02-23-14 Weekly Review & Watch-list

No real surprises this week as the S&P consolidated and distributed at the all time high resistance.  This market is really split in two right now, either you are a stock that is just blasting off to the upside or you are being ignored.  There are so many names out there getting crazy amount of momentum for reasons I have no idea.  I can understand the Teslas and the Facebooks but names like CBS and Hershey's I just don't get it, but that is the market we are in.  Biotech, utilities, semiconductors, and gold is where the money is flowing right now.  Real estate is also getting some attention as it tries to form a bottom.

02-16-14 Weekly Review & Watch-list

Well if you asked me, I'd say this week was awesome.  This sell off gave great risk/reward for the buyers and they took it higher without hesitation.. this was what the entire review last week was talking about.  I said last week that what I was doing was shorting weak stocks and buying strong ones, well all I'm doing now is buying strong ones because shorting weak ones isn't working.  I'm not looking for shorts just to be short, I'm trying to make money.  Lately I have been using a moving average setup that I really like (10, 20, 50 SMA) because it is shorter term and I can still read the price action very clearly.  I will likely stick with these.

A Quick Rant About This Market

It's been a while since I put out a post other than the weekly reviews (which will be coming out tonight) but I just really feel like I want to put this out there, so I hope you enjoy it and hope it inspires some thought.  I am constantly seeing people looking for any reason to short this market, in fact it reminds me of last year specifically the first and second quarters.  Contrarian traders are consistently on the wrong side of the trade and continue to get their head handed to them, yet they garner the most attention and the most emotion from retail traders.  Why aren't they ever right?  Where are all these new buyers coming from?  How long can a trend last for and what is the right way to be trading this market?

02-09-14 Weekly Review & Watch-list

First off I'd say that this week in the markets was pretty decisive, almost felt like 2013 price action.. imagine that.  There is talk going around that all these U.S. buyers are investors fleeing from emerging markets as the Fed pulls back on liquidity and causes trouble for them.  That may even be what the Fed is hoping would happen.. I mean it is their job to make sure stocks go up, right?  My strategy as of late was shorting the weak stocks and buying the strong ones and that has been working really well up until this week where I closed out a lot of short positions and entered into new longs.  I felt that the risk/reward was so good on the long side that it would be foolish to pass on them, so that's where I'm at for now.

02-02-14 Weekly Review & Watch-list

Overall a pretty quiet week on the indices while they are consolidating that big move lower from the previous week.  January has been lost and Yellen took over the Fed after Bernanke set her up with not one, but two tapers to deal with.  A lot of great trades came from the watch-list last week.  Something I caught myself doing last week was being a lot more short term than I intended to be when I moved back to trading options, so I have made a few minor changes to accommodate what I'm trying to do.  That's not to say I won't be trading short term setups, but I'd like to have more longer term (2-6 weeks) ones on my mind as well.  I have the moving averages saved in a study collection for when I need to look at them, but other than that it is just going to be price action and volume.