Before the Open (Oct 10)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed, and there weren’t many standouts. India gained 2%; Singapore gained 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Norway is up 2% and London 1% but Austria is down 3.7%. Futures here in the States point towards a large gap up open for the cash market.
Right about now I’m glad I respected the bounce. Even though all the indexes moved below the bottom of the ranges, I covered my shorts as soon as the market started to bounce. Anyone who knows me knows my MO is to exit the market and look to re-enter instead of riding out a counter move – especially when the indexes have been flat over the previous two months. Sometimes this causes me to re-enter at the same or even slightly worse level, but there are enough times (like right now) I’m glad to not give profits back. This wasn’t a hard decision last week. Over the last 2+ months, we’ve had too many reversals, too many sudden moves and too many large gaps. And most of all, there have been too many times when a trailing stop would not have worked, where a 10% profit was wiped out in a day when the market gapped opposite the short term trend. There have been so many reasons the market is “supposed” to get clobbered yet here we are 9 weeks later and the indexes are unchanged. We must trade what is, not what we want or think.
Overall I still consider the long term trend to be down…the intermediate term trend to be neutral…and the short term trend to be up. Trading is not hard when you trade in the direction of the trend, but when the trends of different time frames don’t match, we need to err on the side of being conservative.
One reason for the higher futures levels is news out of Europe that a comprehensive response to the debt crisis would be finalized by the end of the month.
The dollar is down 1%. Oil, copper, gold, silver…they’re all up. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers

0 thoughts on “Before the Open (Oct 10)

  1. In my opinion, with sentiment so low and economic data not so awful, we’ll probably test the 1100 level at least one more time, perhaps this week and then start a new uptrend for a year-end rally. But my crystal ball is in the shop, so this is only my opinion.

  2. I think today the market will look for an excuse (bad news) to take profits.
    The 9:30 ETZ traders are Bullish at the moment. If the next dip holds (ESZ1 1169) it’ll be an up day otherwise down, down, down.
    My, “Over the Weekend” long is up 14 points.

  3. I agree with Jason’s comments and followed his suggestion on a previous short trade and managed to capture profits. Unfortunately, I started building a new position at lower rally levels still looking to put on the last 1/3 of a new full position on the short side. I’m keeping my existing short positionsin place in keeping with the long term downtrend but I’m not comfortable, to say the least.
    I see we are up against the 50 day EMA at SPX 1188 while the 80 week SMA is at 1211 (still in sideways mode). Absent signs of an impulsive move down, I’m reluctant to add my final 1/3 position to an already losing 2/3 position. Certainly, if I see an orderly pullback that finds support between 1150-1165, I will have to consider covering at least part of my existing short position at a loss.

    1. Tough call.
      I thinkit boils down to debt and earnings. If earnings are good enough to pay on the debt then the equity market will stabilize and maybe go up otherwise down.

  4. Last week Jason made a comment something to the effect that when all the blogs
    and all the TA analysts are all talking about a particular pattern usually it
    never develops. So much for Black Monday. But unfortunately I did go into
    the weekend with a 50% position in TZA because it looked like the Russell 2000
    was going over the cliff on Friday. I did bail out in the premarket Monday
    around 7am today with a $3000 dollar loss. I can absorb the loss, but
    my ego and my trading ability psyche has been damaged considerably. HW

  5. whilst i still think this looks like a typical deadcat bounce,in a bear market
    and still forming a right shoulder to h/s –i would be tempted at the 1188 ,but i leave for salt lake today for 7 days–so no trading
    the impulsive up is more like a dead cat but it could become a abc up for wave 2
    if im lucky the dead cat will still be around for 7 more days
    then i can short those horible long only mutuals
    normally the bank hedgies wont short untill after banks and some techs report
    but europe overrides all

    1. SPY 60d60m: Typical Dead Cat Bounce? I don’t see how you can say that since this is the 5th bounce since August 10th. More like a basketball bounce.
      The volume has significantly increased since Sept 26, and this leg up is longer than the leg down.
      Personnaly I believe it’s building a Wave1 up.

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