Trades: AMED, SIRO, CREE

Added to longs:  SIRO (34.79)

New longs:  BCSI (25.47)

New shorts:  CREE, (60.35)

Stocks to watch (very bullish): 
Riverbed Technology, Inc. [[RVBD]]

 Tempur-Pedic International Inc. [[TPX]]

 Baidu.com, Inc. (ADR) [[BIDU]]

Wow, my workstation totally fried.  Thankfully you can buy hard drive enclosures to save your data; so I basically spent two whole days recovering data and stripping two computers to the bone.  I didn’t realize that my life was embedded into a small box.  I felt all kinds of emotions when I couldn’t revive the machine- hate, sadness, regret, denial.  Haha, what a douche.  By the way, as a little tip for you people, if you’re in the market to buy a computer (PC), now is the time to get one.  Now that Intel released there i-family chips, the core 2-duos and quad-cores are ridiculously cheap.  I ordered one on Dell with a 24″ monitor for about 700.  In the meantime, I’m builing my own super-computer using the chasis of the one that broke.  Haha, what a nerd.  Anyone can recommend a video card?

Anyway, market moving up in some choppy trading.  But what scares me about being short this market is that a lot of leadership stocks are looking strong.  I did a quick scan on the IBD 100 (throwing out about 40 of their crappy stocks), and found some great intra-day moves in stocks like RVBD, TPX, and BIDU.  I like RVBD, detest TPX.

BIDU has been kicking butt again, which makes one of our favorite sectors to trade alive again.  That would be China online.  Keep watching those momentum magnets:  SOHU, FMCN, SNDA, SINA, NTES.

Long open?  Hmmmm.

Long:  OPEN (30.79)

Nothing technical.  Just end of the buy-rush.  Time for breakfast…

No way.  This market is in for some beating.  Volume is low today, so we should see more action this month.   What’s my strategy here.  It’s kind of weird and probably unorthodox to most traders out there, but I’m using (as I’m accustomed to) support levels of  leading stocks.  Here’s my initial check-points to cover or add to shorts:

I’ve been freshening up on my Java programming skills so excuse the conditional statements…

Test for Short Aggressive

If: 
AAPL < 190  (Apple usually has a multi-day spike to the upside after releasing products.  With the release of iPhone 3gs, ipad, nano-video, we instead see AAPL trading on the bottom of its 25 point channel.  The real question is, where is the momentum?) 

GOOG <500 (very interesting volume action in the last 20 trading days.  Compare to past 3 months.  Signalling medium-long term reversal to the downside)

BAC < 15  … < 14  … <13   (short market or this stock at these checkpoints.  The stupidest stock of 2009 seems to finally have hit the ceiling around 18.xx – 19.xx.  Lack of news and Government intervention will send traders moving elsewhere.)

VPRT < 49  (one of the best companies to emerge in the last decade, Vistaprint is vulnerable to a young CEO who is mixed up with too many partners.  Well, that’s not really a bad thing, but the fact that VPRT is partnered up with many companies like FedEx, Office Depot and Home Depot, we can use VPRT as a measurement for how well small businesses are doing in America.  There probably are too many variables to get a strong correlation, but all I know is that if VPRT starts taking a downturn, then it will reflect well on how business-providers and a big chunk of American companies are doing.)

AMZN < 107 (I don’t know why, but I always liked shorting AMZN under 107 for safety.  Anyway, AMZN is still a favorite leader I like to track to give me an idea of how the retail sector is doing.  Yeah, it’s online, but it’s big enough with a lot of customers to tell us enough about our spending habits.  The price-volume action of January is showing signs of medium-long term reversal, much like that GOOG.  Be careful if you’re holding long here.  You may want to consider buying some puts in the 90s five to eight months out.

Anyway, that’s my notes on how to make the transition from a short-term short, to a more aggressive play.  We cross those lines and I begin to go into survival, back to the wall, James Bond mode on this market.

Please.

That was the most anti-climactic dip under 10k I’ve ever seen.  Anyway, I was sort of stuck on an off-site office all day anyway to miss all the action.  Kind of glad I did.  Next week should be real interesting.  Sorry I gotta keep this quick, but I got guests from all over the place to take care of.  Last week I had New Yorkers, then my friend came down from LA for a job interview, now I have guests from Philippines from my last trip, and a childhood buddy from when I was 10 is here too  I’m going to have an epic Super Bowl party.  Or not… crap I work on Sunday!! 

Yeah, this is kind of a random weekend post, but I thought it be necessary since you probably think I was kidnapped or something.

One thing I do want to mention, is the volume that poured into gold today.  Usually we measure that as panic, but the play is so obvious, I think it’s more of traders making a bet on strategy than panic…. unless you count shorts anticipation of a reversal leading to covering in the precious metal sector as panic.  Let’s see where that takes us.

Stocks to watch in this “battle at the 10k” line:  GG, EGO, FRG (“panic buying”), IRBT (short this to the single digits), BIIB (medical stocks are cool place to hide when times get hot).

Just yesterday I was sitting at some other Company’s office, thinking about how stupid the market was… ok, well, how stupid I was .  I was like… “No what?”  I thought we would have gotten a hit on the market last week, so I built a short position to prepare for it.  Then today comes.  Sweet.

Anyway, I feel like the game has changed quite a lot.  I seem to have to set a goal/target for a stock (or the market), then add 10 days to that.  I guess the market has “slowed down”, which isn’t all that surprising given we are in a new quarter, Obama’s new year, and Apple’s iPad debut.  Plus it’s tax time so it’s our chance to reflect on how screwed we are.    Play accordingly!

Anyway, like I said last week-ish, you better start selling some longs and inserting shorts into your portfolio.  We are on thin ice.  Just saying.

New longs:  NTES  33.05

New shorts:  SOHU 50.14

Put these trades at the end of the day, while talking on the phone with clients, printing checks, signing letters, playing guitar, feeding my cat, hard-stepping to David Guetta, polishing car, paying GE Tax, getting a massage, watching Lakers vs Celtics 4th quarter, faxing the IRS, and cooking oatmeal.  All at the same time.

SOHU disappointed me with those numbers, but was able to survive an ugly day.  Bah.  Maybe I’m making a mistake here, but it’s worth a try to short the close.  The long on NTES long is for protection and trades at 1/3 position of NTES. 

Aloha!