The TRIN-dicator
Believe it or not, my TRIN-dicator is still flashing an overbought condition. While the TRINQ over on the NASDAQ was solidly in selling-pressure country, the TRIN stayed under 1.0 for almost the entire day Monday. And that is very odd because breadth was very bad. I’m not sure what to make of it. Perhaps a lot of stocks were being sold on light-volume, and a small number of other stocks were being bought on very heavy volume.
If you have ideas, please post. It would be interesting to know which stocks were being bought on heavy volume, if that was in fact happening.
On CNBC Monday morning, Jim Cramer raved about the low TRIN, saying it was a fantastic buy signal. I must say that I am appalled by his ignorance. Every trader who uses the TRIN knows that single-day readings mean nothing and that you have to use a moving average. In fact, the guy who invented the TRIN writes for Cramer’s website! How can Cramer have traded for decades and not know how to read the TRIN?
The Never-Ending Market
This watching the futures and overseas markets all night is really wearing me out. So, I don’t have a good in-depth analysis for Tuesday, but I agree with David, we are hitting a lot of extreme readings and a selling climax may be near.
As I logoff at 1:00am EST, the futures are making a bounce, though you need a microscope to see it.
The Next Bear-Market Rally
The March-to-May bear-market rally was very long, impressive, and sucked a lot of people in. The July-to-August bear-market rally – not so much. Though some sectors were moonshots. If we do get a selling climax soon, I’m thinking that the next bear-market rally might be even less impressive than the last one…
XLF Options
Can somebody update us on that gigantic slug of XLF options that we were discussing a couple of weeks ago? Maybe it will help us see where the big options-trading hedge funds will attempt to pin the market this week. Not that a global financial meltdown is the ideal time to attempt to bend the market to your will…
Watch the comments for updates throughout the day.
The market has the FED’s decision and they approve: XLF is accelerating up
What the f–ck is going on now?
Dow was up 100 and the Naz was down 16? This is so fun.
hey tony got a price target to sell AIG?
News that AIG might get gov assistance. Good play Tony/K.
Dusty,
Oooo, don’t tell K and Tony!
Matt,
AIG may be another pay the bondholders, screw the stock holders. I’d rather just give them a 1-month loan and then take them to BK if they don’t get their sh*t together.
as of now i got
SPY @ 119.70
AIG @ 2.56
WOW, playing Fed days is fun. At least a buck or two for each change of command.
ok sold at 3.25 don;t like the action i saw just now.
BIG NEWS LEHMANS IS BEING BOUGHT OUT BY BARCLAYS
eheheh pooch. that’s why AIG going up in hopes it too might be bought out before it crumbles.
When they told me to expect volatility I had no idea.
“they just bought stock. you saw them buy stock” puke
can you say my first day trade i had a case of the jumpys haha im still happy i came out with a small profit
Did you guys see this? Hilarious!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/16/cnn_broadcast/
Watch that S&P sweet spot 1225-30
This blog is great. Thank you all.
Matt,
your friend is on Bloomberg tele.
Rich you holding overnight if S&P 1225 doesn’t get touched ???
Crash,
Those were two guys from the Howard Stern show. The Register is silly to think that they were Lehman employees.
Matt
OMG i’m having a seller’s remorse again
sold at 3.25 aig is at 4.54 and climbing. shall i now jump out the window? 
oyyyyyy noyyyyyyyyyy noyyyyyyyyyyyyy coulda had 100%
ok i will stop
15 more S&P points and Iam outa here
Double top on ICE intraday. Still caughed up a couple of bucks after that bottom (in the 60′s).
Rich,
If you see this…
If the S&P can hit the 1230 mark at days end, do you think that is the top?
K, i have a limit sell of $5
Dressguard,
Gross was on CNBC earlier. I always thought that he was a bond guy, and now we find out he was writing CDS insurance on AIG!
Matt
Pullback possible here to 1192-98, and then a spike higher into the close to the 1220s-30s.
Back tomorrow.
Can you believe that BBT? Sucker is up over $2 again! Talk about double-dipping.
Paul, if they do get a bridge loan from the gov, i def think it will be short term but it will still be a quick fix.
Tony i sold too fast but if i’m correct your limit might have executed?
i like this day trading idea. once i have at least 25k i will look into it.
Crash, yes, probably a 4th-wave top.
Pooch, would not hold overnight.
Good luck!
No cut during the IndyMac panic. No cut during the AIG panic. I’m starting to detect a trend here…
You would think that the market would have crashed with no rate cut today. But when the market is deeply oversold, it is almost bulletproof. Sometimes it will drop further, but most of the time you get a bounce no matter what the news is.
Nice scalp, K!
I’m still working on one of my own with CEG. Man, I wish there were more lemmings attacking stocks for absolutely no reason.
“This is the most fun I’ve had without laughing”. (Woodie Allen – “Annie Hall”)
so anyone expect a good day tomorrow? i want to make sure my SPY position will be bearable for a day while i’m not active at the computer ( read:mobile)
and George this is the most fun i’ve had too.
Could this be a $10 day for ICE???? From the bottom, only $4 more to go.
Paul CEG nice scalp going now.
Matt, Rich, Paul, Tony & Gang,
You all are SUPER!!!
looks like the pro’s are trying to close us down at 0 today?
Interest rate cuts became a blunt weapon. Why waste money and energy on that? Interest rates are low enough. The FED would have implicitly announced a rate cut. I was a bit astonished by the immediate reaction of the market. You can’t always drag Ben around by the nose ring.
Consolidation on the SPY 10-min?
What do you think of these interest rates?…
LIBOR Soars Amid Global Credit Seizure
Bloomberg is reporting Money-Market Rates Double Amid Global Credit Seizure.
The cost of borrowing in dollars overnight more than doubled to the highest since 2001 as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and credit downgrades of American International Group Inc. led banks to hoard cash.
The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that financial institutions charge each other to borrow soared 3.33 percentage points to 6.44 percent today, its biggest jump in at least seven years, according to the British Bankers’ Association. The rate was as low as 2.07 percent in June.
Banks are driving up short-term lending rates on concern that AIG, the biggest U.S. insurer, will follow Lehman into bankruptcy and leave financial institutions with losses on $441 billion of credit derivatives. Central banks around the world pumped more than $210 billion into the financial system as they sought to alleviate the credit-market seizure.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to the lowest level in five years as investors sought the safety of government debt. The cost of buying protection against default by Wall Street banks soared, as credit-default swaps on Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. all traded at records. Average yields on overnight U.S. commercial paper backed by assets such as credit cards and car loans jumped 54 basis points to 3.45 percent, the highest since March.
“I have never seen anything remotely like this. The money market was typically the one thing that always worked,” said Luca Jellinek, head of interest-rate strategy in London at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. “It’s the cardiovascular system of the financial body. When this happens, it’s like a heart attack.”
Crash, this downturn is not over. People are scared, but right now it’s cooling down. For how long? 24 hours or 24 days?
I’ll be back shorting soon.
Keep or throw out SPY for the night?
i use thinkorswim ( never a slow trade ) &
td ameritrade terrrrrrible execution again
i fear keepin all my money at 1 broker
any ideas 4 another broker
Anyone taking/holding any positions overnight? Sold my little SPY scalp for tiny profit.. but was just fun to hold.
I wouldn’t be long anything overnight
Ave Guy,
I use Ameritrade and Scottrade. I have not had problems with either of them.
The heart attack with a ticker symbol (SKF) is going straight to $120.
2 day trades.
SPY 119.7 out 121.75 lol
XLF back above $19.75 support line.. Didn’t act as much resistance on the way up through it. GS still well below the $150 level.
What a Murderers Row of sluggers we have on this site! Several of which killed it on the downside yesterday, and then again on the upside today.
Amazing.
Nicely done everybody.
Sitting long overnight.
Nice trades K
got out of all my aig at 4.45
I’m long healthcare and MSFT, but mostly cash/neutral
guys did you see a selloff around 4:03? apple went down a lot SKF went up a lot. that was some late unloaders or late filed orders or something
and thanks charlie but i think i’m done daytrading for the week hehe 2 already.
still hanging onto apple. the rest is cash
Tried to sell my Q’s into the close but they didn’t want them,,mistake i will get twice the at the open tomorrw watch and see.12300
called td up asked y they filled at limit
when $ was well blow for more then a
minute …..they said fill at limit is all we have to do
K look at APPL’s 50-day and 200-day average vs the rest of the Techs (for bellweathers I use XLK ^NDX AAPL GOOG YHOO RIMM ORCL SAP MSFT DELL HPQ LNVGY.PK INTC IBM CSCO NOK NT ALU T VZ) .
The only two folks doing well are SAP and IBM; and today HPQ ’cause of the EDS cuts.
does anybody trade POT? check out the price action….its a fairly reliable stock to trade if you buy at near term support levels and allow at least $1 of stop protection. my last 8 out of 10 trdes in this name have been very profitable.
Well, I think that we’ll get a small “the financial world didn’t end” rally in the morning and hit Rich’s target of 1220 (although I did notice he hedged like a good politician and said not to hold overnight positions
).
MS killed their top & bottom line numbers:
$1.31 vs $0.78est EPS
$8.0B vs $6.3B revenue
XLF will stay above $20, although I can’t believe it is this high already.
UYG (ultra financials) soared 11% today and I am ahead 18% from the price I paid in the morning.
But did not have the guts to take a large position.
Rich’s taret is 1230
VIX peaked at the open at 33.7. Ended the day at 30.5. Watch it fall further tomorrow. Treasury yields (90 day) at 0.75%. Scarily low.
Dblwyo I had a $145 sell on apple and then i had missed the rally to $142 and change. so I held it for one more day heck it might be a good decision if we rebound this week somewhat. i can get the price i want
A rear-view mirror on XLF and the market:
Pre-open, expectations of a huge down day (300pts+) with futures down 100, unless the FED cuts or AIG is fixed, neither of which happened.
XLF was down to 18 (-5.7%), finished near 20.2 (+5.8%).
52wk low was 16.77, which we never got within 5% of. Perhaps a short rally as Matt and Rich suggest, then XLF will test its lows.
I sold calls on my 9 % allo to QID at the open.
sept 50 calls that is…figured there’d be a bounce.
I’m stuck with 3 individual stocks that i bought because of “this and that” and held because of “this and that”.
Any thoughts on any of these would be appreciated:
bce.to uts.to MGU
i’d short lehman from 0.3 to 0.15 lol
i already pushed my luck with day trading tho not ready to go margin and short
hmm
i wish that is me some day and retire the year after.
The World Record for the largest portfolio return is held by Dan Zanger who returned a staggering 29,233% in a single year.
During the high flying late 90s Dan Zanger grew his portfolio from $10,000 to over $42 million trading the stock market. Through his website chartpattern.com Dan now runs a daily newsletter sharing his stock picks that has made some of his readers over a million dollars.
K – AAPL looks like it’s headed south to me but maybe you’ll get your bounce. You play poker ?
Rich’s 1330 ALSO looks to be the 38.2% Fib up, give or take, from the 02-now where we hit the 50% retracement at 1173 if I recall (h/t Barry R.)
Matt – how’s your TRIN doing ? Looks like it hit you low test again ?
Crimson Ghost,
Well, at least you had the guts to go long in the morning. I wouldn’t touch a trade like that. You will probably do well tomorrow with MS’s nice results.
Larry,
I never looked at the VIX towards the end. VIX>30 & XLF>20: one of these doesn’t belong. AIG resolution will likely decide which one gets hammered: either VIX below 27 or XLF <19.1.
Dblwyo
i’ve bluffed plenty of times in poker and gotten good hands. but that’s what i’m trying to avoid here. it’s like bluffing with the best poker player. you win once you lose a million times.
had i been watching apple instead of AIG and SPY at that time when it passed $142 i would have sold.
I do appreciate your advice and I will let you know when i’m finally free of apple.
we may have actually hit a low on the XLF yesterday, assuming AIG is thrown a life preserve. but that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of opportunities to trade it. look at the names in the index….they are mostly large banks that will likely weather the storm. the better index to short is prob the regional bank index which has a lot of banks with oversized amounts of r.e. exposure.
Uuups – 70bln _additional_ write-offs in the third quarter for some unknown counterparties. No, you can’t stuff defaulted bonds into level3 assets at nominal value…
“Lehman bonds and loans that were trading at 80 cents to 90 cents in the dollar last week are now worth little more than 40 cents, according to Deutsche Bank’s credit market experts. In other words, about $70bn of Lehman debt held by other institutions has been wiped out. The holders of that debt are facing huge potential losses with untold ramifications of their own.”
Larry,
I agree. I will be back shorting soon too. The real economy is still contracting, and the business cycle just does not turn on a dime. How wonderful another “The Worst is Over” rally would be for the next shorting gold mine.
Matt
K – not my business and you’re a better poker player than I…but those names I listed are tracked in a watchlist portfolio to judge the sector. By who’s up over their 50da, 200da and Yr H/L’s. SAP is the only strength, IBM was coasting on engineering it’s EPS. But take a look at the chart for SAP. Not doing badly at all.
Matt up in the open until mid morning then slibe into end of week. Of course we are getting up to the minute on AIG…the gov is considering assitance
SAP actually seems 59 if the momentum continues. ADX 14 shows more buyers than sellers lately. And I already appreciate your opinion. you said you saw $150′s and $150′s came. i just was a stubborn person and that’s about it. First I was addicted to BRLC (back in the days when it was from $7 to $11 where i made profit then rode it down) and now Apple seems to have taken it’s place. I am tho trying to be disciplined and also have each stock lose just 1.5% of my total portfolio before i dump it.
(being young stubbornness takes over sometimes)
Dblwyo,
Yes, the TRIN is still down at an overbought reading. These big opening gaps down take a lot of buying power to overcome.
Matt
i like this yahoo news headline
“Forget the lipstick, economy takes over campaign “
If keeping the Public Money safe during times of financial crisis is important, then McCain has first-hand experience. Just not the type we want.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
Rich we still tag 1225-30before the next leg down
futes down big AH
thanks for the link Paul.
pooch 2 futures look up to me and the dow must be glitching. i’m using ino.com so i might be misinformed
Whee “Treasury Said to Be Considering AIG Conservatorship” Bloomberg flash news.
SPX mini’s at 1204, down 9.75 (.8%). What a world.
I see qid @ 49.81 per yahoo vs 49.22 @ the close…
weeel look at AIG hehe 2.10
tony i think any scalp we made was awesome. you more than me hehe
I dumped my SPY puts for a nice profit in the morning after I read through my notes and saw “screwed by the FED” more than once on a trade.
I was ready to go long on a quick day trade on something like BAC or MER in the afternoon and then got side tracked when I took delivery of my new 24″ monitor. Completely missed the FED announcement. Oh well. It’s probably for the best.
I will impatiently await the next shorting opportunity. All cash for now.
Reserve Money Fund Falls Below $1 a Share, Suspends Withdrawals on Lehman
Reserve Primary Fund, a money-market mutual fund with $64.8 billion in assets as of Aug. 31, fell below $1 a share in net asset value because of losses on debt issued by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Investor redemptions will be delayed as long as seven days, the fund’s owner, New York-based Reserve Management Corp., said today in a statement. Withdrawals requested before 3 p.m. New York time today will be paid at $1 a share.
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a5O2y1go1GRU&refer=home
and wow SNDK 56% AH
Rich still looking for 1225-1230 tomorrow? Been on hold now for 15 minutes with ameritrade going to chew them a new asshole ,I want those Q’s at a buck,no excuse for there f–k up.
Let’s all hope that things get better now … not!
read this and look at the chart
http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2008/09/lets-all-hope-that-things-get-better.html
Sounds like the bridge loan came thru for AIG 75-80 billon tha its what was just reported.
damn i guess that’s good.
looks like govt to take 80% stake in AIG per the fannie/freddie model. should be positive for mkt and neg for anyone in AIG equity. AXA is really taking it…they are top holders of AIG, Fannie, Freddie and Bear (i think).
well I have what might be a silly question for the thread :
GS – don’t they have less competiition now, when/if things turnaround – so could they be a buy at some point ?
after you might be onto something
Ummm… I first posted this GS idea yesterday afternoon. Go back in the comments and look. See how good my memes are? They get in your head and you have no idea where they came from! That’s how I control the market!