Before the Open (Jun 24)

Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China and India rallied more than 2%; Hong Kong and South Korea gained more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up; there are no 1% movers. Futures here in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.
The dollar is up slightly. Gold, silver and oil are down.
The charts were looking pretty nasty at yesterday’s open, but thanks to Greece agreeing to a 5-year austerity plan, by the close, they weren’t looking so bad. The indexes are still a mess (lots of up and down movement, lots of gaps, not net change over the last couple weeks), but a handful of individual stocks look pretty good (I’ll post some on the message board) – good enough to play to the long side.
The question is: was yesterday’s late-day rally just an overdone knee-jerk reaction to the Greek news that will get sold into because the market had already priced it in, or was it legit and something the market could build on?
Instead of guessing, I let the charts guide me. To me, trading is a big game of follow the leader, and I’m not the leader. I let others make the first move; then I jump in (usually a little late, but when the odds are more favorable). Right now I see no reason to be aggressive in either direction. The intermediate term trend is still down, and the short term trend is neutral. I have a few good longs and shorts to play which sounds good but actually hints at the lack of near term direction. When the trend is obvious, when the side of the market we should be playing is obvious, I have many set ups to play on one side and none on the other. Such isn’t the case right now. Given it’s a Friday, I’m not in any big hurry.
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 (Jun 24)

  1. so this morning’s survey shows 75% of the Greek people are against the proposed austerity agreement and if there is any semblance of representative democracy remaining in the once-sovereign country that is now just a euro whipping boy, then this proposal will fail on Tuesday. What a joke that knee jerk reaction rally was…. see you at 1250 SP….

    1. If the survey shows 75% of the greek population..you can
      bet it’s probably a whole lot higher than that. Besides,
      they’ll say anything right now just to keep everybody
      happy. But all it will amount to is just a futile
      excercise in kicking the can down the road a little
      bit more. The punitve damages to Greece are resulting
      them in having to re-pay their debt at a much higher
      interest rate. Hey, how do you say default in Greek?

  2. What is being discussed here on TV at the moment (specifically Fox business news),
    is that the strategic oil reserves which were released yesterday under the sanction
    of the IEA (don’t you just love those silly little ancronyms?), is that the intent
    of the oil reserves is for military purposes in case they run into and emergency,
    and oil should not be used as a tool to manipulate the price of a currency or
    a commodity for that matter. The investigation continues.

  3. yes use the oil to destroy the big banks hedge
    then put a 500% petrol tax on to destroy the use of petrol
    the price of usa petrol is a joke and shold be at least 10 usd
    only then will it match what the retailers have to pay in the rest of the world

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