Let's just say Friday's USD+/ Oil steep slide led to a big upside day on the broad markets. Still, despite the huge slide in Oil, excluding the E&P energy Shaes, the damage was minimal to the rest of our commodity stocks we either monitor for direction and /or trade. This was a surprise following the commodity run of more than 5-6% mid week. A pullback possibility was noted before Friday's trading, the non-severity of the pullback was an opportunity to pocket gains as losses to any profits would have been minimal heading into a weekend.
Thanks to this 1-2 USD/ OIL punch, the brutal intra-week volatility/ pullback during the week would have been the topic of conversation coming into this trading week, instead the DJIA ended down a measly 32, SPX -6, NASD -38pts for the week. Volume continues to be extremely light and yr/yr comparisons are almost unbelievable, down at least 30%. As the usual course, we are not focusing on the technical which on the DJIA is one of a retracement back to an ascending wedge and it's potential resistance with an army of technical shorts possibly lining up. Instead, we continue to focus on individual groups and stocks. If we weren't open-minded and looking for new opportunities, we wouldn't have been ready for the mid-week commodity run or a solar opportunity, specifically in the ENER, SPWR alerts. Simply, the reality is it's a mess out there, but we're not giving up looking for a flower or two amongst the weeds. In regards to Solar, we are sticking to the core and that means SPWR ENER as our favorites and avoiding a spree into many of the cheaper ones that we followed before when there was a wild run on anything solar. Also note, we are avoiding the Steels as stock action, notably in X, is responding to continued weaker international spot pricing. Copper is showing better stability and FCX is getting some eyes on it as the best play on the group.
Monday, August 25, 2008 at 08:30AM