Thursday Evening

COT Report - VIX Futures (Sentimentrader.com)

The chatter on the VIX got me curious about what the big players are doing in VIX futures. This data is delayed a bit (it's from July 13th)... but you can clearly see the large speculators are/were super heavy short, and commercials are/were super heavy long. We will get an update tomorrow afternoon that shows positions up to Tuesday of this week, so I'll follow up on it with any new developments.

Thursday Afternoon

DECK Daily Chart (12:00 Noon)

I posted DECK as a CoD earlier this week and it still looks good right here right now.  I should have bought it but I didn't.  I may correct that and put my stop just under yesterday's low.  That's how I get into stocks that refuse to pause.

Edit: Actually the post was the Tuesday afternoon thread.  http://algofighters.blogspot.com/2012/07/tuesday-afternoon_17.html

Thursday Morning

Gator's Chart of the Day: TIF

I don't think I have ever been in a Tiffany store and I'm sure I've never owned the stock but the chart caught my attention.  Since that nasty news driven gap down in late May TIF continued to slide all the way to the end of June.  It bottomed June 27th and made a decent 10% move higher before pulling back to make a higher low.  Wednesday it completed a "W" pattern and closed above the upper Bollinger band.

The Trade
Now that TIF has made a higher high I see two ways to approach the trade and the opening rotation will determine which one to use.

Scenario1
If the stock opens lower I would look for support and a bounce.  If it is above 51.00 it could be bought with stop just below 49.72.  That's where the stock bottomed in late June.  If you start with a larger position you may want to put the stop on at least part of it just under 50.52 which was the most recent low.  If the stock falls below 49.72 without bouncing .... well .... I won't be interested in the trade.

Scenario2
If instead of a lower open TIF opens higher I would not chase but wait for the initial enthusiasm to pass and look for a small pullback and bounce to enter.  The stop will be a bit looser so the initial position size should be smaller than Scenario1.  I would recommend using the previous day's low strategy for stops and add only when each tranche is profitable.