As you sit in your chair with your eyes fluttering, day dreaming of your bed as you digest your carb-heavy lunch, preparations are being made to resurrect the chicken. Two tribesmen are burning thickets of sage to ward off the evil spirits as we call to the land of the dead. We call for the chicken, we call for the chicken to ARISE!
Seriously, the smoke from these sage leaves is burning my nostrils and staining the crowned molding. These guys mean business I’m sure of it.
I put the #meattrade on your radar this weekend over at chartpin.com were you paying attention? Is anybody paying attention? Or should I start talking about football and man-whoring? Please do realize my derriere is on the line and my site statistics are teeny-weeny. Fly’s going to toss me off a cliff like a deformed Spartan baby unless you start telling your financially driven friends how much coin we’re making over here.
Don’t worry, our edge won’t vanish. It’s based on the laws of nature.
PS If you were REALLY paying attention back in the blogger network days, we grabbed 60% upside in $PPC last quarter. Indeud.
Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:40am ESTComments Off on Rotation Underway: Socials to Apparel and Meat
Into the Facebook event I reduced exposure in a few of my social names and may continue selling exposure as the day continues. However, the market continues to behave constructively and lots of breakouts are occurring across the board.
In order to keep my cash levels low, currently hovering around 20-25% I bought Quick Silver (ticker: ZQK) which I highlighted last night. I also started buying back into the meat trade, buying up shares of my favorite PPC aka Macho Taco.
I still like ZNGA today. I’ve tried selling it twice and it’s charmed me into sticking around both times. This could change.
Sun Jan 13, 2013 11:14pm ESTComments Off on Disney and News Flow Kick Up A Wave
The recent downdraft in Lululemon stock and the behavior that lured me back into shares of American Apparel had me turning a curious eye on the whole textile and apparel industry this evening. A few swipes into The PPT on my Windows 8 touchscreen laptop and I’m laser focused on the industry’s stocks and The Fly’s robot brain is spewing diagnostics across my screen. I’m multi-touching, feeling like Tom Cruise in Minority Report finding future pumps and looking awesome. The future is good so far. I’m glad to be living in it.
The chart is the final arbiter when determining whether to place a trade, but I love adding layers, measuring results, and building context. I especially like to poke around and see what kind of news flow is occurring. After observing the following chart, I turned an eye to the news flow. First just look at the chart and observe the volume on this pump:
I figured something was afoot so I fired up the finviz news feed. Look, they’re getting all giddy and noisy about a new CEO:
Early December, Bloomberg reported the prior-rumpled CEO was getting sued:
So here’s our context. The company’s chief was sued, he was quickly and kindly shown the door and they brought in a hot boy replacement (so homo). They brought in Andy Mooney. He came to QuickSilver from Disney where he was chairman of consumer products. And the market loves the news.
Take that context and layer it onto our context on the big indices, currencies, and industries and you’ll have a lovely feel for context.
This stock looks as overheated as the rest of the market. The stock could certainly pullback before ripping higher. Pull out to the weekly chart and you will see we’re nearing a critical price level. Sellers are going to be at work up here, but we’ve rammed up here aggressively and on volume. For a trade only and if it fits the whole markets behavior, I may grab a few shares on strength tomorrow.
On the swing timeframe the stock looks good down to $4.25.
Don’t be afraid to grip and rip, just make sure you define your risk.
In all the excitement last week of stocks pumping hard from their pullbacks, I began buying and selling with great disregard for the underlying companies. My hon3y hole was showing up everywhere and I was simply grabbing on to the letters presenting my setup.
Next thing I know it’s closing bell and my portfolio is riddled with social media stocks. Holy moly, I own FB, ZNGA, OPEN, Z, and SINA. Yeah that settled in this morning like a hangover. But I must say, the charts say yes. I’m just wondering if the Facebook event is a sell the news type situation. They’ve certainly intrigued me.
As for the twitter and blogosphere, I’m thrilled to have all my new followers and I look forward to adding value to your trading day. I’d like to extend a special thank you to RaginCajun for highlighting me on his new #FF blog series.
This morning I defined a price level where I wanted to position for the pump. That way, even if I get pulled into a meeting to talk IRS bullshit or jerked around by my favorite underlings I can always pick up my chart and see where we’re trading and whether I should act. It turned out to be a busy day.
When it comes time to buy into a rally, I want to buy. I bought SE early on, thinking the market would hold my pivot at 1460 on the S&P March contract. When the level broke, I cut TIVO. For all I know, TiVo could rip tomorrow. But when it was weak in a strong market and the market began giving back its early gap, I cut.
Next my eyes turned to Zale Corp to see how it was behaving after TIF missed on revenues. They dropped some hot same-store data too, double pumparoo. ZLC loved the news. People who can no longer afford Tiffany but still need to get iced out can shop at Zale’s. Shares ripped hard off their 200 day moving average and I hunted a dip to buy in. I barely caught a riskier secondary entry after the primary entry vanished as soon as I loaded up the chart. When I bought the stock it was already up almost 10% so it felt sketchy. Thus I only purchased a 1/3 position. The position was in question all day. My swing setups are all based on how the stock closes. Obviously I had no clue where the stock would close at 11am, but given the strength of the market and the strength in the name I gave it the benefit of the doubt. It closed strong. Nice.
Just before lunch I took a small ¼ scale in FB. I usually scale in thirds, but the stock has been far too beast. I’ll ride peak-to-trough if needed to see higher prices. However, it’s always prudent to take gains when you’re at prior levels where price has demonstrated curious behavior. I also purchased BGMD near the highs of the day only to sell the degenerate stock near the LOD.
Coming into the closing hour of the day it became apparent the market was accepting higher prices. All I wanted to do was get longer. I bought GOOG to bring my cash levels down. Then I bought APP. I know, busy day.
Finally, I scaled off 1/3 of my full size SINA position. It seemed a proper sacrifice to the stock gods.
All this action and I still have 35% cash in case the hanging man candle forming on the index wants downside follow-through. It was the only warning indicator flashing to my eyes, but it could signal buyer exhaustion.
I have to go swim now I have far too much energy. Take care and get out of that chair friends.
I drilled down the Independent Oil & Gas stocks using my drilling solo screen. Then I took The PPT top ten ranked stocks and imported their names into finviz a la RaginCajun for your chart viewing pleasure. Then I charted my favorite pick.
In my last post attention was drawn to the Independent Oil & Gas sector after seeing it exhibit unique seasonality performance with a high count of stocks excessively outperforming and underperforming their January seasonality. That tells me the industry is all over the place (read: tradable action) thus I got lazy and asked the Fly to provide me his top pick in the space. I wanted the space alien magician pick. Then I realized he’s a very busy man, piping conference calls into his brain and abstaining from profanity.
I then at that very moment realized I was being very lazy.
Interestingly enough, The Fly leaves the keys to his time machine lying around for the tabbed bloggers. It’s a work perk. I’m sure some of you get cocaine or hookers from your degenerate bosses. We keep it classy and get data.
Without further adieu, here is the stock plucked from The Fly’s computer brain. LONG LIVE THE FLY:
Wed Jan 9, 2013 4:46pm ESTComments Off on Gaps Filling – Stocks Chilling
My portfolio enjoyed a slight loss today mostly due to the shake down I received in shares of RGLD and CEDC. Moody’s decided today was a good day to throw hot potatoes at the Russians by downgrading their debt. I don’t entirely see how this company’s tiny debt matters when a Russian billionaire has taken the stock under his wing. Their debt is peanuts to him. Fund it.
Royal Gold on the other hand is whipping around, undecided on whether or not to hold this very important price level. I don’t intend to stick around and find out after Fly damned the entire space.
Finally, I added to my shares of SINA near the highs. I still like the name.
Banks caught a slight downdraft too (sans my Goldman).
All of these losing propositions were muted by my Facebook position.
Overall, the market traded lower in a rather orderly manner, especially the S&P which spent the day filling its opening gap.
Tue Jan 8, 2013 2:03pm ESTComments Off on Stalker List
I like this dip and need to get all the names I’m stalking on paper. Ideally, I would write on the pages of a small notebook in blood or on a mirror with red lipstick like a good stalker. But then how would I share them with you? Facebook?
Stalking the following names for entry:
TPX, APP, JIVE, EWJ, and SINA (to add)
MOAR Update: ZLC, ATML
Note: I’ll be adding to this list as I find more opportunities
Side note: CEDC failed at the very basic necessity of meeting the listing requirements for NASDAQ yesterday. Yesterday it was a non-event. Today it’s a decocking. I may close my position. Developing…
Tue Jan 8, 2013 12:09pm ESTComments Off on Royals Chopping Up the Bears
My favorite mining play has been Royal Gold (RGLD) ever since Senator Gint brought the stock to my attention. The stock has always flowed in a rather smooth manner, even when taking my coin. I prefer this type of behavior when I’m trying to build a large position. I don’t want 5-10% positions in cocaine monkey stocks like ZNGA (a current long) because my portfolio will oscillate too violently.
Today the stock is reclaiming a VERY critical support level even as the rest of the market sells off. I like the potential bottoming characteristics the stock is exhibiting and currently have no precious metal exposure. I think the stock has much work to do before I can build a full size position, but I’ve initiated a medium-sized trade today.
NOTICE: this is a trade with a tight stop until the stock proves it’s ready to start behaving again.
