(CLICK ON THE CHARTS FOR A LARGER VIEW)
TSLA at the end of the day – net up 94%.
BABA at the end of the day – net up 52%.
AAPL at the end of the day – net up 14%
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NFLX at the end of the day trade – net down 43%.
#DayTrading stocks in the “Fool’s Game”
Don’t quite have it together yet, but am working on developing a strategy to day trade stocks mostly because I’ve been told it can’t be done.
It is based on the basic idea of buying calls and puts as a simple way to play options, calling it, tongue in cheek, “the Fool’s Game”:
The game has been played mostly with SPY options for the liquidity, the three-times-a-week expiration days, and the measure of market breadth they provide.
But what about stocks?
They have to be liquid and as close to expiration as possible – weeklies. And they have to be big prominent popular stocks. To start off I’ve selected AAPL of course (it practically is the market on a weekly options basis), and FB, BABA, NFLX, TSLA. All solid, sometimes big, movers. But even with these one can’t eliminate the randomness (sometimes they move with the rest of market, sometimes they don’t) and the risk of news out of the blue related solely to the individual stock itself.
Still, as the great market wizard Trader Vic Sperandeo once said: “if it moves, I’ll probably try to trade it”
So stock options on a day trade using strikes close to the money on the open and closed at the end of each day. As I said above not completely confident in this but today TSLA gave a glimpse into the possibilities. This is a strategy for day trading, but it is likely it will be more suited to scalping.
On the chart below, I’ve color-coded my buy and sells signals (each trader needs to work out their own). Simply put, I say to myself “buy the yellow, sell blue.” In TSLA today, a trade set at $10K (to easily show the percentage gain) in the nearby out of the money 295 call (TSLA opened at 292.11) resulted in a 74% gain ($7,400) in just under two hours, a scalp sort of…
I suspect today was a best-case scenario but maybe not…
To be continued…
(click on the chart for a larger view)
Here’s a sneak peak as possible a best-case
$SPY – it doesn’t even rhyme, it repeats?
History…
Back in December there was this post:
$SPY – Simple black candle tops…
In which it was noted:
Again and again, market upswings end in black candles – a hanging man, a shooting star, a dreaded doji, or just a sign after six days up and two blasts of nothing-much news the buyers get tired. Not always it’s a black candle ends the rally, but it happens often enough, me thinks, for swing traders to take notice.
And it was further noted going into that December black candle:
“If I had to guess, I’d pick the 281 neighborhood as a place where the SPY may settle this trip up (see the chart). Maybe even a bit higher. It may not take long or it may chop up until January. After that all indications are we have not seen the eventual lows of this bear.
The December black candle (see the chart below) started the plunge into the December 26th buy signal from which we have rallied again to…you guessed it…280 on the SPY! Lots of traveling around in the market to go almost no where. Swing traders love this — after all what a rally! Long-term holders must sit grateful that it’s not as bad as it was…but is it going to get any better for them?
Well, we’ll see. Like last time we were here, there are again simple black candles everywhere: besides SPY (the chart below), and QQQ they are in a slew of ETFs – TAN, FAS, SOXL, FNGU, TNA, TQQQ, UPRO — as well as DB and C in the banks and no less than eight staring me in the face in my nifty-50 stock list (that a lot for a single pattern all at once).
So what’s it mean? Maybe nothing since all-important long-term breadth continues to rise, but then short-term breadth (measured by the McClellan Oscillator, $NYMO), continues to wind down (see the lower portion of the chart below), giving warning signs of a turn to the downside coming near. To keep it simple, let me say it will not surprise me if a dip starts Tuesday and goes down a while.
(click on the chart for a larger view)
#IPOs for “Dummies” – $GOSS, $ALEC, $HARP on buys
Took a look at some recent IPOs since this is one of the easiest trades any trader and investor can make.
I don’t mean being on the inside, or some investment house’s favorite client, or some politician on the take. This when to buy a newly-issue stock offering AFTER it come public.
The strategy is outlined in this post below:
Don’t mean to insult all those guys who went to Harvard and Wharton and Stern, but simple is best and there is no simpler trade than this.
Note the range on the first day of the IPO’s trading. The buy signal is a close above the high. It is too difficult usually to short these stocks so let’s set that aside for now. The stop loss after the buy is up to the individual trader’s or investor’s risk tolerance. It a can be as close as the price coming back below the first day’s high or as far away as falling through the first’s low.
Below are the charts of the selected recent examples for the stock symbol GOSS, ALEX, and HARP. I have no idea what these companies do nor how qualified they were to sell stock to the public.
This purely a technical analysis entry signal. GOSS was a buy above $19 on today’s open is currently up 1.9%; ALEC was above 19.50 on today’s open is up 4.9%; and HARP was a buy on Friday’s open and is at the moment up 6.1%. The numbers in the white flags on the lower right of each chart is the dollar gain per $10K invested.
Needless to say, as indicated by those quick gains, the first-day high is an important line to play.
(click on the chart panel for a larger view)
#MarketTiming – the rally to fool everyone continues
Been on vacation and been lazy so haven’t updated this blog for a month or so.
No matter. Nothing has changed much since first getting the buy signal on this upswing way back on the open of December 24th in this POST BELOW. Along the way I made the quote below in this entry back on January 7th — Santa leaves behind a “fast up” rally. :
So what now?
Probably more upside but it would be prudent to set stops to preserve swing profits. I’ve cautioned in the posts below that this longer term is a relief rally, and likely just the kind of rally the market uses to make everyone believe it’s the resumption of the multi-year bull.
The key here is go along for the ride but guard against being fooled by how fast the up.
This is still my overall opinion. This is a bear-market rally. It has been and continues to be spectacular but it is still likely to be the rally to fool everyone into believing the bull is alive and well. And maybe it will turn out that it is but no matter. The key is be long as long as it lasts but don’t fall in love with it.
Long-term breadth, as measured by the McClellan Summation Index, the $NYSI (obviously the most important stock market timing signal there is), has been rising now for 37 trading days and yesterday short-term breadth, as measured by the McClellan Oscillator, the $NYMO, turned up from a dip last week giving a renewed general market buy signal for today’s open (see the chart below).
It is a notable uptick since the $NYMO, as it often does ahead of a downturn, was giving warnings that the rally was flagging but the new low above a low in the $NYMO pattern (see green circle on the chart) suggests there is at least a week more of rally to come.
So, as I said above, nothing much has changed this year. The trend is up. Be long and don’t even think short. For now.
(click on the chart for a larger view)
#MarijuanaStocks – gains are high in the weed patch
The vast majority of stocks move with the market. And some stocks move more than others, both up and down.
Take the marijuana stocks as the prime example.
At what may have been the end of the bull market last August, this newcomer stock sector was leading the market (a telling sign the bull was getting too high) and with the fall in the Fall, its stocks all went down together.
Even the sector’s leaders took a drubbing CGC, which Constellation Brands had just put a ton of investment money into, dropped from a high of $59 to a recent low of $24. TLRY, an extremely hot IPO screamed crazily from its IPO price close of $22 to a high of $300 in two months (its founder may have been the fourth richest man in the world for one day…on weed) and then plunged to an almost still respectable low of $70.
What fundamentally changed at those companies in the three months the market sold off and took them down? No much, if anything at all.
So coming into the market bottom, that was an obvious vibrant sector that needed to be watched for a big bounce.
And, indeed, the marijuana stocks have not disappointed any swing traders looking to make bear-market rally plays (see the chart panel below). Since the December 26th blog buy signal here, CGC has rocketed 52%, CRON 27%, GWPH 31%, ACB 37%, and TLRY had gained 37% until it was knocked down to a “mere” 13% gain in today’s action.
That hit on TLRY today is why I bring all this up now.
There is speculation TLRY’s drop was caused by fear that an expiration of the lock-up period on IPO insiders would bring on selling, a self-fulfilling prophesy if ever there was one but then most moves in the market usually are. With the exception of GWPH, the granddaddy stock in the sector, the rest of the stocks took hits in one way or another today along with TLRY.
It was on some news, profit-taking, whatever, but it was a hit in the leading sector on a market up day. That is an alert.
In the blog post below the suggestion was and still is to play defense, defense, defense during this rapid rise in the market because of the likelihood this is a bear-market bounce that can go ragged at any moment, and in some sectors die on a dime.
Bull markets end and bear markets begin on one down day. And sector rallies do the same.
Today may or may not be the end-of-the-swing day in the weed patch, but it turns out to be, as we used to say in the 60s and 70s and the bear can growl now: “Don’t bogart that joint, my friend.”
(click on the chart panel for a larger view)
$SPY $QQQ – Defense, defense, defense…
With $SPY up 5 days in a row and 8 of the last 11, and with the Nasdaq up 5 days in a row and 10 or the last 11, short-term breadth turned down today…
How many times have we seen that before?
In addition, my nifty-50 list of stocks started to turn on Tuesday from 48 buys (and 40 overbought) on Monday to 22 on buys (and none as yet oversold) today. CNN Money’s Fear and Greed Index has finally, begrudgingly it seems, managed to crawl out of its ‘extreme fear” reading to a mere “fear” reading today.
This was been a spectacular bounce from extreme fear but at this point maybe too spectacular. Almost every index is up five days in a row. The Nasdaq Comp is well beyond two standard deviations of an average advance when one is usually enough to throw the advance into a pullback or a sideways slide (see the upper red line on the chart below). And that’s despite the AAPL news blip in the middle of the rally.
SPY has also moved that much but that ETF, mirroring the S&P, has reached strong resistance at its 260 level.
Usually, this would be called “too far, too fast.” This time it looks like “too much, to soon.”
A lot of shorts have been scorched. A lot of traders are sitting on big gains in no time at all. TQQQ for example is now up 35% in the past 11 days, NFLX 38% and looking to gap up more tomorrow. There’s momentum in those numbers so I suspect there will be more upside to work it off but at the moment with a hint from a slight falter at an astronomical level from short-breadth it could be time for a dip.
One suspects those left behind on this bounce are beginning to believe it’s more than a bounce, and one suspects long-term holders are holding their breadth in the hope it is (sorry, boys, just look at how far anything is from its high and it’s overbought already?).
The market can go up as high it wants and for as long as it wants, of course, but this really looks like as good as time as any for a dip, probably tomorrow.
And since this appears to be a typically fierce bear-market rally, any dip can get carried way with itself and become a dose of despair…the play is defense, defense, defense…
(click on the chart for a larger view)
Oops! $SPY rallies again into a black candle top
Okay, another day up as the rally keeps going, but…
But there are now simple black candles everywhere.
Back on December 3rd I started looking at black candles on StockCharts.com just for the fun of it and discovered a simple black candle at that point on the SPY might be the top of that up swing.
I wrote about it and posted the comments and a chart here:
$SPY – Simple Black Candle Tops
As it turned out it was the exact top of the late November market bounce. Given that it is believed that it is impossible to consistently call tops in the market, that might have been pure luck. However, looking back over many charts (see those below for examples) those black candles appear to be telling. Just focus on the black arrows on the day after, and the moves from there in the current environment.
In Japanese candlestick charting there are names for these patterns — dojis, shooting stars, abandoned babies, etc. — but I’m trying to be as simple as simple can be. The black candles I’m talking about here occur when an index/ETF/stock/future closes higher than the close the day before but also closes below its open (again see the charts below), oftentimes on a gap higher than the high the day before.
However, as with all technical and price indicators, nothing matters unless there is follow through the next day or very soon thereafter. December 3rd signaled the drop from the top of a range in the newly-born bear market (see the first chart below).
There was money to be made on that decline just as there was on the subsequent bounce off the bottom. This is swing trading.
The general market has had a nine-day bear-market rally off the low. For many ETFs and stocks there have been spectacular gains which I noted here (the post below, yesterday) but now….
Now we are back to simple back candles at the top of more than one ETF: not only SPY, but also QQQ, and in the sectors, LABU, ERX, FNGU, TAN, FAS. These I’ve charted (see the panel below the SPY chart) but these black candles are all over other ETFs and many stock charts besides.
This may be a turning point. It may not. But like all great things in the stock market we won’t have to wait long to find out.
(Click on the charts for a larger view)
$SPY – Santa leaves behind a “fast up” rally
Despite AAPL’s bite of the Santa rally two days ago, it appears the rapid bear-market rally that began the day after Christmas has gone on to a bigger thing.
That is good news and bad news for the bulls. The good news they have received remarkable relief from the drubbing in the fall. The bad news is this rise still looks like a typical bear-market rally. Just as bull markets grind up, then drop hard, then grind up again and so on, bear markets tend to grind down, rise up fast, then grind down again and so on.
This up swing truly fits that later description.
On the plus side, both short term and long term breadth have had a screaming flight out of the massive oversold low to a massive overbought high (see the chart below). That breadth blast has a lot of analysts commenting on the history of “breadth thrusts” and generally indicating the market has had its correction, maybe even an entire bear market when the S&P tapped a 20% decline (for one day).
That may turn out to be so but I doubt it.
I suspect this more likely just a bounce on the road to the next grind down, but it could go up more or chop sideways for a while before the grind begins again. Margin debt has likely not finished its fall (we won’t know how far it has to go until its reported for December at the end of this month) and that means more downside to come (take what just happened in November and December and do it again).
But, granted, this has been a spectacular rise with the 3x-leveraged TQQQ up 26%, TNA up 32%, UPRO up 23%; and leading the leveraged sector ETFs, LABU (biotech) up 67.5%, ERX up 35% and FAS up 23%.
NFLX, among my bellwether stocks, is the star of the show so far in this rally , up 32.5%.
This is eight days in the market and again prime example of the value of swing trading over buying and holding through declines. There are numbers in stocks’ advances during these last eight days that would make an asset manager’s entire year (and maybe will). Forty-eight of the stocks in my nifty-50 list are on buys. Today 43 of the 50 were up. And finally 40 of them are overbought.
And SPY itself is coming into the 255/260 resistance suggested here when this rally kicked off.
So what now?
Probably more upside but it would be prudent to set stops to preserve swing profits. I’ve cautioned in the posts below that this longer term is a relief rally, and likely just the kind of rally the market uses to make everyone believe it’s the resumption of the multi-year bull.
The key here is go along for the ride but guard against being fooled by how fast the up.
(click on the chart for a larger view)
$AAPL – a Santa rally revisit
On the way to writing what was intended to be a cheery progress report on the buy signal posted here Christmas Day the bear took a bite out of the after-market and had an AAPL for dessert.
AAPL has plunged after-hours as CEO Tim Cook lowered earning guidance in a surprise announcement after the close.
This was forewarned here last November in this post:
I’ve been an AAPL bear for quite a while because when a stock is priced to perfection one must remember perfection usually lasts less than the blink of an eye.
Before the news, the general market from the open of the day after Christmas on the buy signal in the immediate post below was is in a very sharp upswing, a true Santa Claus rally.
TQQQ on today’s close is up 20.6%, UPRO up 18.4%, TNA up 20%; among the sector ETFs, LABU is up 31.2%, ERX up 21.3% and FAS up 18.2%.
We’re talking five trading days here.
The bellwether stocks moved too – NFLX up 14.4%, FSLR up 8.1%, GS up 9.6%, and AAPL itself was up 6.5%.
And not a sell signal anywhere to be seen at the close, except maybe the fact after five-day up pattern in the index ETFs one had to be alert to a sell down and maybe the fact my Nifty-50 stocks list, which went from 48 stocks on sells to all 50 on buys in those five days, clicked down to 47 on buys today (a crack in the advance, but a very small crack indeed).
All that is likely to change tomorrow thanks to the AAPL news. In the link on AAPL above it was noted it would take the market with it when it fell given that it was dominant in not only the Nasdaq but also in the S&P and Dow, and it has been the most over-owned stock in the market.
Since August it has and appears it will again.
And it was noted in the Christmas Day post that in the general market this was going to be little more than a market bounce to give some relief to the bulls in a bear market, not a beacon of hope for a resumption of the bull.
Funny how news comes along to agree with market history, with market internals, with the relentless swings from fear to greed and back again, all in the fullness of time.
See the charts below for a look at the AAPL and TQQQ plunges after the close.
(click on the charts for a larger view)
