at Retracement Levels to show this for yourself.
We expect a rally in the next few weeks to around 1000 on the
S&P. We expect that rally to roll over and re-test the Oct or
Nov lows before a strong rally can happen.
We have been reading all sorts of doomsday end of the world
predictions by the Elliot Wavists (EWs), and will be able to profit
from these if they play out, but we have observed that with EWs the
pattern is doctrine, and reality must be bent in order to make it fit
the prediction. These are the same people who predicted DOW 30000
and are now predicting S&P 200... EWs are always adjusting
their position on the holy model to figure out where the market is
right now - Our take here is that if you can't figure out where you are
right now, how can you credibly claim to predict the future?
My personal prediction is that the last blood to be mopped off the
street is that of the EWs (once again) as the market bounces in March
around 750 again and never looks back as EWs scramble to cover their
shorts on S&P Futures or bleed to death in denial.
We have taken on some long positions on DIA and IWM with S&P
around 865. We will stop out of these below 860, and we will add to
them around S&P 880, with a target around 995 where we will exit
part of those trades. The rest we will hold for signs of
weakness, and then enter short positions as it turns over...
Our long positions consist of a bull-put spread used to fund
purchase of long calls. This improves Delta and reduces Theta as
well as offsetting losses as volatility bleeds away in the rally.
As the rally falters we will use bear call spreads to finance long put
options - the same strategy flipped over. In these trades there
is part of the trade that resembles a synthetic long (or short).
The short option of that trade offsets Theta and Vega of the long
option. Exit of this stragety can be simply selling out, or you
can take profits from the long option and allow the short option to
expire provided the price holds - cover the short option on
weakness. The other long option, used in the vertical spread, can
be sold if it has any value, or held as a lottery ticket if the stock
rolls over.
We have a couple long call trades, too. Bought during
hesitation after a breakout we sold covered calls against it, as the
price reversed we bought a long put - this resulted in neutralizing
delta almost completely. Both of these trades bounced, so we sold
the put for a loss, and rolled down the long call to a better strike
price. We made money on the covered calls, but closed some of
those to allow more directional profit now that it seems the stocks
will bounce.
12/27 - On Friday I described the basics of the new trading rules
using breakouts on 15-minute candles. To avoid the critical
number of day-trade round trips we also trade only a couple major
market ETF's (actually proshares ultra funds). We also are
looking to the SPYDER sector funds and simple major market ETF's for
less volatility; we have observed large price swings in the proshares
funds in the after and before market periods - swings enough to trigger
stops when the market opens.
The short and ultra short funds were hit by a huge distribution on
12/23. In the morning this looked like a huge overnight price
drop, and the loss in value resulted in margin calls for many people
extended into margin. The dividend was 20% or more on most funds,
so the charts appeared to show the security was down 20% or more on
opening.
We have also been trading complex option strategies for income,
selling time, volatility, and fear, mostly with diagonal and calendar
spreads. I'll be updating the Rules and Strategies pages this
week, and explain more there. It is very nice in this market to
have a number of trades which do not feel like they require
minute-to-minute monitoring.
We have a couple directional trades, too, but we are offsetting them
by selling options against part of the position. This reduces
time decay at the cost of smaller gains if the stock moves strongly.
12/26 - We haven't been updating the blog here much. I thought
about it, but never got around to it...
We have re-tooled a few times this year, changing our tools and
rules, and developing strategies for literally any market conditions.
When we ignored our rules we had trades blow up, too many, well 4,
and none was more than a couple percent of the portfolio, but it really
burns to have a trade go bad because you loosten your rules and then it
runs beyond your tolerance of pain.
We formulated our current rules in July, and were paper trading the
bearish side for the crash. This worked quite well, so we started
a few trades with real money, which were choppy and ultimately not
profitable. The volatility from October through December made
trading day candles difficult.
Most of our losses for the last 14 months were from the first week
of December. On December 1 we entered a number of synthetic short
trades - having LEAP options for some major indices we sold a covered
call and bought a put for the short term. Using the day candle
rules we had retooled, these entered late in the day, and over the next
couple days exited for losses. We re-entered bearish trades on
December 5, which reversed strongly. Avoiding a large number of
day trades, we compensated by buying more trades that were long on the
market, and the rally stalled, then failed, so we ended up losing on
the bearish trades and even on the bullish trades.
This was the point were we retooled yet again. This was not a
complete refit, but we discovered that if we used the same basic rules
on 15-minute candles we had few day trades, and much more profitable
trades. Instead of trading bounces on day candles, we trade
breakouts on 15-minute candles. Also, directional option trades
are not as profitable over very short swings with the often wide
bid-ask spreads.
To explain this, let's look at the November 21 Low and subsequent
rally. In context, remember that NOV 14-21 are the last
significant downswing, breaking the October 10 Low. We are
looking for a place to exit short trades and enter long trades, the
last 3 opportunities are indicated below. Around the middle to
2/3 point in the day we look at the price action so far and decide if
and how to adjust:
Below is the week of 12/1 - where we lost most of our money by
entering short trades too late on 12/1, and entering short trades on
12/5...
Using our new formula, we exit long and go short as the market
opens, but the trades are tight...
2/2 - The S&P 500 plunged to just under 1275, an important
Fibonacci retracement level, and has already climbed back to almost
1400, another very important resistance level now. Our
expectation is for the S&P 500 to slow and not meaningfully exceed
1420, though it can go as high as 1450 and be within its downtrending
channel. If the S&P 500 closes above 1425 it is a strong
argument for expectation of a continued uptrend and above 1470 is
probably time to get bullish again.
Still, our current plan is to enter a few bearish positions as the
market rolls over, with a target just below the S&P 500 level of
1300. Different indices will move at somewhat different rates, but
usually in about the same direction, but look at the smaller end of the
market in comparison to the DJIA or Technology. Small and Mid cap
companies are rallying more than the large companies and this is an
indication worth making note of. It is a reason to diversify,
even among major market investments; it allows one to focus more on
baskets of companies where there is greater market strength.
At the moment, though, in terms of looking for single stocks we see
more upward potential just now than downward - though many of those
could be setting up for a resistance bounce in the next few days.
Either way we won't put much money in until the market takes a
direction.
Last week we attempted to enter a short counter-trend trade to take
advantage of the response to the FED announcement. Once we saw a
rally we entered trades with SSO and QLD, but leveraged ETFs.
News following the FED turned the market around quickly, a sign of the
increased volatility. Rather than panic and exit the trade
immediately we waited for the next day, allowing us to exit the trade
at a point just better than breakeven. We only expected that
trade to go for a few days, but the speed of the markets moves was more
than we want to tolerate with stock investments. We plan to use
option strategies, for the time being leaving our retirement
investments in cash, with small total risk and relatively high
potential gains until the market is more stable.
Considering the possibility that certain stocks may resume their
trends we have entered trades with call options giving ourselves to
decide in March whether or not to buy those stocks at todays
prices... We are buying additional contracts allowing the chance
to reduce the cost of the trade by selling the extra contracts.
For example with POT we bought 2 call option contracts expiring in
March with a $105 strike; within just a couple days the stock had run
back up to its previous channel and we sold the extra contract for
roughly 120% net profit. The remaining option could expire
worthless and we already have a profit on the total trade, in March we
expect POT to be at least $140 and will be able to buy it at an
effective price of around $101 (accounting for the profit from the
trade to date). MOS and MON are stocks we have entered similar
trades with and are also agriculture related. AAPL is a more
risky trade since it may not resume its momentum of the economy is
actually in recession.
1/20 - It has been a few weeks since we updated the website.
We've tried entering a few positions, but have now stopped out of just
about everything. We have been watching the S&P 500, and the
markets in general, form lower lows and lower highs. The decline
has become more widespread, POT lost over 20% of its value in the 3
days following our buy-in when event he stocks related to agriculture
and energy saw a strong sell-off.
As of Friday the S&P 500 seems to have found support at 1325,
this is from the highs in May of 2006, and is probably weak.
Still, the index has dropped so quickly in a few days that a bounce is
likely. The bounce will probably raise the index over a few days
to a couple weeks to around 1400 and then the next level of support
below this is around 1240. The 1240 level is a much stronger
support level from late Summer/Fall 2005 and Spring/Summer 2006.
Using a high of 1565, 1325 is 15% below the high, and 1240 is about 20%
off the high, both in the range defining a major market
correction. Below 1240 are potential support around 1150, 1080,
950, and the 2002/2003 lows around 800.
The ETF securities that trade around the major markets are probably
the best way to safely navigate this more volatile market. The
small cap stocks (Russel 2000) have been hardest hit in this decline,
but may remain weak if the economy is weakened. Technology has
been strong lately, but has also come down quickly in this
decline. We will be using funds on our ETF
Quick Reference to take positions across the whole market over the
next few weeks, not so many single stocks: DDM, SSO, QLD, UWM on
the up swings if possible, and DXD, SDS, QID, TWM on the down swings as
long as the down trend continues... Remember to watch the
underlying indices to determine support and resistance of these
derivative funds. Of course we will also be looking at straight
call and put options on the principle market ETF symbols as well:
DIA, SPY, QQQQ, IWM...
Bear in mind that I have access to tools which make analysis of a
large population of stocks fairly easy, the key is picking good stocks.
Here I describe how I derive our watch lists.
In this document I describe the basic investment strategies that can
be employed in Up, Down, and even Sideways markets...
This list is updated weekly with stocks that have gained at least
30% in the last 6 months. Some of these also appear on the
acquire list on the Trading History page; they have been screened and
we have decided we can acquire them when they present a technical buy
signal.
This is where we put money behind what we are showing in the Virtual
Portfolio, below. This documents the actual trades we have made.
We show you here our option trades, short and long stock trades.
Charts
- All Charts are screen captures with permission of Prophet Charts.
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