Ride the pain train for another week?

Whew, busy week indeed, in the economic and academic sense. Made some time to make a couple of trades which I will go over in a bit, but for now, let’s review last week. ES had a large gap down on Tue. morning, held 1,140 and ramped 25 handles to close at high of day. Same BS Wednesday, more ramp to 1,199 (bulls failed that 1,200 on the last candle of the day by THAT much) Thursday bears finally crawled out of the cave after 1,200 was challenged and broke through once again for the 3rd time in 3 weeks. I am still bearish this market, the longest so far we have held above 1,200 was 2 weeks ago for 3 days after Bernanke’s last ditch effort speech that fizzled out. Any huge ramp we get for the long term, take the profits.

Chart above is ES showing break down in S3 pivot Friday on a 31 handle selloff, brought us to lowest close since Aug. 22nd. From lows to highs, we see to be in an upward momentum trading range that has held for the last month. The range is tight (80-100 handles) trade the charts, always sell Bernanke and Obama. If we break below 1,150 (which is almost certain to happen, ES just opened down 15 Sun. night), downside to 1,100 is our next stop; I don’t anticipate anything above 1,180 this week, Expect a huge push to the upside on any sign of good news, then a fade.

Last week I made a profitable trade with $TLB pre-earnings release strictly in and out. Studied the charts, looked like a bottom, took a chance. The report was ugly, worse than expected, it dropped a good 8% pre-market before spiking higher in the AM. I bot @ 2.4 limit 200 shares [very small] got out at end of day @ 2.95 made a few bucks.

Chart above of $TLB shows tight range between the b-bands, broke through 2.4 earlier, did it again last week and bot it there.

Two weeks ago I mentioned I bot $CWTR @ 1.00 limit 300 shares. The report was also not good, but sold off substantially afterwards. Downside made it to .80, bounced back to the mid .90’s 2 days following. Next day huge volume spike to upside right out of the gate, had absolutely no idea what was going on, but glad I was not out of the position just yet. Found out CEO was buying up a bunch of shares ramping the stock nearly 25% that day.

Above $CWTR chart. Once again, I day trade so I really had no reason to hold this speculative company after a spike like that. I got out at $1.25, made a few bucks.

This week is going to be a very busy week for me, I’m looking at $NBG for a quick trade. Now I know there is still a lot of contagion going on over there with default issues, but this does not mean there will be a one day pop and out, right? I’m looking to get in under .80 in hopes of a shoot up over a dollar. Then again, anything can happen, banks are no longer “too big to fail”.

Above a chart of $NBG, notice the large spike up to 1.15 from .83 at the end of last month, if some rumor news gets out, could drive the stock up.

While on Twitter this morning, I found this chart of how commodities, equity and interest rates have fared in the last 10 years, via zerohedge.com. Very interesting to see how the market has gone basically nowhere in this past decade, but consumer prices and commodities have skyrocketed (money printing, anyone?)

I will close on this 10th anniversary of Septermber 11th with a picture, if you follow me on twitter of have seen my Facebook page, I put it up a couple of days ago. It is indeed me on the right looking out into the city with a friend of mine the weekend before 9/11. Props to my dad who happened to snap the photo with the American Flag flying over the towers. We will never forget the lives that were lost that day and the tragedy that struck us. Have a good week of trading everyone, God Bless America.