Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Evening Thread

Strong day today, with the QQQ's leading. The SP500 managed a close over 1300. Options expiration Friday hasn't whacked too much yet ...

Panther's Chart of the Day

The normal "spring" run in refiners seems to have begun early this year. Normally this happens in Feb. The guys on CNBC are talking "crack spreads." Short hand for refiner profits. They should be dismal for 4th quarter when these guys report earnings, but are already improving.

How do we trade this? UGA (gasoline ETF) is a pretty thin ETF. The refiners themselves are the way to go. The scariest chart right now is VLO, above. We can hope for a pullback to let us in. The weekly chart (above) shows the move in 2011 and why we want in.

Carl Icahn bought 14.9% of CVI recently.

The other "usual" suspects include WNR, TSO, MPC, ALN, HFC (a combination of Holly and Frontier in case you lost track) ... Most of these report earnings in Feb.: VLO reports Jan 31 and I think they are first at bat. MPC reports on Feb 1 and TSO on Feb 2.

Afternoon Thread

Sentimentrader.com
Sentimentrader had an interesting write up yesterday showing the Hulbert Nasdaq Newsletter Sentiment Index. They note: 
"Mark Hulbert's organization looks at the recommended allocation to the Nasdaq among a sample of newsletters.  Currently, they are 62.5% net long that index."
You can see from the chart above that the bulls have struggled a bit the last few times the Sentiment Index was around this level. It's definitely something to be aware of as the Nasdaq Composite nudges up to (and potentially breaks out of) the Oct 2011 high at 2753.

Morning Thread

Gator's Chart of the Day
(Daily chart)
Panera Bread is a stock I have never owned.  It's one that Cramer has featured many times on Mad Money but not recently (as far as I know.)  He did give it a buy in the lightning round yesterday.  (I did not see it but that is how it is shown in the Mad Money recap on Yahoo Finance.)  It was mentioned on IBD's site yesterday around noon.

The stock is in a bullish configuration with the 20 day above the 50 which is above the 200 day simple moving average.  It has been basing since November in about an 11% range from 130- 145.  While it does not quite meet the Fitz criteria of a volatility squeeze (6% width on the Bollinger Bands) it's close.

PNRA has broken above the upper band for the 1st time since early December and volume has been increasing which is a sign of accumulation.  It could just keep going but that is not what I expect.  I do look for another day or two of upside movement and the impatient may wish to take a small position in case it does not pull back.  I think the better entry would be after a small move back to test the breakout (about 145) and then buy the bounce.

I have not checked for an earnings date but you should know when they will be reported BEFORE taking a position.