Steve Jobs 013

Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The Less We Say About It, The Better
Two good days in a row. I won't get used to it. The crapola bull-filled last 11 months has left me bitter and disillusioned. But seeing a bunch of green over the past couple of days has been nice. I was prepared for all the pointless "Buy the dips!" and "Get in now to ride to Dow 15,000" nonsense in the comments section. It's what you can expect.
The S&P 500 over the past couple of years was in a giant, upward-sloping channel. The highlighted area is the "above even the top" chunk. The madness exceeding the madness. At a minimum, I would expect us to at least re-enter the aforementioned channel.

The $VIX, understandably, has shot higher, given the approximately 200 points blown off the Dow 30. Fear is on the rise. Finally.

AutoZone is one of those nice shorts which has a tight stop but plenty of potential downside. It's one of those charts that could represent a major trend-shift but doesn't make you pay through the nose to see if you are right or wrong.

Bunge (BG), mentioned here many times already, is on its way to its target price. This is a short position (obviously).

A thoughtful reader sent me a suggestion of symbol CEG. This is a handsome looking short. I have no position in it, but I'll follow it from now on.

Big Blue, good old IBM, really got smacked today. I've got puts on both IBM and Honeywell (HON), both of which pushed much higher on the day.

I am showing NVR again simply because it is such a "Fibonacci friendly" stock, to use a phrase I coined a while back. The way it bounces off these retracement lines is really a sight.

I've unsuccessfully owned puts on Sears Holding (SHLD) in the past, and it has never worked out. Once more into the breach, dear friends.

Since I'm feeling a little better, I'll keep throwing the goodies your way. Here's the marvelous Naive Melody from you-know-who.
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at6/06/200737 insightful comments  Links to this post
Labels:azo,bg,ceg,ibm,nvr,shld
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
My Nude Pictures of Ernest Borgnine
Finally, a skosh of relief for the bears today (only those truly secure dare offer the word skosh in their blog). The market was down over 100 points several times today (but just a skosh) and wound up down 80. Freakishly, the QQQQ left the day unchanged.
In any case, I made some nice green on some intraday Russell 2000 option trades. I'm too war-weary from the past year to hold these suckers overnight, but I can at least say I like the current $INDU chart more than I did 24 hours ago:

The Russell 2000 (side question: has anyone found ANY other index with a reasonable bid/ask spread on the options?!) has been rather strong lately but edged down about half a percent today. No sea change by any means, but we take what we can get.

And, for good measure, here's the S&P 500:

I haven't put a chart up of the $UTIL for a while, but whether you've noticed or not, interest rates have been really pushing higher lately. (Remember those? Low interest rates? The reason the market's been so bullish.........remember?)Worldwide interest rates have been surging, relatively speaking. Gentle Ben's remarks today pushed them higher still.

My suggestion of Coach (COH) as a short is decent thus far.

I am short a lot of housing stocks. Today was a good day for those positions due to the interest rate movement. Essex (ESS) is particularly attractive.

Just yesterday I said Google was a nice looking long position. Today (of all days, considering the market's weakness) it made a nice lifetime high. So - clink! - here's to another zillion dollars for all the adolescent Google zillionaires out there. I'm talking about their employees. Not you.

KRC is another sharp-looking housing short.

I've been charting the thirty components of the Dow Industrials recently, and 3M Corporation (MMM) is a favorite of mine. I've got some puts on this. Continued Dow weakness would be very kind to those.

Oh, and one last thing. JakeGint's pondering as to what "we" saw in George Carlin left me shocked. So here's another clip.
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at6/05/200730 insightful comments  Links to this post
Labels:$indu,$rut,$spx,$util,ess,goog,krc,mmm
John Wayne/SNA
Yeah, yeah, Tim. We know. You're at an airport and don't have time to post until later tonight. We get it.
In the meantime, enjoy one of the best George Carlin bits of all time:
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at6/05/200712 insightful comments  Links to this post
Labels:airport post,george carlin
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