Saturday Morning Post

I was trying to find a way to have some better clarity on my screen shots….here’s my final version with admission that I didn’t find what I was looking for….

Yesterday I pulled my last information off of a laptop. I bought an 8GB thumb drive since it was clear that my DVD backup failed. The drive was less than $20. Storage costs sure have come down.

Today is my birthday. I’m 49. I hope that I’m never ashamed to state my age, but I could see serial anniversaries of my 49th birthday! I plan to relax a bit today. Mark and I will be taking a canoe adventure on Monday.

I’m trying to get back in synch with the market. I like Tim Wood quite a bit. If you take a moment to read his Friday’s comments on FSO, it would be worth your time. http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wrapup.htm

Ascribing the rally to a new bull market feels odd to me largely due to my believing that we’ve taken a recession overlay (in terms of decline and correction) and are using it on a deeprecession (rather than a depression). Perhaps that term has already been used by someone. I don’t know, but I’m using it here and will lay claim to it.

Time for a few charts:

I have a theory that if we really are in a new bull market (I don’t think that we are) then the trade-down trade, is likely to be over (crowded). I shorted just 200 shares of FDO in my speculative account. You will remember that my speculative account is one that took from ~$5K to $26K. I then blew it up with two bad trades, and it went to $15K. I just left it alone. I now have it back to $17,850. I only have one position, which I’ll show later.

Here’s the FDO chart. I can see it going to 29, and that is the level that it would need to hold. I took my 4.3% gain on my short from an overnight hold and moved on. I don’t mind base hits, but I still believe that the big money is made in the big moves. Big moves are generally apparent in retrospect though.

TGB is a stock that I held in this account as well. I bought it at $2.21 and it promptly fell into a chasm. I’ve marked in magenta my ignominious entry. I should add that it has always been on my radar screen, so I made some purchases at the bottom and sold in my qualified account. This may be a case of selling too soon which is a habit that I’m trying to break. But, I expect that it will pull back, and there will be a chance to re-enter.

SNEN, my Chinese compressed natural gas stock is a wild ride. I’ve been holding to my buy low volatility and sell high volatility. You can see the long shadows on this stock to see the price swings.

The above is a weekly chart. Here’s a weekly chart that shows the action more vividly.

I’m truly finding that using the volatility spikes is very helpful in giving me an objective signal. It’s a stock that I watch and will likely re-enter as I like the ‘space’ that it is in—compressed natural gas for automobiles and engine conversion kits.

Here’s another name in that space: CHNG

I was looking at this stock around March…looking is the operative word, as I was ‘looking’ at gold stocks at the end of November.

Here’s another old favorite:

They reported disappointing earnings this week. I’ve been in and out of this stock (using blv/shv) I’m finding that using this strategy, I’m doing much better at producing these results where I’m selling (the small red/blue) combo. The last mark is where I bought at $4.86. The cat may have run out of lives on this one! We’ll see.

Here’s my one holding in my spec account

It may or may not be bottoming. I know better, but I give into my catfish tendencies to swim along the bottom.

I’m still mostly cash, and have a nice combination of brilliant and dumb ass trades to keep me up about 11% this year.