I hope

i'm thinking we open up down some since we were up so much today... so sell my position in the a.m. then re-evaluate based on how things go.

[Edited on March 10, 2009 at 4:11 PM. Reason : ]

3/10/2009 4:11:18 PM

i don't know if i can sanction an FAZ pick up right about now. its a nice rise we got, but we went down for over a month solid. i wouldn't be shocked if we saw 7000 this week.

that being said i'm going to wait things out, its all a bit too intense for me.

oh and all my funds are in T+3 right now.

3/10/2009 4:11:42 PM

I bought some SKF calls at the close. I'm hoping we gap down tomorrow so I can sell them and then go up.

3/10/2009 4:49:16 PM

Dang, I just noticed I sold out of my FAZ calls at 3.80 and they closed the day at 5.80.

3/10/2009 7:06:56 PM

PLEASE CALL MY MARCH 4S AWAY FROM ME...PUHLEAZE

3/11/2009 8:40:47 AM

dumped faz after market yesterday heh

3/11/2009 9:24:13 AM

its going to be another up day. its so bad because in a typical market I would be all about the gains to be received from these up days but I sold all my long positions, what appears to be prematurely. FAS is doing well (4.10 pre-market), sold it at 2.75. FITB doing well (1.74 premarket today), sold it at 1.54.

3/11/2009 9:27:47 AM

I'm telling you guys, options are your friend. I got in for 1000 shares at 2.75. I pseduo panic'd and sold covered calls for .35 on Monday because I feared the time decay was going to increase quickly as we are approaching expiration (I don't have enough experience with them and I don't know the greeks well enough yet to make those judgments accurately). I could have waited and sold them for .70 just now. Assuming the market trades in this range until expiration (not bloody likely, but you never know), I'll be able to sell April calls for .75-1 and my cost basis will be about $1.50. I'll be able to do it again in May if I have to and so on and really profit on the volatility and premiums in these things. If I wanted to hold these for awhile, I could probably get my cost basis under 0 on them (and I'm thinking about doing just that rather than try and get greedy about catching the huge swings).

3/11/2009 9:57:37 AM

hello to all.
it must have been my payment to Citibank for my cc that made them post positive earnings Q1. well i know i'm reaping the benefits off of POT....

IF YOU DON'T SMOKE IT, TRADE IT....

puts and calls lose no money in the recession...thats why they made puts...should have shorted the market last year folks, told ya now trade the living shit out of it bc its cheap. then invest smartly.
fck you, pay me for my info!

3/11/2009 10:39:15 AM

okay so how do people feel about whats going on here. are we turning around, or is this a long bear market rally, such as what we saw from november to say jan.

3/11/2009 10:42:11 AM

it will go lower. no WAY we're even CLOSE to recovering.

3/11/2009 10:48:28 AM

just sold all my FAS at $4.25

now I'm only down 50%

3/11/2009 10:48:47 AM

i should probably unload FAS as well...

got in IAU yesrterday at 88

3/11/2009 10:49:35 AM

there is a Fibonacci pattern forming that triggers a buy signal...

let me see if i can find the link

3/11/2009 12:00:05 PM

rally done. switching to skf and faz again.

3/11/2009 12:29:16 PM

Just bought 5 BBY April 25 PUTS for 1.45 each.

Looking for a horrible earnings announcement that will push these up to the 3-4 range pretty easily.

3/11/2009 1:19:02 PM

i bought a short and as soon as i did the market starting turning around for the day, at least temporarily. since the exact moment of purchase the stock has gone up the amount i wanted it to go down, its oddly bizarre.

V' I was following a TA trend and the trend for the stock looked down. I did it over a 5minutes, 20minute, and hour interval. There were many indicators.

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 1:51 PM. Reason : .]

3/11/2009 1:26:53 PM

Gambling can be bizarre like that.

3/11/2009 1:45:50 PM

^^ Which stock, I want to see if I can see what you saw?

3/11/2009 3:10:31 PM

BAC, maybe 30min before my initial post.

PM me if you see what i see, or if you see a mistake that i made, i'd appreciate it. i'm still very new to TA

3/11/2009 3:33:48 PM

I put it on a 5 day chart with 5 minute bars. The first part of the day you can see it trading in a fairly defined range until it cracks the 50 period moving average and it takes a big drop towards the 20 where it looks like some buying came in briefly. When this failed to set a new uptrend it took another plunge below the 20, eventually retracing towards the 20 and bouncing off of it several times. You can see the 50 is pulling in towards and it can be seen that they are about to cross you can see the stock dive again. A failure to retake the 20sma and use it as support rather than resistance would have been a good signal to get short if that is what you were looking to do.

From it's intraday low it starts forming a 45 degree channel with higher highs and lower lows. As it passed above the 20sma you begin to treat that as support (and it tested it once and bounced off) with your eyes on the 50sma. And from here it bounced off back towards the 20. At this point the stock has basically traded sideways as the 2 averages have converged and don't provide a lot of useful info other than the 20 has crossed back above the 50 which is generally bullish in nature.


This is a lot easier to do looking back than looking ahead. I don't really see anything on my chart around 1pm that would make me think of a good short opportunity, but I admit I haven't looked at a 1 minute chart yet.

I suspect if you plot some Fibonacci numbers on there, the intraday low will be the first bar down from the intraday high (I'll try it later).

3/11/2009 4:06:08 PM

it wasn't around one, it was more about 11:30. i assumed i posted it near the time i bought, but evidently not. so check 11:30ish

3/11/2009 4:12:54 PM

Quote :

"rally done. switching to skf and faz again."

the easy upside trade may be over, but i'm not sure i'd short anything just yet


...also, exited all of FAS @ 4.18

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 4:49 PM. Reason : ]

3/11/2009 4:47:56 PM

^^ Hmm, can you put a screenshot of these multiple confirmations you saw. On a 1 minute chart I see it move sideways riding the 20ema in confluence until about 11:18 when it finally decides to break lower. You can see the volume ramp up as some buyers come in at this point and then it forms what would be called a bear flag back to the 20ema. It fails to break this again and we have another sell off. This would have been a good short entry point but only for about .25 cent or so.

But that is all on the 1 minute, which I don't think are all that great for stocks that aren't highly volatile like FAS.

If you pull back out to the 5 minute you can see the 20 and 50 supports even better. It breaks below the 20 and finds the 50 quickly. When it fails to move up off the 50 it drops below that and uses it as resistance. When it can't break the resistance and the 20 falls below the 50 we see another round of selling.

3/11/2009 6:09:11 PM

I might pick up a bunch of C, set up a DRIP, and then stuff it under mattress for 10 years.

3/11/2009 6:37:22 PM

I would do that with all the high yields that have been beat the fuck up. Forget day trading, this market will make you rich, in 10 years

3/11/2009 6:43:11 PM

I actually set up a separate account with all of my ETV, ETW, ETJ, TIP and a handful of beat up financials and set up DRIPs on all of it. I told the banker who set it up for me that I won't be touching it for 5+ years. I did that to secure a line of credit with the same bank, but I think it's a very solid long term investment.

Those are Eaton Vance funds are great BTW. Big dividend and right now the three that I mentioned are selling well below market value.

3/11/2009 6:56:01 PM

man what happened to TBT today? It was hoving up over 48 all day then all the sudden fell off a cliff

3/11/2009 7:28:15 PM

I saw some reference to bond action on the FAS board today, but it was buried in a thread with a different title and I can't find it now.

3/11/2009 9:21:38 PM

Quote :

"Just bought 5 BBY April 25 PUTS for 1.45 each. Looking for a horrible earnings announcement that will push these up to the 3-4 range pretty easily."

Hmm, not sure what to think about this play now on the retail sales report

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ag.B_L49e2hs&refer=home

Quote :

"Excluding gas, retail sales decreased 0.4 percent. Excluding autos, gasoline and building materials, the retail group the government uses to calculate gross domestic product figures for consumer spending, sales increased 0.5 percent, after rising 1.7 percent. The government uses data from other sources to calculate the contribution from the three categories excluded. "

So autos were a drag on results and if you remove those and gas, which helped the numbers, sales were actually up.

However

Quote :

"Wal-Mart Lure Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, reported a 5.1 percent gain in February sales at stores open at least a year. Consumers, trying to make ends meet as job losses mount, are being drawn to its lower prices on groceries, fuel and electronics. Retailers reporting sales declines in February included Macy’s Inc. and J.C. Penney Co., clothing chains Gap Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co., and luxury sellers Nordstrom Inc. and Neiman Marcus Group Inc., company announcements showed. "

Combined with the increase savings rate and Circuit City still drawing some portion away from Best Buy, I still feel pretty good about this put play. Just wish I could have gotten it a little bit cheaper.


In other news, GE is cut from AAA to AA+ and the stock is up 5% in premarket
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKBpCHgjvcaU&refer=home

I guess investors were worried of a deeper rating cut.

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 9:21 AM. Reason : .]

3/12/2009 8:58:22 AM

Up almost 20% on my QLD that I got a few days back ... 19.70 to be exact.

Looking to sell half of it though. Just trying to get back to even across all investments for past year, while the market is still at the bottom ... that way I can get a little riskier knowing that there is alot of upside.

I dont think this is going to be a huge rally though ... sorta hoping we drop really hard and fast from here, and shake out another 20% from the markets on high volume. Then we could get a really good rally forming. I just dont think we have seen that huge flee from the markets that signals the end yet ... but who knows ...

3/12/2009 1:14:05 PM

its looking like its going to last all week. misread my charts yesterday and thought the rally was done and over with, but i was regrettably wrong. at this point its anyone's guess, to be honest.

as you recall following the 20th of november we had a few month long rally, so no need to write this off quickly.

3/12/2009 1:36:52 PM

can someone tell me why oil is up 11% and yet COP is still managing to drop 3% today

3/12/2009 2:54:29 PM

^ Without thinking too much about it, aren't they more downstream from oil, ie, they are a refiner and seller of gasoline. And I think there have been recent reports (yesterday or today) that gas inventories were higher than expected or something? I'm just thinking here without doing any looking.


The FAS covered calls I sold prematurely (because I'm still an option noob and learning how they behave) for .35 are now trading for 1.15 with 9 days to expiration. Yes, that is correct, I could have pocketed an additional $800 on this position had I waited a mere 4 business days. Le sigh.

3/12/2009 3:28:14 PM

March 4s?

3/12/2009 4:03:54 PM

Yup. I mentioned above what I did. I haven't studied options enough to get a true feel of how they behave. I pseudo-panicked on Monday thinking that the time decay was going to be moving really quickly and sold covered calls on them to lock in that profit. At that point, I guess I wasn't really factoring a rally taking off since it was flat again Monday or else I could have waited a bit longer and the trend would have been clearer.

However, I am hoping that FAS below 3 was just a way oversold level that we aren't going to see a return to those levels for a few weeks, until the next round of earnings. And I'll probably just sell April 4s or 5s on them. If the stock can just tread water in this range and I can get ~$1 for them, I'll be extremely happy and my cost basis on the position will be $1.40. It would take a complete implosion of the finance sector for FAS to approach that level. I'm not putting that out of the realm of possibility, but with the way the government has been backstopping the banks, I think I'll be able to see that truck coming before it runs me over.

3/12/2009 4:21:40 PM

I actually sold very few calls this month just because I couldn't rule out a healthy rally that would stick me in a bad spot; I only made roughly 1/3 of what I did in February with options trading.

I've also loaded up on some cheap blue chip stocks like GE and T and done alright just based on the volume of calls I'm selling on them.

3/12/2009 5:07:41 PM

Should we make a separate thread for investing?

Maybe you guys could take your options talk into the sports gambling thread

3/12/2009 5:45:58 PM

Quote :

"can someone tell me why oil is up 11% and yet COP is still managing to drop 3% today"

I used to like COP but something not healthy is brewing internally that i can not see.

I think i'm going to stick to XOM or look into CVX. Might as well go for the best.



What do you guys think about tech? I want to acquire either some VZ or T. Think both got some good stuff on the research pipeline; VZ being more speculative and they give a good yield.

Before i get either one I really want to offload my position on CSCO or RIMM. As my portfolio is already tech heavy. CSCO has been really under performing but I believe in their fundamentals and think they are undervalued. I've made lots of money on RIMM already and bought back in after selling at $120 when the stock got slammed last fall; but feel that this stock is more speculative than Cisco.

3/12/2009 6:24:45 PM

First thing I do when thinking about stocks is seeing where it is trading relative to it's past. You can't make a trade based on that, but if I see a stock trading at a high or low point, it at least frames my thought process as I look at info about the stock because I am trying to look at a story to explain why it is trading where it is relative to itself. Then I start comparing it to other companies in it's industry over the past 6 months to 1yr time frame. Then relative to indexes.

1) Relative to itself, it is down about 20% over YTD, 6month, and 1yr time frames.
2) Relative to Qwest, Sprint, and AT&T you have it outperforming those guys bout almost 50% over 1yr time frames, trading relatively the same as Qwest and AT&T but more than 50% better than Sprint over 6 month time frames. And YTD about the same as Qest and AT&T but Sprint rocketed off its low points and is actually up 109% YTD (a good short opportunity in Sprint?)
3) It's outperforming the Nasdaq and S&P over the 1yr and 6 month periods by about 50% but YTD it is even with the S&P and being outperformed by the Nasdaq by about 50%.

So this should give you some sort of reference to think about Verizon.

Looking next at a 6 month daily chart, you can see that it has started to cross the 20 day sma which is currently under the 50 day from the overall downtrend it has been in since the start of the year. I'd look to see if it treats the 20 as resistance and if it pulls back a little (especially is this currently rally runs out of steam) you should have a great entry point to get long with a nice 6% yield to boot. This is before you even have to look at the balance sheet or cash flow.

The balance sheet and cash flow look reasonable considering the Alltel acquisition, though you have to wonder what that will actually do for the bottom line as they continue to try and integrate the operations. The P/E seems to be about where it should be. Oddly enough, it was downgraded by one analyst on Jan 5th to underperform and upgraded on Feb 27 by another to outperform.

Todays put/call ratio was 1.01, the 30d average is 0.83 which tells me even as the stock was dropping people were loading up on the calls expecting a rebound. A good sign.

In general, VZ seems like a fairly safe play at this point. If you aren't sure where it is going to move from here, you could buy some April or July 30 calls and control a large position for not too much in premium. If it makes its way above the 50 and seems like it is going to hold, you can either sell the calls for nice profit or you can just take your position with the cost basis set at 30 (or you can buy the 27.5s of either month as well).

This way, while you wait for the stock to confirm it is making a new trend up you can deploy your capital on other more speculative trades if you like.

3/12/2009 9:46:05 PM

you guys are fucking idiots

3/12/2009 10:36:10 PM

VZ and T are not tech. They are telecom utilities that pay dividends.

3/12/2009 10:55:24 PM

Might not be a terrible time to scale into some April FAZ calls. I ultimately think this rally has run out of real power. It might trade higher in a more controlled manner but I think we're going to reset the 750 S&P for the near term until the next wave of bad news pushes it back down.

3/13/2009 9:48:35 AM

I was just about to ask if anyone else is planning on picking up FAZ at the end of the day today

3/13/2009 10:11:12 AM

Put/Call ratio yesterday for FAS was .24

For FAZ, you'd expect it be something closer to 1, but no, it was .57

So there are indeed plenty of folks out there banking on us to head back in the other direction.

You can get April 50 calls for about 7.25 right now.

3/13/2009 10:21:41 AM

FAS looks like a cliff face

3/13/2009 12:06:54 PM

Quote :

"You can get April 50 calls for about 7.25 right now."

These guys are up 25% since I made that call. Wish I would have bought em myself.

The Best Buy April 25 PUT play is inflicting a little pain on me, I got em for 1.45 and they traded as low as .9 today. I loaded up on some more at $1.

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 12:31 PM. Reason : .]

3/13/2009 12:20:06 PM

wednesday was sort of like this and was last friday. i got out of FAS, though, so everything is sure to go back up

3/13/2009 12:32:22 PM

You probably got out a bit too soon, I'd expect to see FAS ride the 20 or 50 for another hour or so before it dips back under then uses them for resistance.

If you'd have taken that advice, you could have bought at 4.87 as it pulled back and touched the 20 and scalped 25s cent off of it. Not much, but it's profit.

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 1:16 PM. Reason : .]

3/13/2009 1:07:00 PM

yeah i had a stop set so it was rough. i didn't even use a trailing stop because i anticipated some fluctuation but not this much. if i had more time at work i really would brush up on chart reading because i'm sure it could do a lot of good. i really need to focus on that effort.

fail, are you feeling this as us running out of steam or more along the lines of a 50% correction?

3/13/2009 1:18:22 PM