Before the Open (May 13)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed and with a bullish bias; China, Hong Kong, India and Singapore all did well. Europe is mostly up, but there are no 1% winners. Futures here in the States point towards a positive open for the cash market.

The dollar is down; gold, silver and oil are up.
As I said yesterday, unless you’re a pretty good short term trader and have stomach for risk, the market has been challenging lately. Over the last 10 days, 5 have been up and 5 down and the net change has been small. Each rally has gotten sold and each dip bought.
On Tuesday I said the rest of the week would go a long way hinting at the movement of the foreseeable future. Since then we’ve gotten one down day and one up day, so the picture remains cloudy. A good day today would create some pretty good looking charts into the weekend. A bad day would do the opposite. When the near term is that fragile – when one day can make the charts either look good or bad – we should wait until the market shows its cards before committing much money.
Here’s the 60-min S&P. Purely from a charting standpoint, there’s nothing terribly wrong with this chart.

More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
yesterday’s sector performance
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers

0 thoughts on “Before the Open (May 13)”

  1. The drumbeat of the Elliott Wave Theorists are starting to bother me.
    We haven’t seen any substantial correction off of the March 2009 lows.
    I know it’s a rigged game, but just how rigged is it? Where is the major
    correction that everybody has been talking about for so long now? HW

    1. Elliott Wave: I never could get a definitive understanding as to what constituted a WAVE. What wave is the S&P in now, how do you know and what timeframe? In order for me to believe I’ll need a little more constitution than, “I think”.

      1. Their analysis is based upon the laws of nature
        (i.e., 1) what goes up must come down; 2) water
        always seeks it’s natural level, etc.)

  3. The Elidiot wave proponents are like broken clocks, they are right 2X per cycle. Strict proponents have made no money or lost money. The only money made was by the so called wave theory experts. They are as insightful as the muttly fools.
    Stick to the basic fundamentals as taught by Fisher & O’Neil and technicals as taught by Murphy & Pring and learn to think for yourselves. Examples – ABC LYB SINA BIDU EW MCP CROX – look at their weekly charts over the past 2 years. But we are at challenging the 2008 highs in both the Nasdq and Rssll so its time for some caution.

  4. …and next week is options expiration…. what do “they” like to do to all those juicy puts bought for protection/speculation?

  6. Looking at the Rut point & figure chart…it looks
    like the damn thing is getting ready to break out
    in one direction or another. Stay cool and wait
    for the afternoon session (to develop a little
    bit more and avoid getting whipsawed). HW

  8. 1344 spx used to be a old high ,so depending if the insto are hedged long or short,then looks like they have deal with all their opts stuff above that and are ready to roll over into the real congestion areas below 1344
    what i have been noticing for a few days is that the markets are following the euro lower tick for tick suggesting their is a lot of carry trade useing the usd zero intrest rate deal –so pos a lot of overseas unwinding
    where is Neal today,he has my permission to continue to post,for what its worth,but im just a outsider from oz and a dam daytrader at that,but i find Neals insight into the fed important

    1. Attn: Neal Listen to Oz. Don’t post if you’re drunk.
      Wait til you sober up a little bit. You aint missing
      much either. Just a little sell off, that’s all.

  11. oh –for what its worth i took some may 1320 puts when we hit 1370 a few weeks back,to go with my july puts—not many ,just a few –why–they were cheap as chips and anything can happen–dont know if they will be worth anything but

  12. From Wikipedia; Alcohol proof
    , it was “proved” by dousing gunpowder in it, then tested to see if the gunpowder would ignite. If it did not, then the rum contained too much water and was considered to be “under proof”.
    Maybe you’re on to something Neal, “stock proof” Have a great weekend.

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