Shakedown..

'Breakdown....Takedown....Everybody wants into the crowded line... Breakdown....Takedown...You're busted...Let down..your guard..blah blah ..you're busted!".  Yeah, we're humming a guys tune who probably already had a beard when we born!.... but hey, what's the ruckus today?..We still in the loop.  Cheer up, it's not the end of the world!.   You know what was looking like the end of the world?....

The market being up something like 24 of 28 days!!.   What percentage is that?.   Sure , ain't Shaq's free throw percentage!.  The point is simple, what the "Disney" did you expect to happen sooner than later as we ran the market higher and higher.  Today should not be a shock to any of us. If you've ridden the DJIM plays recently, you are probably safely out by today anyway on most positions with nice gains..   But seriously, if the market shakedown scared you today, you still had a perfect storm to exit with gains in tow today.   Why...you say?

Let's see DOW down 147, NASDAQ down 43.   What really stunk the DJIM joint out?    Well, percentage wise it was NGA!.    But, we've all expected and actually welcomed a decent fall after this 40% run with DJIM hands all over it..   This was going to happen, no matter if the market got smacked or not today.   NGA was prime for it.   Besides the NGA bit,   there was not much damage to anything you might be holding off DJIM. You still could walk away today all in one piece if that's your choice.

FWLT  TNH  SPAN  CPY  FTK  IDSA  FSLR  KRSL  ADPI  are some recent DJIM names traded that managed to post green end of day.  Tomorrow..all these can get the smackdown and other barely reds like TRCR  LXU  MA  HAYN  NTLS (1% or lower) might as well.    What you had today is exit opportunities to leave with almost all of your recent gains in these names.   The next day you might not!.     Be it tomorrow or any other time in the market, if you survive one day...you might not the next if the slide continues.    What we hate is to be part of any domino effect, so today we did some selling into this orderly action of our closely followed/held stocks.  We don't want to blow the past months of good work out the window.   Safe than sorry heading into a weekend at this point.   Still...there was no action in any DJIM recent play that money screamed get me out of here...fast! .  We like the group we are covering at this time and will monitor closely as always.

As full time traders, we look to end of day for some fire sales on our favorite winners lately.  We've talked about buying a pullback for days on NGA...last night the last.    What we said today in the forum as it traded $13.80-14.00 from it's highs, is the market conditions today basically stamped out a chance for a orderly pullback and buy possibility that we expected from it before weeks close.   If the market (NASD) is down 20 points,  we do not know if panic will set in on any individual stock and take it down further.   We can't buy such a fresh pullback as NGA hung around $14 at 2pm!.   As a trader member pointed out minutes later, "would rather buy a pullback within the context of a stronger market day... Opportunities are made up easier than losses.".    Minutes later NGA crumbled to 13.20.   So how do you know when a pullback is sufficient?...is it the one down to $13-8-14.00 or will there be another as later today to 13.20?....We simply don't know and we're not going to guess at $14 with a falling market.    Basically, why play with fire as the market starts to crisp and burn.   Simply, we wait till end of day to decide if we want any.   We do it with strong stocks to buy in or add more and this is still the way we go if considering to recycle a recent big winner on a dip.   End of day.    Yes, we picked up small amounts of LXU, NGA  end of day.  This is nothing in size to when we were playing these recently.  We all should have enjoyed these 2 runs, we are not blowing it away with a substantial position now on a dip in a falling market today.    If any sign of momentum comes Friday in NGA, we'll be there in sizes again.    Call it another starter to monitor today, that's all!.   Still, the issue with NGA should not be if it catches a pullback and heads to $15 tomorrow.  What's 13s-low 14's to 15's at this point when the play has been here since a premkt alert at 9+ and soon after buy in low $10's. If you won big from low 10's already, what's the rush now?. Let it sink in and let it show a definite change in trend.  Is this a possible secondary leg coming up?.   Was this the retracement we were waiting for?.   We'll know soon enough (Friday).  We just went through IDSA remember, so you know what can happen.  What it might do at /if $15+ is a whole new different leg and we'll decide then how to approach it.

For those new here, our Aert-Comments are either our buy-ins or leads we are considering for a buy.  Today was a nice combo to an alert from Monday on FRPT to go with our buy in alert on SPAR today.  Both had stellar days in a bad market and were involved in the same contract.  Yeah looks like Cramer gave a hand to our pick ups again today.   We were oblivious to who or what or why...we just saw momentum happen at different times today for these names.  The idea was here Monday following the Armor Holding M&A activity for a look at  FRPT with its chart, today it paid off as FRPT and the company making the chassis (SPAR) for it all won. SPAR last trades at 31.60-32 AH. 

Small Caps...

The small caps definitely outperformed the rest of the market today.    Perhaps, fittingly, the lagging action finally moved to our neck of the neighbourhood.    RUT index was the strongest among all the indices and it shows in majority of stocks on our play list.   In fact, everything seemed to be green today all across the board.  Our hunch that the NASD/small cap play catch up in last nights Journal was clear early today with the NASD climbing to almost 30+ and DJIM small caps in tow.   If Dow hadn't reversed intraday, we are sure that some of the bigger stuff of our small cap world would've closed much better.   There was some excellent action in MA CROX early..oh well, such is life, we can't always wish for a perfect scenario and we'll just have to take today as an overall good day.

Onto some plays here...

NGA, now that this one made the IBD list, why is it still going up?    Why not?  Again, before the split announcement, we were much more bullish on the potential of this play.   The split, now come think of it, may just add an unwanted twist to an otherwise great story/play.   From the look of it today, momentum is still there and the stock notched a new high off very good volume.  This is what we wanted, a NCH.  How do we approach this one now?   Much like what we did with GROW back then when we rode it from $30 to $70(pre split), we play till the music stops.     We'd be watching this 9 ema religiously and the higher NGA trades, the more cautious we'd get and smaller the size we'd trade on.  There was no monkey business and the stock carried on without the usual IBD shenanigans. To us this was a good sign.    The easiest of the easy money, however, in our opinion, was made from $10 to $15.   That run-up had the great probability with limited downside and lots of liquidity.   So folks, take this one as a good lesson if you hadn't made much off this one.    A play like this will come again, sooner or later.

FWLT 4%, triple digit club, enough said!   We cashed out some around $100 and will see if this one can take out the psychological level and move into a new trading territory.    The story is definitely not over by any means and we feel this one may last a long while on our play list.

NTLS 2.2% RCCC 3.4% CUB 1.6% AFAM 4%, these three keep on rocking and they are up like most other small caps.   We've been very happy with these quite runners so far and we aren't doing much with them unless they show sign of stalling.

SPAR 6% FRPT 5%, these two made a b/o today and we are treating them as a pair trade that moves together.   We were adding/ trading some today but are keeping our time frame short

USU, even though this one trades heavy, we like the way it closed today and we think its business is independent of the overall market sentiment.

DXPE, "load, weekend alert, gap, dump",  oops, did we just give out the secret of a certain trading guru? lol. SYNL and now DXPE back to back.  In fact, we'd like this move much much more without its status being "stock of the week" freebie.   Given the statistical result of past "stocks of the week", we'd be a bit more cautious if still thinking about chasing the move.

Even TRT answered our question from last night...it bounced...imagine if didn't on a day/ set up like todays!.  We'll see if it gets to highs before considering it again for more than a quick flip opportunity.