lightening my load

Looking at my after close market analysis, I lean more so that we are going to fall a bit from here.  I think the fundamentals are still strong, but I definitely subscribe to the fact that tomorrow could see some down side.  The market just needs to blow off a little steam and then it can continue upward.  I'm not changing my mind on holding 30% long, but I'm glad I lightened my load a little before leaving town. 

sold today

I must say … I was VERY proud of myself … I called the bottom within 30 minutes of it happening, a little lucky … but made some great money off of it as a result.  What is even neater for me is that all my mentors were wrong, which shows my analysis is getting significantly better these days.

I actually sold a ton of stuff today for 2 reasons …

1)      I'm skeptical being the last day of the quarter that we have had such a move over the past 3 days … I am fearful that tomorrow (7/1) we will have a dump.  The big guys do a lot of moving their money around at this time of year to make their quarterly statements look good, and I'm sure they all want to show a positive for the month end.  Whether the momentum continues tomorrow or not will be seen.  I actually think it will, but …

2)      Since I am going away, I want to be mostly in cash just to eliminate the stress in my head.  I will be watching the market at a minimum twice a day (open and close), but since I won’t be watching it every minute … I don’t feel comfortable being fully in.  probably have about 30% still in the market … all long.

market update after the close on 6/20/2011

Well, most of the guys I track are EXTREMELY bearish on the market.  They have been for a few weeks and with each day that passes they seem to get more bearish … which is why I am still am nervous and somewhat cautious right now.

With that said though … today was another good day showing healing going on in the market.  In my afternoon analysis, I still see the same data that I saw last week, that the market needed to hit the 200dma and once it did … it decided that we were at the bottom. 

Now whether this is a short term bottom OR whether we will have a nice up from here is still to be seen, but when I look under the hood at the market internals … the market looks slightly better every day.   Basically, we have a sick patient that seems to be looking stronger every day, but still lying in bed looking icky.  

As I said last Monday 6/13 (I emailed you as it happened), it seems like we hit the bottom and are slowly coming back up.  By the way, it is actually very healthy if we move up ‘slowly’ as we are seeing now.  Time usually is required to put in a good bottom (and top).  Again … remember my example from last week about the guy that falls off a roof and takes awhile to get back up.  A slow move up gives the bears (that are short) time to get scared and get out, and the bulls time to get more comfortable that we are at a bottom and start putting money back in.  vs … a ‘fast’ up move which causes the bears to short more (similar to ‘buying on the dip’) and usually another larger down move from there.

I am still 100% long (from last Friday June 10^th as you know) and holding it with a slight gain (2.75%) from then.  Time will tell if MY analysis is correct OR if most of the guys I look up to are right … Murphy’s law says that they are right and I'm not J, but for now I follow my own path.  I always trust the numbers more than someone’s opinion … even if they are people that have a long track record of doing this.  Of course, I have tight stops in place … just in case all heck breaks loose again J

Hope your day is going great!!

interesting

Interesting stuff in the market today.  If you look at the chart for the day it basically opened WAY up and then spent the rest of the day selling off slowly.  The day ended up basically at the close of last night.  This is usually not a good sign since it couldn’t hold its’ gains.

A lot of people attribute this calm selling to POMO activity … basically controlling the selling instead of allowing a mass panic of selling that is typical in these times.

With that said, I run a number of different analysis to try and get under the hood of the overall market internals and those have been steadily getting stronger over the past few days … showing to me that healing is going on … a base is forming, and soon we will be able to move higher.

It is quite interesting because my gut tells me that we are tough times ahead in the coming month and the charts seem to indicate that, but the market internals are showing some strength that the charts are not showing as of yet … implying that we have more upside.

Oh well … time will tell … just thought I’d share my thoughts with you and bore you (I'm sure!!).

Hope all is well on your end of the world!

a long shot

What I mentioned a number of days ago still sticks … the market wants to touch the 200day moving average (200ma) … It’s getting close, but it isnt there yet.

minutes

We should know within 10 minutes whether the downside trend is finally broken OR if we will continue going down