ETF Prophet

Which Was It For You? 2008 ~ Wasn’t That Great!!! 2008 ~ wasn’t that great… Either Way, Here Is To A More Sublime 2009:A Happy New Year to You All!

Today’s pre-holiday follow-through on strong tick action should leave the S&P 500 (SPY) above both its 20- and 50-day moving averages. However, should we close here price will be quite overbought on a very short-term basis.

Back in the good ole days, about 10 years ago, making money off popular momentum was easy as pie. One of my favorite plays was simply watching Wall Street Week with Lou Rukeyser on Friday nights. The show was PBS’s longest running and most successful offering. Lou always had a group of fund managers on [...]

I was recently sent a copy of “Short Term Trading Strategies That Work” by Larry Connors and thought I’d post a review. The book covers many subjects that I’ve spent a lot of time looking at over the last two years.  I gather that some of the book comes from previous articles posted by Mr. [...]

With the Cumulative Tick and the A-D lines looking strong, we have the possibility of a good trend day setting up. For that to be confirmed, however, we will need to break out of this mini-range that the SPY has been in for the last half hour or so post resistive volume spike peaking at [...]

Here are a few more LEAP examples, using some of the SPDR Xxx components.Keep in mind that Jan 09 data reflects options that will expire in 18 days, so the ROI is really based on a little more than half a month.I’ve added the beta values for each of the ETFs to see if that [...]

Cumulative Tick and Declining Volume are very negative as the implications of global tensions finally sink in. For now I will be looking for SPY support between $85.30 and $86.00 with a view towards the lower end of the range if the VIX trend can’t stabilize here soon (now nearing 46). Volume remains low.

Clueless has been mentioning his LEAP positions lately so, being a pitiful copycat, I thought I’d look at what some LEAP opportunities might look like to generate a little premium decay for the coming year.This is obviously a small sample . . .GE, XLE and the Qs and only examines the ATM situation as of [...]

Above is the daily bars 3 LRs study for my little ETF basket, while below is the weekly bars 3 LRs study. It’s occasionally useful to scale back your view of the the charts to get a bigger perspective on how far we’ve come.On the daily bars the oversold RSI2 and stochastics are encouraging on [...]

(Click Image to Enlarge/ Glossary) This is just a mini-holiday post on this last week of the year, gang. Last week’s light volume trade left mostly red on the screen, with the S&P 500 (SPY) down about -1.6%. In fact, the only exceptions were Real Estate (IYR +4.1%), the US Dollar (UUP +0.8%) and a [...]

I mentioned the volatility skews typical of thinly traded days . . . like today. although these skews present some great scalping opportunities, the other side of the coin is that there tends to be considerably more technical “noise”, false starts and head fakes for us daytrader types than in otherwise “normal” days where volume [...]

Today’s opening gap put the SPY just above it’s five-day moving average. However, this proved to be resistance, as it often does, and price is now roughly tracing along below this line. That said, Cumulative Tick is largely positive, and Advancing versus Declining volume are keeping well paced and we have thus far found support [...]

Well, I’ve completed work on a new system I wanted to tell everyone about.  The system has some unique characteristics.  First of all, I have no doubt that the system will lose money in the short term.  However, the system has the benefit of hopefully long-term value and definitely has a great deal of short-term [...]

First Half of Day We have recovered past the daily pivot line on advancing tick readings after opening at yesterday’s closing lows on the unemployment claims figures. If you’ve never seen the source Department of Labor press release, it’s worth a review. Second Half of Day From MarketRewind, a Very Happy Holidays to You and [...]

Another relatively easy GE/NYAD scrap (I’m not going to call them scalps anymore) today.I’ve also shown the NYAD in a separate chart box below the main GE/NYAD chart just to show the relative dynamics of the NYAD.GE had almost identical volume as the Qs and IWM today 65M, demonstrating it’s popularity. I hope none of [...]

After a choppy morning session, we have seen an interrupted decline on worsening Tick and Advance Decline readings. I will be looking for potential support near yesterday’s lows, which roughly coincides with today’s Support Level 1. Volume is again on the low side and the VIX remains moderate. Most leading sectors are exhibiting high correlation [...]

Here’s another example of a flat 75 day LR30 pattern that may have some potential as a butterfly play. Unfortunately, XLP shares some of the same option drawbacks as its SPDR counterpart XLU (as detailed last Friday) . . .that is, low volume, wide spreads and limited option exchange participation.From a strictly technical standpoint, the [...]

The S&P 500 has been trading above and around S1 (SPY $87.20) since the morning sell-off and break below it’s twenty-day moving average. Cumulative Tick is trending lower, which doesn’t have me optimistic on the day. Note, however, that the VIX (43) has been trending down along with price. In this regard, here is an [...]