your kicks

Discovered a cool site this weekend. Design your own Converse sneakers. They have a pretty reasonable variety to make your sneakers your own.

chop

A really boring and frustrating market today. The only observation/lesson-learned I have from today is from watching TLT with QLD and the NYSE TICK.
The QLD filled the gap from this morning after 11:00a.m. If you weren't lulled to sleep before then you could have gone long at the apex of the ascending triangle (cup w.handle on shorter time frame) that formed in the first 1.5 hours with a traget of the gap-fill/previous day's high. Also up, I have a 1-min chart w.volume running of TLT (inverse relationship to QLD). Volume jumped at 12:33 this afternoon.Which coincided with this chart on a 3-min of QLD. Price tested the morning lows, rounded out before testing the highs again.
The whole time the NYSE TICK chopped between +/-400.

Railroads

Big day for Railroad stocks today. All the ones I'm looking at are turning up from Oversold levels, take your pick. BNIClosed at the high of the day with huge volumeNSC - back above the gap from July at $67.50. UNP - Back above $77.CSX- .

9/11/2001

I am thankful that my United flight out of EWR to SFO was scheduled for 7:39 P.M. instead of 7:39A.M. on that Tuesday.
Why are we in Iraq again?

USSRA

This article comes compliments of THE Fly's site and his cutting edge awareness. I feel we are helpless to do anything about this, but it's fascinating nonetheless. We all know the next presidential administration is going to inherit a shitstorm, so I think I'll be enacting the Costanza-vote this November; voting for the opposite party that I might otherwise vote for.
From the recommended article:
"This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed – untempered by fear of loss or of punishment – leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics."

Bounce? Slide?

Is this chart due for a bounce or downward spiral? QLD- UltraQQQProShares ETF nearing all-time lows since the ETF began in 2006.
The chart for the Nasdaq Composite Index is very similar, of course. If we don't get a bounce here soon, it looks like we could get a blow-off move to the downside. Though one blow-off move could likely trigger a lot of stops into the arena and create a steeper slide. Anyway, the QLD is heavily weighted in Nasdaq100 contracts as well as 11+% in AAPL shares (heavily weighted towards the Hardware sector).
At this point price direction seems like it will be knee-jerk whichever way it takes. Volume has tapered off of the current move down (which doesn't mean it can't skyrocket once extreme levels are hit. Also, the intra-day direction today seemed very indecisive/unconvincing. So...bounce? ...or, trigger all those stop-loss orders at the March lows? Anyway, it's important not to have a directional bias, rather be prepared for what ever direction you're faced with.
Here's the Nasdaq Composite Index daily chart.

Palin Action Hero

Gotta hand it to the creators of this action figure, they sure acted quickly.

die already!

The NYSE Cumulative TICK spent most of the day in negative territory today. Stubbornly price was being bought at support levels most of the day. Eventually we got a sweeping move down, the DJIA barely closing yesterday's gap.
I defer the discovery of all meaning behind this week's price action in the markets to here,
or here.
Oh yeah, I sold my position in NWL for a slight gain. Hindsight would have seen me closing out at the top of the morning, but it didn't happen until mid-day.
I missed trades in QLD as my bids weren't hit on my entries. blah!

Out of...

...the mouth's of babes:
"The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shows that the U.S. is "more communist than China right now" but its brand of socialism is meant only for the rich, investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe on Monday.

"America is more communist than China is right now. You can see that this is welfare of the rich, it is socialism for the rich… it's just bailing out financial institutions," Rogers said."

The Man

I know they're old clips, but more relevant now than ever.

weird

Started the day with the DJIA gapping up 300+ points on the FRE/FNM bail-out news. If you were smart you would have likely gotten short within the first half-hour and covered at the double-bottom later in the afternoon. I watched DIA most of the day. A few scalping opportunities, most of the downside and attempts at a gap-fill were bought up pretty quickly. The DJIA daily chart recovered it's bullish-biased trendline that was broken on Thursday; Pull-back before continuing down? Short-Covering? Bullish recovery? I bought some NWL on Friday, it's looking pretty nice, with a strong day today but approaching some resistance, so I'm curious to see how it will react at $21.I'm sure you're all aware of the UAUA bankruptcy rumors that turned out being false. Insane tape on this one......oh yeah, GOOG...ouch!

Big Bang part deux

The Large Hadron Collider is finally ready to be switched on come next week. The gigantic particle accelerator found underneath Switzerland will shoot protons around a 17-mile long ring, allowing them to smash together in order to study the effects and in hopes of finding the elusive "God Particle."
Of course there are concerns that the experiment will both not recreate the effects they're looking for, and quite possible create a black hole out of the world as we know it. Yesterday's press release was a means of assuring us there will be know black hole come the end of this month.

What Can I Say....

...I got nothin' again. For some reason I have been completely unsure of what direction to trade. Either I'm too late coming into a trade and therefore don't want to chase it, or my confidence ahead of a move doesn't allow me to jump in. So, I'm in the process of regrouping. I like the chart on NWL for what it's worth (bull flag after a V-bottom, and they're in the process of cutting jobs).

consistency

...

We closed at the lows of the day. I've got nothin'.

SRS

UltraShort Real Estate Pro Shares SRS: The overall trend is down, so the plan is to short a retracement. Here you can see how things set up on the 3-min. chart today. There was a head-fake coming out of the consolidating triangle which tripped me up, but it made the measured move (and then some) afterwards.

sell it!

It looks like there was a type-o in the memo that went around Wall st. this morning. The memo probably read something like "...today we're going to have a stupendously bullish rally."
Then, just before lunch, everyone heard that the memo was supposed to read, "...today we're going to have a stupid bullshit rally." What it left us with was a massive sell-off and gap-fills across the boards. Seriously though, that was a pretty spectacular sell-off. From what I was watching the Russell2000 (IWM) and the S & P led the way down this morning, while the Dow put up quite a struggle to stay afloat.
Whatever chart you look at (of the indices) the line is drawn in the sand. We finally saw a volume surge today with very bearish undertones. We could either fall off the edge tomorrow, or get some choppy indecision. Get ready for some volatility to start off Q4.

mmmmOil

OIL! huh...What is it good for?...absolutely Everything!

Oil, Gas, Gustav

Have a look through this comprehensive site on potential damage to the Oil & Gas infrastructure in the path of Hurricane Gustav.

links

Link-fest