Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Not a pirate flag ... it's a bull flag

SPY Daily Chart
At 3:15 the market looked strong but by the close the wind had left the sails and the ship was drifting.  The chart shows a bull flag and while volume was below average it was slightly higher than yesterday and the candle is much closer to the upper Bollinger band than the middle one.

Weakness in crude oil and the still unexplained fast $4 drop coupled with some strange action yesterday in NOV and DO have some traders scratching their heads.  Still Ben has the bulls back and the trend is up (until it's not.)

Vulcan dog says ...



Three things that will be a big help:
 
1. Buy low and sell high.
2. Remember flowers on those special days
3. Put the seat down

For CallaLilly

Gator's Chart of the Day: EL
Several of the traders here remember CallaLilly.  She was on the old Rev blog and at Dan's place way back.  She traded bio tech and beauty and since I don't do bio tech I looked at some beauty stocks and found EL.

The chart shows a reasonably well formed cup with handle (yeah there's a hole under the handle) and it looks ready to move higher.  An IBD sanctioned buy point would be 10 cents above the right side of the cup.  That would make the trigger 62.08.  IBD would tell you to put a stop 8% below there but I think a tighter stop is in order, say just a little under 60.

Analysts have a price target of just over 67.  With 5 up and 2 down the reward to risk ratio just barely passes muster with me.  (I like 3 up 1 down as a minimum.)  The options are a bit thin so I may not get in this trade but for those that like the common this can work.