Into the weekend I would like to very briefly run down my portfolio holdings and the reasoning behind each.  This information is coming off the rip after a long week.  Thus any thing with a flimsy justification may need to go.

Here we go, from largest to smallest holding:

Cash – I have 20 percent of my book sitting cash.  I’m eager to deploy it on the long side

SKF – I’m using a three year volume profile chart to view BRK/B, WFC, GS, C, etc. and I see a great volume pocket below prices.  Plus they’ve broken down off their respective highs and are printing tight bear flags.  The overall market is on unstable footing and I want some levered short exposure.

RVLT – Yes, it’s my largest long holding and currently the bane of my stock existence.  It earned largest ranking when I blew out my YGE and YELP shares this week.  They were my prior biggies.  The stock is trading worse than a bag of dicks at a hot dog eating contest.  There are no buyers and presumably a few large sellers cashing in on the 600% plus move that took place up unto the day I bought the stock.  The business model is stronger than ever, the shift in focus from consumer products to large scale retrofits is brilliant, and the investor population is still very shortsighted on the opportunity in lighting.  I still love this name, and I plan to cost average in through several quarters.

AIXG – My German LED company.  I love LED technology and I see this company as a beneficiary in Europe due to their energy awareness.  The stock has been dead money for months and I continue to hold.  Nothing has changed here, but this consolidation has excellent potential energy.

END – Huge short interest, oil exploration, and a hot chart.

CREE – Same as RVLT and AIXG, I want these names until incandescent and HID bulbs die.  I’ve been in since January, why exit now?

TRLA – I love their app and use it constantly, the chart looks great, Zillow has been a beast, value added to realty pros, and Le Fly is in the name.

CLF – Tight consolidation, looks like it wants to rip and if it doesn’t the risk is really low.  OA went YOLO on it this week too, although it never moved so that may have been a small loss.

FB – Marky Mark and the poke crew are getting it done.  Holding

LO – Blu eCigs and menthol cigarrets won’t actually get banned.  Interest rates need to stop rising, it’s making the coupon less attractive.

F – Still a strong chart and a nice product line.  This is a patriot long still kicking around my port since the 4^th of July

IMMR – haptics are way underutilized by porn.  I think the porn industry will drive growth here 😉 Also, a Le Fly favorite.

USO – I should still be large but I took a bunch of scales on the way up.  I almost sold it all.  Look, that would have been really dumb.

O – it too pays a large coupon which is losing allure with bond rates rising.  I traded my favorite reversal pattern really well in here with a large position.  The locked in gains dipped my cost basis way down here.  So I’m basically break even on the idea, waiting to collect some coupon.

That’s my holdings.  I’m interested in a few other names, like SFM and GOGO, but will wait until next week to act (obviously).

Have a great weekend everyone,

Raul

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I really like the feel I had trading the /ES_F today.  I’ve currently pigeonholed my discretionary trading to conform to the BOSSRAM ALPHA cycle.  This prevents me rushing.  It allows me to measure where we are in the cycle after some broad redundantly calls my phone so she can hear herself talk and position (or hand sit) accordingly.

You see, plates, I juggle so many.

One of my favorite trades in the market requires full attention because it can fly in your face quickly.  I didn’t want to stop trading the chart picture simply because my day job doesn’t afford me focus so I automated it.  This was the birth of ELROI.

Elroi doesn’t trade the picture as profitably as me.  But what he lacks in profitability Elroi makes up in consistency.  Elroi bagged 3.75 handles in profit today on trades that were too racy for me.  I on the other hand, wielding Bossram, made $25 or 0.50 handles.

But it was fun to watch Elroi go to work while I waited for the market to come into the Bossram wheelhouse.  This week I reset my account to $10k: five for me, five for Elroi, and I pulled the rest out to buy cat food.

You see, trading the /ES since April has been by and large a circle jerk and a dangerous one at that.  It came down to losing focus.  I’ve…courourrrected the problem and put several policies and procedures in place to ensure the new habits stick.  My future’s trading operation is looking more like a Fortune 500 company every week.  Goodness, companies like AMZN, GOOG, and SBUX aren’t on these lists by luck.

Learn from their cultures.

Now it’s exciting and I’m happy to fire up my futures every morning.  It’s me verses Elroi.  So far he’s winning.

ON TO STOCKS:

I sold AMBA entirely today.  I told you very clearly I was taking this cheap trick for 10 percent and then taking my business elsewhere.  AMBA fucked me once, I fucked AMBA once.  Perhaps after earnings we can make love, or something.  I earned about 8 percent on the trade.  It was a 12 percent position.

I took profits in Ford(s) because I was watching the /ES_F weaken.  It’s nothing personal.  I still have a 5% position.

My top performers were END and YGE.

RVLT continues to ‘suck goat’ instead of retrofitting Manhattan with LEDs.  Get to work you zoophiles.

I bumped my cash up above 25 percent and was up 1.75 percent on the day.  I needed it.  One thing is certain.  When RVLT stops going down…I’m forecasting champagne showers.

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Taking yourself out of the proverbial shark tank that is the stock market for a few days leads to some interesting observations.  Once outside the tank, you’re better able to observe the water you’ve been swimming around in.  It’s a higher sense of self understanding, if you will.

After buying AMBA Tuesday morning, I’ve been inactive.  This is in part because the purchase took my cash down under six percent.  What little cash I have left must be used to average into CREE and RVLT should the opportunities arise.

Speaking of RVLT, I’m now minus thirty percent on my basis.  Investing, it seems, is a tricky endeavor.  On one hand, I know they have to potential to make hundreds of millions of dollars retrofitting businesses with LEDS.  I also love the vertical model they’ve built with their recent acquisitions.  On the other hand, I’m in an ugly chart in a company that was up over 600 percent in one year’s time.  Yeah…

But I’m keeping my investor hat on and entrenching into the LED industry.  CREE, AIXG, and RVLT are multi quarter holdings.

Just before heading out last week, I increased my oil exposure.  Nice timing, yes?  I still have positions in END, MHR, and USO.  Until the Libyans find out they didn’t in fact kill Doc Brown because Mike Fox used the time machine to warn him to wear a vest, I’m sticking with these positions.  I may trim a bit of exposure into further strength.

I passed through no less than four po-dung towns on my travels, and in every case I depended on YELP to find my palatable food with a reasonable atmosphere.  I did the same in Traverse City, a much finer and top hatted community.  Why not use Google?  Because the YELP interface is BETTER, you jack asses.

ENPH and YGE are both lit sticks of dynamite.  I intend to stick said dynamite in the tail pipes of the shortmobile.

LO will succeed in addicting teenagers to Blu Eciggarets and I will collect a lovely coupon, much higher than any government or corporate paper, at little or no risk to my person.  Same goes for O, except for the teenager part.

IMMR, F, and FB round out my book of long positions.

I’ll be back this evening with an update on Bossram Alpha and El Roi, my drone strike robots.

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As quiet as today seemed, I was able to advance my portfolio by over 1 percent today.  Leading the way were my LED players, RVLT, CREE, and AIXG.  This basket of securities currently represents 23 percent of my portfolio and I intend to make it much larger, perhaps even as large as 50 percent of my book.

That’s how much conviction I have in lighting grade LEDs.

I intend to make a very concentrated bet and advance my family to the next level of society, top hats.  If anyone can present one iota of evidence contrary to the eventual 100% adoption rate of LEDs in the United States, please do so now.  And don’t feed me that plasma light bullshit, I’ve tested these things and I’m wholeheartedly unimpressed by both the performance and the economics.

I’m slowing my swing portfolio down a bit, instead focusing on building into names I believe add value to society, which is why I started buying cigarette marker LO into the bell.  I’m essentially parking money in the Newport Cigarette maker, planning to earn the very handsome coupon while they add value to the smoking community.  How?  The Blu eCigarette.  When LO took over Blu and rolled it out to every convenience station from here to California, they earned the early mover seat in this space.  I like to imagine they have teams of behavioral physiologists and scientists working around the clock to sell more of these disposable vaporizers.  My game plan on LO is to buy weakness, time and time again, and allow the eventual growth from eCigs to buoy the share price enough for the coupon to make me profit.  Fun stuff, I know.  I’m sleeping on some Ford(s) shares the same way.

I have a heterogeneous mixture of other stocks kicking around in the old portfolio, mostly names where I’ve taken the lion share of profits and left a runner on for sport.  Stocks like O, BPZ, ONVO, and IMMR.  I really only see reason to sell BPZ but the others I keep, like collecting baseball cards.

I still have a decent hunk of FB, about 35% of what I consider full size.

I bought more OCZ today.  This is my aggressive pumper.  I’m having a hard time accepting a double top at two bucks.  I’ve questioned this proposition by increasing my size in the name in search of a short term pump.  I’m playing PBF in a similar manner although it has different chart logic.

My other aggressive trade is YGE, which is still huge.

That makes 14 longs, 0 shorts, and 25% cash.  Just writing that out makes me want to sell something and concentrate my eggs…

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Everyone’s getting their panties in a bind over tomorrow morning’s premarket jobs data, thus I thought it my public service to broadcast my book into the bell.

Enjoy,

Raul

 

Here’s my book, by size, biggest listed first and cascading in size smaller and smaller as the list goes on:

AIXG, FXY, F, CREE, FB, I, END, IMMR, YGE, GTAT, OCZ, BPZ, and O

Cashish, it’s high, about 50%

TOP PICK: I WISH I HAD ZILLOW DAMN!

I like END the best baby

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The Facebook, led by a fearless byproduct of my generation’s upbringing (kickass video games and cable), has reemerged as an endearing member of the Wall Street community because, let’s be honest, they’re making money.  Lots of it.  And that’s all we really care about, right?

I needed some winship because for real, my portfolio is getting HAMMERED.

Listen, I’m not one to cower behind my losses, suggesting caveats existed and expanding my verbiage to sound smart.  I’m smart as shit, you know that.  The ‘junk in my trunk’ is being iron pressed into the proverbial hotplate long ENPH in size.  Support held on the first go of it, barely, and I’m still in possession of my shares, barely.  I can barely muster the strength to keep it, but I am merely a shepherd to the solar stocks and I must lead them to greener pastures.  Today I fended off the wolves, barely, and as I walk east to the Promised Land a warm sun kisses my weary shoulders…barely.

On to the important matter of Sealy Tempur-Pedic and their perverted bed salesmen, I like what I’m seeing.  I can’t sit here, behind my keyboard, and act like I’m some expert in the fundamentals of mergers.  Hell, I’m not an expert in any fundamentals for that matter.  I’ve been digging around all week, trying to understand this weakness.  Select Comfort (SCSS) missed last week Wednesday citing increased input costs.  On the surface, this seems like it could affect our TPX, but that’s not the case.  Select Comfort has been investing in their stores, technology, and product development all in an attempt to remain competitive.  That’s squeezing their operating income down.

So a sympathy move in TPX makes less sense than the fashion styling’s of Kris Kross.  On the other hand, housing stats have been strong for months everywhere but the Midwest and let’s face it; Midwestern folk are a bunch of frugal penny pinchers anyhow.  Hell they’d use a rock for a pillow if it saved them money to buy lotto tickets and fuel up their oversized SUVs.  So as much as I wanted to scale down this TPX long before Thursday’s earnings call, I may just have to throw caution to the wind, middle finger in the air, and take what’s coming to me.

Obviously I’ve been emboldened by Ford and Facebook.

The rapid depreciation of my equities in general has upped my cash to 22 percent.  There were no trades taken today, I just let the losses effervesce in my bowels.

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As risk flies off the table today, my book is getting pulverized, down around 1.5% 2% as I type.  Leading the march lower after taking a minute to wake are gold and silver.  I told you this is a run-and-gun industry to mess with.  EXK has given back all its gains already.  Having scaled only 1/3 of my position off so far, I’m confronted with a curious proposition, do I cut the net and take my small door prize or do I stick to the plan?  Sticking to the plan results in a small loss, nearly a scratch, but sticking to the plan could make a solid gain, I’ll give it another day or two.

Solar stocks are getting pounded to pieces by incessant sell orders also.  This happened around mid-June and it was a fantastic buying opportunity.  This time it looks like we’re all doomed…so it’s an excellent buying opportunity.  The only difference between then and now is where the indices reside relative to the industry.  Back then we were on pins hoping the bottom wouldn’t fall out of the entire shithouse, today we’re day one of selling from all-time highs…hmm…

My largest position is due for earnings tomorrow after the bell and the chart is suggesting nothing positive.  TPX has essentially become a coin toss.  I’m at a real crossroads here, sitting a tad under -3% on the name.  I planned on lightening up before earnings but now it feels like a rip-off because I think they crush and guide.  A betting man at heart, young enough to absorb a gravity hammer to the dome, I may just go for it…this is a young man’s game after all.

My pseudo hedge FXY is down nearly a percentage alongside the market.  Cool of me to get fancy, no?

I’m not shorting the /es futures at all because I’m too distracted so no relief from that front.

On the plus side because there’s always a plus side, I took a ¾ size long into the F earnings, that’s helping a bit.  OCZ is bucking the trend, but I doubt it can breakout amidst the overall market weakness.  AIXG is undergoing a nice bounce back after Europe reported very strong factory data, and I have a modest sized FB long which I will carry into this afternoon’s Marc love fest.  #timestamp that, we’re all going to love Marc Zuckerberg after today’s announcement.  We’re going to gang poke him until he can’t see straight.

 

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Congratulations to the entire Ford team! The strong quarterly financial results we are announcing today – with improved results in every region – are more evidence that our One Ford plan continues to deliver and build momentum.

 

Thanks to our efforts to serve our customers around the world and deliver profitable growth, we are announcing solid volume, revenue and market share increases in all regions. Importantly, we also are improving our expectations and guidance for full year profit, Automotive operating margin and operating cash flow.

 

Our second quarter earnings are driven by our highest second quarter and first half North American profits since at least 2000, our best-ever quarterly profits in Asia Pacific Africa, continued solid performance from Ford Credit and a return to profitability in South America.

 

Our results also reflect more proof that our transformation plan in Europe is on track to return to profitability by mid-decade, as Europe improved its losses compared with a year ago and the first quarter.

 

We will continue our laser focus on serving customers with vehicles delivering the best quality, fuel efficiency, safety, smart design and value through our One Ford plan, which remains unchanged:

1. Aggressively restructure to operate profitably at      the current demand and changing model mix
2. Accelerate the development of new products that      customers want and value
3. Finance the plan and improve the balance sheet
4. Work together effectively as one team, leveraging      Ford’s global assets

It is important for all of us to read the attached news releaseand understand the progress we are making against our plan and our outlook for the future.

 

We will meet with financial analysts and representatives of the news media throughout the day to discuss this information and answer questions.

 

We also will discuss our results, accomplishments, challenges and opportunities during today’s Global Town Hall at 11 a.m. EDT U.S. (12 p.m. São Paulo, 5 p.m. Cologne, 11 p.m. Shanghai).

 

One Team. One Plan. One Goal. One Ford.

 

Congratulations and thank you!

 

Alan

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I don’t have a name for it, see below:

NOTE: EARNINGS 07/24 BMO, FD: Long

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The old me would be stalking EXK today like I did Miley Cyrus last time she was in town, but I’m comporting myself with a bit more grace and self-respect today…like Pepe Le Pew.  I learned not to chase miners, EXK in particular, through a long history of daggered hairpin reversals.  The name is volatile, I felt early on that I missed the action, therefore I did.  I’ll have to tickle my fancies with something else today.

I’ve quite enjoyed being kicked in the scrotum this morning by my newly minted long OCZ.  They came out with some preliminary earnings data rather out of the blue, and lo and behold they’re still combating supply issues.  “SUPPLIES!” …no surprise.  There are worse problems for a company to have, like no sales.  Anyway, the stock market is the final arbiter.  If the name doesn’t shape up into the bell I may axe it (no piker body spray puke).

I sold a bit more O which is fantastic, this trade played out LOCKSTEP, and now I have my final 1/3 which the market must work very hard to take from my person, as my cost basis (net of booked profits) is now $38.50 aka well below swing lows.  I hope we take out the recent swing low, run some stops, and then I’ll add some back on.  This is going to be my new AWK, collecting me a coupon while I skip to my lou though the market minefield.

My solar trifecta has me more pleasured than Lil Wayne ‘turked up’ on opiates at a stripper convention.  Take your pick: YGE, FSLR, and ENPH the sector is leading higher just as prophesied by the immortal Le Fly and other iBC cast members.  Use the green juice to power some CREE bulbs and you’re on the right track, guy.

DDD and PRLB did this morning what I like to call the bear pinch: drive lower, pullback for shorts to enter, make a new low, barely, than quickly rip higher, leaving asshole bears stuck in their underwater positions.  Have a great afternoon you harry bastards, it’s hot out there.

RVLT finally lifted off and it has done so without me.  I’m instead nearly balls deep in German LED play AIXG, down 1 percent.  All dogs have their day, RVLT is a decent company, but they’re no CREE or AIXG fundamentally.  RVLT is an instrument for degenerates to trade.

I’m happy to have paired my IMMR with some INVN because to me, they’re the same thing: new tech, chips.  INVN appears to be more en vogue.

F won’t let good Americans in unless their 401-k is set to ‘auto-allocate’.

FB still wants to win, while you’re looking elsewhere.

I’ll never own enough Z, but I own it nonetheless.

TPX is still my largest.  You will all feel its gentle wrath.

Who thinks BPZ has another squeeze in it?  (Raises hand)

That’s my book in a nutshell.  I’m considering an FXY long as protection.  Call it Kong hedging.  iBC is becoming a formidable beast.

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