DJIM #12 2008

We don't like to dwell on the past, even if it's just last week, but what we experienced in all of 4 days last week may be remembered as a turning point down the road.   The BSC debacle, the commodity carnage, the FED cut(s), strengthening dollar may have intertwined in such a way that it signals a change of direction.   Still, even if we were all 95% sure of this, would we all throw our money into the market come this week?  Probably not, so let's not give a hoot about turning points and just take it day by day as we've been doing for a long time now.   Downside risk is not going away, even if the markets rally from here as the economy is no better shape than it was just days ago.  Volatility isn't going away either, we've had 28 days of +/- 1% days in the SPX already in 2008.   This week eyes will shift to Economic data and any pleasant surprises would fit perfectly in with last weeks action.    We're also about 2 weeks from a crucial earnings season kicking off and you know we don't believe in a market tanking just before such events. http://www.nasdaq.com/econoday/calendar/US/EN/New_York/year/2008/month/03/day/24/daily/index.html

As you know we didn't lose faith before the open Friday , even if we had every reason to be discouraged by the commodity free fall on the heels of a 420+  FED day.   We saw and still see the BSC and FED intervention on that Sunday as more integral to the market than the commodity shake up we witnessed.   The reports from GS and LEH were also very important ingredients for the financials and helps point to a bottom being put in on the sector.   This is much more important than any commodity bubble getting its due at this juncture in our view.   Early Thursday, we noticed IWM attempts at 67.40 and the more times you kick at the can, the better chance you have at a break move.  We also had some promise showing from GS/ LEH show up which coupled with the previous spelled a potential redemption day, we also noted the potential short covering to help out going into a long weekend.    The late afternoon was great and if playing our investment firms..GS, LEH you went into Easter weekend quite happy while the Bears were left scrambling and getting demoralized.   Being just under12400 DJIA at the close is significant, a move through here should take us to 12700-800 levels again.  

• So with this in mind and our readers, we've included a primary watch-trade list as of the close Thursday to take us into this trading week.  Setting this up relates to a Journal earlier in the week.  Some like the ETF's are for directional purposes on the market intraday, one like MF replaces the recent listed MBI/ABK to see trouble on the horizon intraday.  Stocks like AEM, SWC you don't see in Journal or alerts yet are there to monitor and trade a potential reversal in the Gold/silver miners at some point soon.  The other groups/ stocks you should know quite well from our pages.  Some like CHLB, SAM, HURC, LNN are recent EPS'ers of interest.   If say some stock is in the news premkt Monday, we would add it to our primary list and remove a Ag-chem stock like MON-CF to a secondary list b/c we really don't need 3 or 4 of them up on primary as they go through troubles now.  We don't need 5 Solars..Shippers on now either, we'll get all the signs needed from the ones we have up now to know if we should add a few more intraday to our main list.  This is a daily process, adding..subtracting..recycling stocks/sectors.  Simply, you don't need to complicate trading, you don't need tons of stocks to monitor or build yourself a wall of monitors to do well. 

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