The market continues to bobble aimlessly. When I took off on a plane today, bound for Utah, the Dow was up 50. When I landed 90 minutes later, I was relieved to see it was down 20. I was afraid of another triple-digit up day in the face of yet more terrible economic news. The market's positive reactions to bad economic news is disconcerting. But I guess people want to think that dropping interest rates, as Bernanke keeps hinting he will do, is going to solve all our problems. I doubt it. The wall seems to be holding.
The Dow 30 pushed up against its broken trendline and, bless its heart, the trendline pushed the prices back down. Hold that line! Hold that line!
Looking at the daily graph of the Dow 30, we can see that the 50 and 100 day moving averages have plunged beneath the 200 day moving average, and the price is beneath all three. The price has managed to retrace back to the 50 day moving average, and I hope this is a turning point. I'm getting a little sick of waiting.
What's scary to me is this: it would make sense for the market to fall now. Every chart I look at tells me the same thing: "the rise is over! the market is going to fall now!" But the market loves to make fools out of people, particularly when things should behave this way or that. so - - paradoxical as it might seem - - I am concerned that things are so well poised for a fall now. Sad, isn't it?
And, in the background of all of this, the U.S. dollar continues to move toward the value of toilet paper.
On to some individual issues.........I bought puts on APOL again today. I did this profitably last week, and I'm jumping in again. I like this broken trendline and today's retracement.
I'm sorry to keep showing ATI, but I am madly in love with this chart. I have a ton of puts on this.
I got knocked out of JNPR, but once the prices got close to its trendline, I re-entered. It is interesting to me that today's high price was just one penny below that gap that took place just before the trendline break.
I've still got a lot of energy puts, including a big put position on OIH. With oil sky-high, this has been a tough hold, but hope springs eternal in the bearish breast.
A couple of specific energy puts I've got including SLB, whose price/volume divergence only strengthens my faith in this position.
And Exxon Mobil (XOM) which has done a terrific retracement to its broken trendline.
That's it for tonight. I'm heading back to the airport to go home. See you Thursday, and thanks, as always, for swinging by.