Before the Open (Feb 21)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets suffered some big losses. China dropped 3%, Australia more than 2% and Hong Kong, India, Japan and New Zealand more than 1%. Europe is currently down across the board. Austria, France, Germany, Amsterdam, Norway, Switzerland, London, the Czech Republic and Greece are all down more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are up.
The bears finally got a big down day yesterday. After weeks of being in disbelief and missing a great 180-point, 3-month S&P rally, they finally got what they were waiting for. For whatever it’s worth!!! Missing such a great move and missing so many great rallies from individual companies is hardly worth being able to pound you chest one time. A stopped clock is right twice a day. After singing the same song for months, the clock stopped yesterday, and the bears finally got a chance to brag. Am I poking fun at the bears? Yeah, it’s fun, and they’re an easy target. But don’t get me wrong. I like the bears – especially the perma bears – they’re the ones who keep adding fuel to the uptrends. They are, after all, partially responsible for the the uptrends lasting longer than they should. And for this I am thankful. They allow me to play the uptrends for longer periods.
Moving to trading, I cannot emphasize this enough – you must not give profits back. You must take what the market gives you. If you bought a stock at 30 and had a 34 target, and the stock only rallied to 33 before reversing hard yesterday, you should have been stopped out. Forget your target; forget a trailing stop. Don’t give profits back. If you played a breakout at the beginning of the year, you can give it time and space to move around. But if you played a breakout in the last couple weeks when the risk/reward wasn’t as favorable, you have to be ahead of the curve taking profits. The same chart in different environments will yield different results, and you must make the adjustment. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers

0 thoughts on “Before the Open (Feb 21)”

  1. Jason,
    in reality there are no such things as bulls and bears
    just insto hedge funds,insane long only pension funds
    AND MARSIANS
    the marsians have their marsian black box high frequency trading computerised machines that can front run orders see your stops and limit orders
    it was obviouse on tuesday the instos had hired the marsian space ships to front run the stops
    alowing them to dump the market
    how far we they go –who knows–but they are up to their eye balls having taken the opposite side to the insane long only funds
    can insto selling overcome central bank euro,futures and etf buying–well see
    a 87 style crash would make the instos lots of money and save the bankrupt banks,perhaps with uncle bens approval
    from cheif crazy bear

  3. boring,boring day so far
    ‘
    at key support world wide–spx 1498-1500
    to early to say if this is a corrective move down with a new high to come
    but if not at a new high in 4 days then its down
    today certinly not impulsive –so far

Leave a Reply