Good ole days ...

At least, judging from the performance of this market during the last few days, we got a glimpse of what the market was like back in the good ole days.   No matter how you see it,  the trading lately has been just crushingly painful for the bears (shorts).     Maybe, they are also responsible for this never ending rally we are currently enjoying.    We closed at SPX 833, going out near day highs.   Everything except the financials rallied today and the action was pretty broad based.   It's great to see others step up to the plate and lead today.  Transports broke through 50ma and the $SOX SMH  passed the hurdle noted yesterday (good signs, now hold!).   With regard to the financials, we aren't worried a bit because the monstrous gains they had during the past two weeks really need to be cooled off a bit.   Today the best performers of late and those that surged late yesterday took the day off, some profit taking, some rotation into other arms such as Asset Managers has been seen lately.    Even today's alerted stock ICE ($77 to $81 day high) benefit from recent headlines as they will eventually play a major role in the CDS clearing markets.   As long as the financials consolidate in a good range, everything has a chance to go up.    This is pretty much the underlying theme for this market lately.

At this point, we don't really care how high it can go or how much longer it'll last.   Until the market sentiment changes, we are staying on the long side.    Believe it or not, for the longest time, it felt this market had unlimited sell supply and therefore neverending selling pressure.    The last few days felt money is being poured back into this market.    We really haven't had such "late day rally and take out day high" kind of action in a long while.    For this market to demonstrate this kind of behaviour in spite a recent 25% gain already, it's just remarkable.    This is where we have to make up our mind and perhaps change our mentality towards a more neutral, if not a somewhat bullish stance on the outlook for the remainder of this year.     Financials so far have been stabilized as a result of more money being put into the system.   It may not be the best solution, but at least most of us agree that given time, it can work.    With recent news that home sales are picking up slightly, that's also another positive sign for the bulls.

Commodities, all of us must be loving them these days.    Everything from FCX  to POT  to CLF  are having a great run recently.    We already discussed this in detail last week on why we like this sector and this week has been proved to be nothing short of great action.    If you look at the 6 months charts on plays such as MOS MON POT (BHP for POT??)  *( March 31st is a very date/ USDA supply and demand planting preview), OIH or the index itself $CRX,  it's as if we are on a verge of a major breakout.    The potential is there and we just have to wait to see how it plays out.    However, we do have to keep an open mind here because alot of the news lately has been quite bullish for the sector.    If the breakout is going to happen,  now is actually a good time.

Approximately a week into April, we'll officially kick off the earning season.    This means we'll get a more in depth look of the corporate earning front and as well as gauge the investor reaction off those reports.  We have a strong feeling that we might actually get a few nice earnings winners this time around.   Considering how bad equities have been beaten down, we might get a nice surprise or two and ignite some serious buying interest.   

A few days still left till Q end and todays broad action was a sign of performance anxiety from the 'Whales'.

Oh yeah, speaking of good ole days, today's Solar frenzy  is assuming the best, important details are missing in the China paper.  Also, a China subsidy would not be a revenue pop for US based solar co's as it would favor 'in- house' co's.   A short play possibility here as firms most likely to knock this.

DJIM 48, 2009

First of all, we wish everyone just had a great thanksgiving holiday.    The past week was "supposed" to be a quiet week where the focus was supposed to be on turkey as oppose to the market.    Instead, we had this ‘little ;)’ announcement from Dubai that it's planning to delay the debt payment of its state controlled company, Dubai World.    As we know with news rocked the western world,  hopefully you didn’t react like “Tiger Woods” by panicking and fender bender-ing a fire hydrant and a tree early that morning!   Both the European and Asian market took a hefty beating and our futures pointed to a nasty ripple open for Friday as the sudden return of ‘credit risk‘ returned seemingly.   They definitely picked a right time to do this, eh?

The actual ‘leverage’ exposure, as far as the US banks is concerned, is very minimal and we think this is containable.    The fact we had a huge gap down at the open on Friday morning was inevitable due to the overseas weakness.    Also, there's also the so called "flight to safety" trade where people taking on safer investment while losing some risky ones.    For DJIM, we had one question in our mind this holiday.     Didn't anyone see this coming from Dubai?     To us, Dubai is nothing more than a glorious version of "Vegas".    With the number of projects they have going on over there, they'd better hope that they can attract more than just the rich folks.    By now, we know that most of the exposure are from the European banks and that is something reassuring to know for the U.S. market.

The biggest question right now, come Monday, is whether this Dubai news would continue to shake investors' confidence in the equity market and flee to other safe assets.    If Friday was a good indication of how things would come in the coming week, we are pretty confident things won't be bad.    The volume on Friday looks pretty good, given the fact the market only opened for half a day.    Had the market opened for the full day,  we would have some very healthy volume and turnover.    This to us, means that many folks were being pulled from their holiday and back onto their ‘blackberry’ trading desks to deal with the market.    No doubt, many folks saw this as an opportunity to buy into weakness while others would see this as a reason to park it in for the year.      For DJIM, we see this weakness as an opportunity as we don't believe U.S. market participants would be as concerned about Dubai as the European players.     On the other hand,  there's really no other alternative investments to pile your money into.   The so called "safety assets" don't really earn you much and if this Dubai debacle turns out to be nothing but a short term manageable headache, we believe the funds will flow back into the equity market.

As far as plays go, some of our latest plays behaved really well on Friday.   RINO and TRIT  even managed to tack on some respectable gains.    Other plays such as AIXG, CLF, CTRP, MELI,  GMCR... all traded as if the market was down just a couple of points.     Coming Monday,  we'll have most traders back from the holiday and we'll see how they digest the recent events.    We also have data from this Black Friday sales event which will give traders plenty of catalyst to vote their opinion.   In addition,  we have job report in the coming week,  so this will be a pivotal week for the remainder of the trading year.

It's all good...

So long, Dubai!   Since the Dubai news hit, we suspected that the news just would not be able to bring down this market. ..“we see this weakness as an opportunity.“..“Dubai stuff is really a non story here..”(alert Monday).   Today, all the talk is what we’ve been saying, except many who were drawn into the fear hype are only hearing these words in the media today, sidelined with many missed SPX points and individual stocks making new highs.  Getting in tomorrow for a Dubai trade is a little too late.  The past couple of trading days have been great to our latest bolded stocks as they've been making new highs....AIXG (CREE/VECO  alert Nov 24),  RINO , Nov 20th (new adds to DJIM, AIXG , RINO ) to our dip list either because we know what they are capable of on a good day(s)..MELI, CTRP TRIT CLF…and CAAS  20+% in a few days.  

As we have pointed out over the weekend and yesterday,  Dubai is likely an isolated agenda which is “containable” and regional.    The overwhelming appetite for equity market is the most important theme we have in this market right now.  That’s why the premise of the never-ending underlying bid is and has been the overwhelming theme here for months.  Simply, this has meant buyers are there for support and any sell offs should be used to buy your favorite DJIM stocks if they get hit or not.   

As of the closing tonight, SPX stood at 1108, smacking against the recent high.    We have mentioned couple of days ago that investors have this urge to get returns off their cash.    Well, you aren't going to get any return from money market or treasury bills.   Nor you can get any return from sitting on the sidelines and watch every single one of your favourite stock go up without your involvement.     Even though we aren't the big money managers,  we can understand EXACTLY how they feel if they are underperforming.    By sitting in cash, or being cautious, the money mangers are under performing even the least experienced yahoo traders who flip SEED  as a hobby.   This may sound harsh but the message is clear out there, "You have to be IN this market to get SOME return!"

Now we got our message off our back, we'll talk about some of our plays.    On our second thought, there's really not much to talk about other than the fact most of our plays are cruising.    Sure, some of the plays may act a little overheated, but we still have to be thankful for the kind of  excellent action they've given us.    Some of the Chinese (bullet point#2), more positive data here today and plays continue to be very hot and that's a very positive development going into the year end.   We’re also adding CAGC  to our trading list as Ferts are hitting new highs.

Only disappointment today is the GS/JPM  Financial bullet point from yesterday.  The more we think of it... this sector may lag for rest of year and not stop the market as long as the group just holds flat.   Bullet point #3 from yesterday, SEMI’s  (up 3%)led the move today with more companies (ALTR eg.) providing market boosting updates and  2010 forecasts out this morning.  

However, we also want to mention that it's ok to trim off some of the extended positions here.   We have done so today, but we'll remain on the aggressive end on any more pullbacks.  Due to what we see in the market today, we will look tomorrow at getting possibly back into a casino 'trade' with WYNN, LVS , the two names we play here.  We also see shippers  turning here and into year end as alerted today.    The market may consolidate some tomorrow, but we think it's a stock pickers market going forward and so individual groups will still attract attention, even if the broad market tape is not doing much. 

Before you know it,  this market may leave you behind once again so you have to absolutely have some holdings going into the year end.     We still like the idea of a balanced portfolio although we have been tilting our weighting toward the smaller stuff over the past few days.

Bottom line, we have a job report to look forward to this Friday and based on the market sentiment, the number may not even matter that much.   Folks, we are right against the recent high here and maybe we can just get lucky this time.