Watchlist 4/14/09

Some crap I'll be keeping an eye on tomorrow:

XOM:

TXCO:

FEED:

OVTI:

And my favorite for tomorrow, SWC:

S&P outlook: Futures

I'm not really sure how the futures market works or if it's anything to give particularly heavy weight to, but here's where we stand as of 2:15 am on monday morning:

Short term view of recent rally:

Longer term view of bear trend:

I have formation at 8:30 tomorrow morning and won't be able to get rid of my SSO position. I think it wise to get shot as soon as possible, until the overall trend tells you otherwise.

Game Plan 3/30

Check out some recent trends and observations on the S&P500 index, to the right. I'm starting to think that 

• The index develops trends in the form of rallies and corrections, and follows that trend until it hits strong resistance or support.
• Identifying and trading with the trend is key.
• A trend can be confirmed when it breaks through a horizontal line.

Side Notes:

• If I had made this chart a few weeks ago, I would have sold off my shorts around 670, the bottom of the channel. I may have reloaded them around 704, but then seeing a break from the trend, I would have gotten stopped out. Then, once the new rally broke through resistance at 736, I would have confirmed the rally and started getting long. 

• Perhaps anyone long going into monday /23 had some decent sized cojones, but perhaps they also were drawing trend lines, and saw a bigger channel overall. 
  

Verdict: 

Stay long for Monday. We've yet to break out of this channel on the downside, and the loss on friday wasn't on any kind of significant volume (see second pic).

Game Plan - 3/27

Check out my graph from my review here:



I see trade support just below 82.75, though it broke through there yesterday. This may be a weak area.

However, the trend support (sloping upward line it bounced off today) is going to converge with the trade support, creating a perfect storm for buying and killing bears. 

I will set a limit buy @ 82.75 for 48 shares. Once purchased, the stop will be at the base of the trend line, which will go up throughout the day. I'll be here to watch things. To prevent some catastrophe in the mean-time, there will be a standard 8% trailing stop on it.

Trade Plan for 3/26

• I ended up selling my 807 S&P at 824.


• I have put a stop order in place to buy 48 SPY at 82.79. Today's high reached 82.7. 


• This is just about as high as I think you can go without running into some serious resistance. 82.79 will signify better chances of a breakout. 


• After or if the buy is executed, I'm going to set a stop for below 82.4, as it will then be clear that my assumption it was breaking out would be wrong. 

 

check out the S&P here:



then check out my drawings on the Russell. 

The broadening top on the russell is a sign of danger. I learned this from Matt Travisonno's blog here. 

He learned it from Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, which you can download if you search hard enough online.

I plan on getting rid of my longs asap and watching to see if the market breaks through this resistance, or breaks down. I told dad in an email: 

"he last 2 days has had a broadening wedge w/ lower highs and lower lows. trading started getting sloppy after a huge run-up and hitting big resistance."