Buying Gold

Just picked up GLD at 159.35.  Definitely a risky play with the sell off today, but I like these deep sell-offs for a quick flip.  If the economy is going to the pits, GLD will be bought up again, and it finally hit an area I was looking for when I posted the chart a couple weeks ago.  Here's the current chart, not real time so this is before it sold off even more.  

Post Fed-day Fall Off

Well, today I woke up and saw exactly what I wanted to see with my portfolio....a lot of green, due to all the red on the screen.  BID, OPEN, and FAZ are huge gains for me today, and although I am kicking myself for not getting out of NOV in my long term portfolio yesterday, it could have always turned out differently.  Because the prospects of economic slowdown are going to kill anything energy related, and while it's been a great performer this year, NOV could go down to the 40 range pretty quick as oil drops.  But long term I still like this stock alot along with HAL and SLB

There are some good looking prices out there, but I'm not interested in buying anything today.  I might try a daytrade to pick up some change, but this could get really ugly going into the close and tomorrow as people bail to feel comfortable going into the weekend.

Patience is really being rewarded with OPEN and BID right now.  OPEN chart is just plain ugly (now at 44.27).  With my short initiated at $80.70 in mid-June (and sweating a little as after an initial drop, it rode up to $90), it's only a few points away from a 50% gain.  Not really sure where to exit here...it's breaking the bottom part of it's down trend line, so technically, it could just be getting started...but but it does break $40 in the next few days, I'll definati

FAZ is breaking out, and anther one i was sweating when I increased my position 2 weeks ago, and if it can get above that 73 area, it looks like 80 is well within reach:

For safety, the LQD is still a great pickup for the long term portfolio, 4.5% dividend and moving up with any weakness in stocks:

For the daytrade route, I'm starting to look at TNH again.  This was my missed opportunity as it zoomed from 120 to almost 200, and has fallen off a cliff in the last couple days.  Didn't even see it in the 120's this morning, but has rebounded solidly, and just during this post it's gone from negative to up $4.  Ride this one with caution:

And finally, while the chart looks ugly, BIDU is really getting punished today down a ridiculous 12%.   Though I'd wait until right before the close to make any buys, this would be on the top of the list (right along with NFLX..it's holding up today after the rough week...I could easily see a $10-15 bounce back before any larger move lower is made).

I have to marvel on days like today...where my long term holdings are getting hurt, but my trading account is taking off, so it's a mixed bag of feelings looking at the market.  I never really shorted stocks until this year, and now I'm almost preferring it as opposed to buying.  It seems like when things are bad, you make a lot of money in a hurry...much faster than when it's going up.  So day's like today it's nice to sit back and watch the account values rise when it could be a day of panic.

For more short idea's, I would check out the list of today's top losers and those hitting new all time lows

Fed Day Announcement

Pretty straight forward.  Tomorrow's fed announcement should move the market one way or another.  Fed day usually results in a spike reaction from the announcement, then a reversal of that move.  Now everyone knows that, so when will it finally NOT hold true?

Reading other traders and many were lightening up positions heading into Wednesday to not get caught on the wrong side of a major move.  I was going to do the same, but I wanted to see how tomorrow looked before the announcement, and I stuck with my short positions for 2 reasons:

1.  My long term accounts are all invested in companies for long term growth...so my trading accounts are a hedge of protection for that.
2.  I'm comfortable with my shorts anyway.  Thinking about it now, closing out my FAZ position would be smart, and I almost closed my BID order today but then the market started selling off and figured another night to think about it would hurt.  And finally, no matter the Fed announcement tomorrow, OPEN is doomed, so why get out now.

I never did get that Pandora short yesterday...i couldn't find shares from any of my brokers to short, and I just didn't feel comfortable going at it with options with the upcoming announcement.  Be ready for a ride (maybe).

And I'm somewhat hoping for no action..lets rip the band-aid off and just deal with the short term consequences...it'll keep us from delaying the inevitable.

GOP warns more easing may hurt the economy

The week ahead, Sept. 19th, Pandora & Netflix

Markets are down through Mid-day today, and after last week's great move up, it shouldn't come as a total shock.  The question now comes does it give all (and more) back this week, or is this just a pause and the rebuilding continues?  My outlook for the week is to see today hold and tomorrow spend more time in the red (whether that means an open up and fall during the day, or open lower).   After that it's more of a guess than what I just made.  Either way, in today's action you there are a few standouts bucking the trend...AAPL, CMG, and WYNN are some of my long favorites doing well.

Pandora is up 5% with only some rumored hope that Google or Sirius will buy them up.  I think that talk is premature because any company knows that the overall business model is weak and they'll be able to buy them up in the next year for a cheaper cost.  Also, they have competition from Spotify which just launched in the US in July, and Apple's iTunes Genius.  Who wants to go against Apple these days?  Besides, if they sold now they would have to secure a large premium to the current stock price...I would guess at least $20-25/share to clear the $16 IPO offering to calm an investor outrage and a heavy class action lawsuit against the company for coming public sell out below the IPO price.  Buy waiting another year investors would still be pissed, but they could blame the competition and market conditions and shareholders could happy just to get out with $12-15/share.  This is one I'm going to look at shorting today while it's around $10.75, and looking at this chart, you can't tell me a huge rally is coming up soon.  Even with the best conditions, $14 is going to be tough to break.




In other news, Netflix is planning to separate DVD and streaming businesses into different units.  The new DVD business will be called "Qwikster" and if you have both services, you will be billed separately.  As the stock as been hammered, I think this is another dumb idea.  Netflix is a well known, established brand, now confuse the people that haven't adopted either yet and give it a new name?  And your basically telling investors that the mail service is garbage...so why buy into that area?  But more importantly, why not call the new division"NetflixMail", "NetflixDVD" or "Netflix-"whatever...keep the name for recognition and help both your brands at the same time.  On top of that, apparently the Qwikster name is already taken on twitter, so any social media types will go check out this guy, who's seems a little more into smoking pot then running a DVD mailing service.   Talk about a company F'ing up as much as it can.

Few more good reads to take a look at, while I get into buying/shorting mode for the afternoon.

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