Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Wednesday Evening Thread

Heavy selling everywhere today. Only 3 "sectors" finished green: bonds (TLT), rails, and PCLN, which didn't even manage to touch the 10 day moving average before forming a lovely hammer. (For weeks now I have been including PCLN and AAPL as their own personal sectors. They clearly are retail and AAPL is also tech. PCLN 200 day moving average is 531... you can at least see the 50 day on this chart) Cigarettes, utilities, including telecom, and other defensive sectors also performed better than average today.

Worst sectors from my lists were precious metals and miners, (including GDX, GDXJ, SIL, XME, DJUSST and OIH) - the usual suspects when the dollar and volatility are up.

Wednesday Afternoon Thread

MHP (11:15AM)
 I though publishing was dead and just waiting for the coroner to confirm the internet as the cause of death.  Maybe not. 
MFB (11:15 AM)
The beauty index has been good lately and MFB is right at support (groan) with the 200 day simple moving average now below price and the 50 day just did the golden cross thing yesterday.

Wednesday Morning Thread

Gator's Chart of the Day: TBT
The Bearded One had no hints of QE3 in the FOMC meeting minutes.  This seemed to surprise traders or the algobots or both.  Maybe I'm the one that is out of step but the news was just what I expected to hear.  I admit I did not expect the rather violent moves we saw in the last two hours of trading but the market is full of surprises.

Interest rates climbed (good for banks that are making good loans) as traders sold off the 20 year treasury bonds.  This could be seen in the drop in price of the TLT that tracks those bonds.  That caused a pop in the TBT which is a 2X inverse of the TLT.

The TBT was in a volatility squeeze in early March and it did move up rather sharply in mid March before pulling back to test that break out.  It appears the test has been passed and now the TBT is headed higher. Volume has been elevated since the breakout with all but one day since then exceeding the 50 day simple moving average. Today the volume was highest in nearly three weeks. There is some resistance above but not much.  Support appears to be just below 20 (the low today was 19.90) and if you want to trade TBT that would be a good stop.