Like last week, I’m charting a tradable ETF (QQQQ) instead of the index itself. QQQQ is designed to correspond to the NASDAQ 100 index. This chart runs from October 1st through this past Friday, February 6th. I highlighted a few points on this chart below worth discussing. The green vertical line shows where Williams %R broke out of…
Mindset Change – Pushed by Recession
The recession finally hit my company this week. They cut our recruiting team by 33%. That’s good for me since I’m still in my seat and now have less internal competition. The rough part is that we’re all under the microscope even more these days which hurts my trading and blogging time. I can take a…
End of Month Update – January 2009
January was the month of woulda, coulda, shoulda for me. I started off the year at $53,000 and made it above $59,000 before the first 10 days could pass. That speed continued to the downside easily enough before I could wise up enough to sell anything worth selling or buy puts, but at least I sold some…
SPY Chart – January 30, 2009
The chart from January 23rd for the Dow Jones Industrial Average held true this past week to the trading channel I drew. It broke above the shorter trend line of lower highs, but couldn’t get outside of the much longer channel. Since that index charts the same this week I’m moving to the S&P 500, but instead of simply charting…
DRYS Starts to Sink and I Jump Ship
DRYS has gotten too risky for me (as if it was ever safe). After announcing more bad news last night about breaking loan covenants, a week after suspending their dividend, I jumped ship and covered all short positions and sold my long positions while DRYS was much lower than I thought it would go in…
Current Positions – January 28, 2009
I’ve been itching to make a new trade today, but held back since it seemed I didn’t have any good ideas other than it’d be cool to make more money. I tend to make mistakes when that’s my starting point. Instead of posting trade details today I’m just showing what my current portfolio looks like. I…
Added to Options Exposure on TDW
After adding a second leg of two calls on top of my 200 shares of TDW last week I’ve only seen TDW go up. That’s good for my 200 shares, but bad for my four calls, especially since two of them are uncovered, aka naked. This morning I clued in to another move that could help…
Dow Jones Chart – January 23, 2009
Today I charted the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJI or DJIA) for the first time this year and once again I see that the Williams %R indicator is the one we should be watching every day. On January 6th, %R broke below overbought. That was at the peak for the DJIA for the previous two months…
3 New Call Option Trades – DRYS, TDW, CELG
After charting DRYS a couple of days ago and saying $10 should offer support they announced they were suspending their fat dividend. Had I not frozen in my seat I’d have realized that even with the BDI rising shorts would have a field day with this news and those in it for the dividend would…