The post Market Speculator Part-Time | Swing Trade Report appeared first on Bulls on Wall Street.

The post Market Speculator Part-Time | Swing Trade Report appeared first on Bulls on Wall Street.

The post Market Speculator Part-Time | Swing Trade Report appeared first on Bulls on Wall Street.

The post Market Speculator Part-Time | Swing Trade Report appeared first on Bulls on Wall Street.

The post Market Speculator Part-Time | Swing Trade Report appeared first on Bulls on Wall Street.

At this hour (10pm central on Sunday), the asian markets have fallen off significantly with the TOPIX and NIKKEI leading the way (obviously).

There are numerous ways to interprate the fall-out from the Japanese disaster.

Here are a few thoughts to consider headed into Monday:

• rice crops will likely be devistated in Japan.. who will benefit?
• Japan will have to rebuild. Who benefits?  FLR and CAT.  Maybe copper, cement, steel companies
• US companies relying on chips (especially flash drives) may take a hit.. My guess is that the tech stock might be weaker than other sectors
• Might want to avoid insurance companies
• Consider the fear that will arise from fears of nuclear energy – avoiding nuclear power and considering coal, and natural gas.
• Oil demand will likely fall with Japan unable to consume at normal levels for a while
• We’ll possibly see a metals gap up –  silver and gold.
• Keep an eye on the nuclear reactors in Japan.  They need to get their power grid up for anything positive to happen.
• Watch copper this week. Could be some buy opportunities.

Market snapshot:

We are at a scary point in the markets. There has been plenty of distribution and little in the way of conviction buying.  Swinging is still difficult and I’m keeping swings at less than 10% of my portfolio until SPX pushes sma10 above sma20.

Swing Watch List Update:

For tomorrow, I’ve add a few stocks to the swing watch list. I don’t want to overd0 the list until we see some directional movements in the market. 

HCN – NEW. Ascending triangle at horizontal resistance.
WPI – NEW. Ascending triangle at horizontal resistance. Need to wait on breakout.
EP – NEW. Nice bounce off horizontal support. Would like to see it get through 23.6% fib retracement on longer term view.

F – NEW. Massive falling wedge.  Waiting for possible move out of wedge on engulfing Friday candle and some horizontal support.
ACE – NEW. Big shadow on Friday candle may signal reversal.
DE – NEW. Nice volume Friday and bounce off SMA100, horizontal resistance, and trendline support.

CAT – NEW. This is a Japanese rebuild play.  Currently holding support and recovering back above SM50. Not interested below.

The post WOW – Japan Takes Center Stage appeared first on Bulls on Wall Street.

OK, so today we had the ugly drop feared by swingers everywhere.  I didn’t trade it very well (more on that later).  Should swingers have been ready?  Were there signs (other than the consolidation in the SPX mentioned above)?  Well, I think there were.  Of course, we could not have predicted the Spanish credit rating slash or the fires shot at protesters in Saudi Arabia.  However,  we could have seen that the reversal was setting up.

Many of the following indexes must move up in order for the market to stay bullish.  If you see weaknesses in any of these, start watching your swings closer and assume the market might run into some challenges:

IYT – Transportation Index

You can see that the transports index has built in a head and shoulders and could easily fall from here.  It’s also struggled to stay above SMA50 which, until recently, was not an issue.

SOXX – Semiconductor index

The semis have shown a lot of weakness over the past week and fell convincingly below SMA50 yesterday – that’s a big red waiving flag to tell us to put more money back in our pockets.

KOL – Coal Index

Everyone was so surprised when China reported a trade imbalance with a substantial decrease in exports.  Well, what does this massive exporter need to drive an industry of exports – electricity.. and where does that come from?  COAL.  As a country hugely dependent on coal, should we have recognized that the global economy is slowing just based on the the recent decline in coal stocks?  I think  so.

The lesson learned today was simple – when you see a market consolidating, look under the hood… watch the industries that took the market to where it is and take a measure of health.  This will help you determine risk and how much of your portfolio you really want to expose.

Here’s a look at my current positions and I’ll point out a few mistakes I’ve made along the way.

Long CAT calls, HDY, MWA, BIOD, MCP calls, and POT calls.

I’m not happy with my HDY trade.  One of the worst examples of trade management and sticking to a stop. Let’s look at the chart (click for notes):

The second trade I’m unhappy with was not honoring my stop in MWA – I should have exited on Wednesday when it failed to get above Tuesday’s highs.

These two examples are particularly bad trades because I was ‘hoping’ they would turn in a market that’s clearly struggling.  The odds are stacked against me in these trades and the best approach is an exit.  This goes back to the point I made earlier.  Watching the overall market will help you evaluate risk and odds of profiting from positions you feel stuck in.

See you in the Boom Factory and stay in the game.  Read these rules for Trading in a choppy market – not a bad write up.

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