looking for advice/suggestions...

I've got some AIG and BAC (both of which are in the green for me), but i've got an extra $1k to do something with. What would you (the royal "you") do?

3/19/2009 4:40:59 PM

Wait for the S&P to go to either 770 or 800. You're in whipsaw territory now. No easy calls to make.

3/19/2009 4:44:05 PM

in this market, and this may sound stupid, i think what i'm going to start doing is buying and holding. i'll play the shorts on stocks as they go down, but for certain specific stocks i'm going to implement a buy and hold philosophy. we've put too many billions of dollars into citi for it to up and vanish. we've had others vanish but they did so without the heavy investment that was made into them. i'll focus on it and put money in it at the $1 - 3 levels periodically.

it may take 5 years, but i figure i'll have a pretty good nest when all is said and done. this constant trading impacts me heavily through commission fees. if you make a move with 4000 it takes 1% change before you even start to see a profit.


This aside, interesting news on citi bank.

two pieces actually.

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-CreditCrisis/idUSTRE52I7N520090319

and

Quote :

" NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Citigroup's (C) $3 billion credit card loan backed deal sold Thursday, making it the second deal eligible for funding under the Federal Reserve's program to jump-start the securitization market. The central bank's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, has sparked a flurry of issuance this"

Feel free to provide your thoughts on this as well as the questions posed at the ned of the previous page.

3/19/2009 9:06:32 PM

I'm sad i sold my Corning- GLW before the earning forecast increase

May buy back in

Looking at GS for a financial play.
Strongly looking at CVX or COP or DO as a oil play as oil prices creep up.
Still also looking to get some VZ as I think prices will dip down again into the 28 range.

Kind of interested what will happen on options day coming up....

3/19/2009 10:37:28 PM

I bought into ENG at 3, how long should I wait on it?

3/19/2009 11:10:16 PM

I bought FNM - fannie MEa at 0.40 last week, its on a nice ride
hoping it will get to $2 or $3 by the end of the month

3/19/2009 11:29:31 PM

Fail Boat

does bestfreecharts have a Fibonacci? I don't see it and since you're the only other person i know using it i figured i'd ask you.

3/20/2009 10:36:14 AM

hmm AIG worth buying at $1 ?

3/20/2009 11:34:32 AM

i'm leaning towards yes to be honest.

we aren't at the bottom, and i can say that with full honesty, but as far as i can tell AIG, Citi, and BAC will be around for a while, at least, because due to the amount of capital pumped into them the government can't turn back and let them fail now. one day these will be valuable companies again.

i'm a bear, but i'm going to focus on some long term investments with these.

regarding AIG in particular, hell i hope it goes down to 35 cents again. can anyone honestly tell me that in our life time they do not see AIG existing or going to 2.00/share? people could have said the same about lehman but they didn't get all the capital injections that aig has. its too big of an investment to turn back on.

[Edited on March 20, 2009 at 11:47 AM. Reason : $$$]

3/20/2009 11:42:29 AM

i guess it was - $1.50 now

3/23/2009 9:32:23 AM

the truth of it is there is too much good news out there. Housing is up, which is highly positive. You have this TALF plan which will reduce the toxic assets, which can be seen as positive. You have the potential for positive earnings which will be released mid-april and you have market to market changes coming on the second of april which could further help boost those earnings.


If i were you, i'd buy in low with some money you don't care about and hold onto it and not worry about it. Between now and this time next month you'll have made some money. Even day traders do not trade all their stocks everyday, so why should you?

3/23/2009 10:10:46 AM

toying with a little BX @ 7.90

but i know chasing after a pop like this is probably not the best of trades..

3/23/2009 2:35:10 PM

you'll be fine.

if we gap up tomorrow then sell at the bell. if we gap down then keep it because we'll end above the close of today.

3/23/2009 2:52:42 PM

just sold the rest of my FAS @ 6.96

3/23/2009 3:52:39 PM

FAZ at $20 - wow

3/23/2009 3:56:05 PM

Gonna go about 5k into some SRS calls tomorrow.

3/23/2009 4:41:10 PM

Good luck, man. I am going to stick to the long route because I don't see the market pulling back too heavy. we pushed through the 790, 800, 804, 811 and then past the 820 resistance mark so a steep decline downward may not be the case for a while. however, being april calls i could imagine a decent raise in the next month its just a hard cause with a lot of other news coming out which is potentially positive.

3/23/2009 8:53:55 PM

What is your target for the S&P then?

3/23/2009 10:31:32 PM

if we do not suffer the fate of retracement tomorrow i could reasonably see low 840s, which would be fair and provide me with the opportunity to vacate a long position or two. however, with the possibility of being presented in 3 weeks and a few other market adjustments coming into the fray in two weeks, i can't bet short. long may not get any significant traction but i think betting short is a greater risk.

if we fall i say 760 would be our short term downside on the S&P.

3/23/2009 10:51:27 PM

The drinks are on me tonight men.

Quote :

"Personal Rate of Return from 01/01/2009 to 03/23/2009 is 1.9% "

First time I have seen a net gain for the year. Probably due mostly to the last two weeks.

3/24/2009 8:27:36 AM

^ props.

got lucky BX gapped higher again...

might look to get back into FAS later today

3/24/2009 9:43:18 AM

we seem to be holding the 810/811 which is a positive sign. if it breaks that we could get some downward momentum and see up to 50% retracement.

however i'm banking on a green end, but just barely.

3/24/2009 9:57:02 AM

Figures, had my order window on 1000 shares of FAS at 6.45 but was too afraid to submit.

Meanwhile, some FAZ calls I purchase before the latel day surge are inflicting serious pain right now.


[Edited on March 24, 2009 at 10:13 AM. Reason : .]

3/24/2009 10:06:32 AM

damn - this shit moves quick

got FAS at 7 even

3/24/2009 10:08:39 AM

well I'll tell you this if we don't start teasing that close line from yesterday by noon, that FAZ call won't be so bad.

3/24/2009 10:18:24 AM

The financials already did.

3/24/2009 10:20:58 AM

S&P. thats our resistance point. If we don't touch it, or at least flirt with it i would maintain FAZ until tomorrow. If we drop too far below 812, it'll be a winner for you.

3/24/2009 10:31:25 AM

So you're telling me the financials, or the XLF or RIFIN if you prefer, have already filled the gap, but if the rest of the S&P doesn't manage it by around noon, then the financials are going to head south?


There are no news reports yesterday and I doubt the bulls have the resolve to keep pushing this higher, however, after the ass whipping yesterday, and barring any econ news, I don't think you'll see any bears coming in to take their turns. This will most likely be a sideways day of no real importance.

3/24/2009 10:38:22 AM

if you don't see the S&P touch near its high from yesterday you'll have a good chance of seeing an afternoon downturn. more or less it'll be sideways, i would completely agree with that. That is why I said i would maintain your position on FAZ until tomorrow. some people get huffy and sell at the first sign of no profit. i think your FAZ call will be okay.

3/24/2009 10:50:23 AM

there it goes. its stair stepping down. probably will stop at a 50% retracement of yesterday.

3/24/2009 11:17:20 AM

Storm season coming up. NSMG anyone?

3/24/2009 3:52:50 PM

Well Cat, you have about 4-5 different "predictions" of todays action going back to yesterday. You did get one of them right. Did you trade based on that one or the others


As for my FAZ play, I got in at that low before the surge, so it has to retreat back below that point before I get paid off. I contemplated buying May puts instead of April because it seems like these cycles take 2 months to work, which would put FAZ well below where I got it before financials start to head back south.

As we are sitting on support, I suppose I can only hope it manages to get under it and then run back down to previous support after failing to get reliably above it (somewhere with the S&P @ 770 I think?) but I have a feeling the coming economic news in the next couple of days (Initial Claims, final Q4 GDP, Personal Income) will all come in near expectations and the market will do what it did in December and January and shake off seemingly terrible news because it was as bad as expected.




[Edited on March 24, 2009 at 4:29 PM. Reason : .]

3/24/2009 4:20:11 PM

i think you're pretty right in what you said there and completely agree with you on the may puts.

some times you plan to trade and some times you trade the plan. yesterday since we flew through those resistances i thought we'd have a clear cut way to success today. however as the markets opened i could tell pretty early (11am) that your FAZ play was the right move. we were just not doing what we needed to do. that being said i'm stuck in a long position right now because i got greedy. I went into C heavy and thrust in all my funds . so now i 1) have no funds with which to trade and 2) have massive losses. If i had any available funds I would have traded on your side and then closed at market EOD.

Obama speaks tonight and we have more home numbers tomorrow. So I think tomorrow will try and test yesterday's highs, and if it achieves them may be sustainable. regardless if i had money i would have taken my FAZ cash out and placed it in FAS and would probably dump that before noon.

3/24/2009 4:54:18 PM

if we gap up tomorrow i'm moving out of my C position, as it would take something phenomenal for me to get back to 3.8 and if i can time the flux on the news days alone i can get back to where i was.


That being said, if we gap up i'm going to buy SKF

3/24/2009 6:27:07 PM

When are you in it at 3.80? On the Thursday open?

I got beat around when I first started last fall by not setting stops. I started using them and it helped, and I've recently strayed from it again and I am getting punished. I suspect you might be doing the same, and I imagine you don't use them because you are afraid of getting locked out of the market for the day after you get stopped out. I know I am going to have to put it back in my strategy to just get pushed out of the position when it moves away from where I thought it would. It certainly would have saved me a lot of pain in the past few days with some of the plays I've made.

I wouldn't be too hasty with your C (this coming from someone with a position in FAZ at a steep loss). If you really fear there is a lot more downside to it, just go ahead and put the order in at your pain threshold now (make it GTC). This same sort of thing happened in Dec/Jan where waves and waves of really shitty news did nothing to keep the market from rallying. Then when it turned around there was just ongoing selling pressure for really no reason and it all. And this behavior has gone in 2 month cycles. I think we are going to see the same sort of thing happen again for another couple weeks. We'll approach the next upside targets (835 or so up to 875) in a choppy way until the the next round of earnings at which point anything goes.

3/24/2009 8:21:04 PM

Can any of you guys explain the following

Yesterday i put in a limit buy order of 67.20 for 10 shares of CVX.
My order was never executed since the market was rallying and the stock closed at $69.XY
This morning the market opened with CVX at $68.24 and never once dipped below $68.

Oddly though i was surprised to get an email at 5:17 PM; over an hour after the markets closed saying that my limit order of $67.20 has been gone though. How could this have occured.

- My order yesterday expired at the end of the day
- I never put in a new order today
- Even if i had the stock never went below 68
- The order was bought after hours

???

3/24/2009 8:33:39 PM

Who is your broker?

There are many different market makers that your order can go through. I don't know the details very well, but I see on Yahoo that it marks a low of 67.29 around 2:15. I suppose your order could have routed somewhere and executed at the .20 and it just isn't displaying on Yahoo. I've never heard of this but I can see it happening. At that point yesterday the stock was in a relatively sharp down trend, the bidvery well could have been down to .15 or something on some lower volume exchange when your order at the .20 hit and the marker maker made it there.

It would be a good question to ask your broker, let us know what they say.

3/24/2009 8:57:54 PM

sharebuilder through ING direct

I will ask and find out

I get what you are saying but i find it odd that a limit order i put in and expired yesterday somehow magically went thourgh today after the markets were closed

3/24/2009 10:01:26 PM

that happened to me once and i tried to cancel - said it canceled - looked at it an hour later - was up 20% on that stock hehehehe.

3/24/2009 10:01:55 PM

Sure they didn't just not tell you about it until today? Pretty sure that's not the case but figured I'd ask

3/24/2009 10:02:30 PM

which online broker would be best for a relative market novice? or are they all pretty much the same?

3/24/2009 11:46:51 PM

what do u guys think of some leap (jan 2011) calls on FAS? It seems to me the best way to play this market (with a decent time horizon)

3/25/2009 1:00:06 AM

Entirely too much decay with these 3x etfs to blow your money in that way. Consider this, the RIFIN was last at 486 on Feb 13. FAS closed that day at 7.92. Yesterday the RIFIN closed at 491 and we closed at 6.12.

That is an ungodly amount of slippage.

Or, look at Jan 20th and then March 12.

The RIFIN closed at 452 and 450 on those days. FAS 7.63 and 5.05.

Shocked yet? Go back to Nov 20, the RIFIN closed at 488 that day, basically where we closed yesterday. Was FAS near the 6.12 it closed at? Try 14.65.

3/25/2009 7:43:49 AM

thinking about buying some faz today at open

3/25/2009 9:23:42 AM

I'd hold off on FAZ the DH news came out and was positive and housing report is at 10, or so. this could change things, and FAZ being so leveraged you may not have the time to get out that you want.

These bits of news are on what my SKF plan hinges. we have an inverted hammers on the weekly chart represents a potential. trend reversal or support levels; a bearish harami on the daily chart,
all the indicators are showing a bit mixed to bearish as well. So the SKF plan is reasonable if the news isn't good.


Fail Boat
You're dead on the money.

It was thursday shortly after open. it was an emotional play, and i let potential greed overcome me. mostly because i sat out the entire day before looking for a drop off entry point but never got it. i hated missing out.

I also stopped using stops. I was using them religiously, and still making a profit (whats important), but got stopped out and missed a few huge gains i would have otherwise taken. this angered me and i have been suffering ever since. i'll go back to them, eventually. the key is making my stops larger than i otherwise have been, not removing them from my repertoire.

I too am hesitant to leave my C position. To be perfectly honest i'll probably be a chicken shit about it and wait it out. its not a loss until you sell, you know. So i'll hold it and pray for the good news every night between here and earnings day.

3/25/2009 9:46:25 AM

Bought some more BBY puts at the 32.50 strike (stock currently at 34.30). I set tight stops on this guys this time. BBY reports earnings tomorrow and I have a hard time seeing how this stock can add to the 40% gain it has had since March 9. Feels like a "buy the rumor" sort of rally. Either way, this is a small speculative play that will be resolved tomorrow at about 10am.

3/25/2009 11:06:21 AM

Anyone (rallydurham?) care to explain treasuries and their cog in the economy in simple terms. I just don't feel like reading wikipedia at the moment.

They are essentially a bond from the government to you, right? Government tells you he'll pay X% for X number of years if you loan him money, right?

By supply and demand rules, if people are selling treasuries back, the government has to offer higher returns (yields?) to entice buyers, no?

3/25/2009 11:24:43 AM

I think you've got it right. if i recall correctly they are set at prices of 100/1000/etc.. and if they are getting bought up heavy there is a large bid on them making the price go up to 102, 103, etc... which in turn reduces your overall percentage return. however, when there is low demand then bids are low e.g. 98/97/etc... which in turn increases your percentage of return since you not only get a coupon but also bought at a discounted rate.

however, one thing i'm not sure about is if the % on a 30yr treasury is the total to be returned after 30 years or how much is given for each year. I think its the former.

3/25/2009 11:39:09 AM

Quote :

"Bought some more BBY puts at the 32.50 strike (stock currently at 34.30). I set tight stops on this guys this time. BBY reports earnings tomorrow and I have a hard time seeing how this stock can add to the 40% gain it has had since March 9. Feels like a "buy the rumor" sort of rally. Either way, this is a small speculative play that will be resolved tomorrow at about 10am."

Up 20% on this play so far.

3/25/2009 12:51:43 PM

My C bail jump into SKF would have done me well so far. I would have made back a quarter of my loss Citi bank loss.

3/25/2009 12:59:05 PM