ETF Prophet

It sure looked like it was going to be another slow burn day, with premium getting sucked out of the near options at lightning pace. Then, at 13:00 a flurry of buying, followed by a modest low volume retracement before a full scale rally at 14:00 that carried through the rest of the day. Some [...]

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sounded a lot like Jacob Marley’s Ghost from The Christmas Carol last weekend, warning how we are seeing “the early symptoms” of stagflation. That’s right, the only word whose first letter strikes more fear into the heart of investors than the dreaded “R” word. Mr. Greenspan was behind the [...]

Thank you Brian for the link below! I’d bet alot of investors wish they had the last two months of their equity back! This whole sub-prime mess reminds me so much of the S&L debacle I was involved in cleaning up 16 short years ago. Nothing changes much… If anything, I’m surprised the real estate [...]

All the comments from yesterday still hold. The day isn’t over, but this market can’t seem to catch a bid and this range is becoming dull. Still, somewhat higher highs and lows have occurred over last several days. Maybe well see a mid-day recovery ala the recent pattern. Hope springs eternal this season! 12:53PM CST [...]

The Qs started out midpivot and finished midpivot, having failed to gain much traction during the day. That 3 hour waddle along the S1 pivot looked like it was going to turn nasty, but the 14:00 buying put that on hold. I was looking for a nice bounce up to sell some naked calls at [...]

Today’s action gives me the feeling that the bears sense that all the bad news that’s out there has more or less come out and it may be time to cover for now. This morning was looking very constructive IN SPITE of more “bad news” until the longs decided to play whack a mole with [...]

The Qs continued the slide out of the gate, settling right at our S1 target of 49.30, before gradually chewing back up to close at the PP pivot. templates. The TICK picked up significantly after 13:00 with a change of character (see above), which in turn got the NYAD upslope into the close. Volume also [...]

A heavy sell program hit the tape about half an hour ago (see the large dashed green spike). This time it was met with some buying and the Cumulative Tick and A-D slopes appear to have flattened. This could indicate an important level of support, but trend is still down so wait for more confirming [...]

Things looked ugly at the open with S1 as the starting point. They didn’t get any better as the day wore on. In fact, the downward momentum was led by the NAZ and basically followed the same downslope from Friday. Noon brought the technical possibility of a rebound, but that little spurt of low volume [...]

Persistent negative Cumulative Tick and A-D lines. Large-cap Tech is being especially hard hit: selling the winners over growth concerns? Certainly Financials are holding up relatively better: a rotation in anticipation of a sector bounce? The markets are technically oversold, but… there are too many buts!

Here’s another article on the rise of Dark Pools, as a follow up to my previous post on Dec 13th. The article reports that 7-10% of daily market volume is Dark Pool transactions. That’s a big number when you consider that retail trades account for an average of only 3% of daily volume. Most of [...]

Top chart is weekly 3 LRs study; lower is the daily. For the week the Qs finished $ 1.36 lower, or -2.60%. Both charts now look bearish. On the Weekly, the Qs failed to carry through on the LR30 channel mean and have broken down through the LR3 lower channel. The MACD and OBV have [...]

Once again I got snookered at the open, having failed to sell my long calls at yesterday’s close. I did manage to exit flat after the first 60 minutes, but that only made me even. The Qs spent the rest of the day in a 2 step down, and as expected, sold off on increasing [...]

The SPY is finding resistance at its daily pivot line (yellow dotted line). Relatively constructive considering the inflation confirmation though. “Looks like” the market “wants” to be finding a bottom around here going into the end of the year, but we are so news driven and volatile it’s hard to be confident in that assessment. [...]

The Qs finished a few pennies higher than the open on strong volume. For most of the day the action resembled paint drying. At a couple points I rapped my laptop to make sure it was still working. As surmised in yesterday’s post, my end of day bravado holding long calls turned out to be [...]

So Lehman beats and retail sales look good, but wholesale inflation runs hot largely due to energy costs. Energy is a tough nut: it both drives inflation and yet can moderate economic growth of its own accord. That has got to put the Fed in a tough spot since it’s not the type of inflation [...]

SFO magazine typically has great articles and this month is no exception. The issue of Dark Pools is something I had vaguely known about, but had no real information about. This article changed all that, and now I’ve got to up my Lexapro dosage to overcome this new worry. But really. . .it’s worth a [...]

The Qs daily chart actually looks fairly benign, with an open at R1 and an almost touch of S1 late in the afternoon, before a very green run to the PP pivot for the close. What is not apparent is the size of the range today. . . $1.55 as compared to yesterday’s $1.63. Coming [...]