TRADING UPDATE
Today the S&P500 was up another 30 points after starting down 16 this morning. That’s almost another 50 point move. This morning I figured this rally was probably for real for a while, and the rest of the day proved that to be true. The news about Obama building his action team to take [...]
Entries from November 2008
November 27, 2008
TU#106 26NOV2008; rally’s got legs, & cheap airfares
November 25, 2008
TU#105 25NOV2008; oblivious but still in the game
TRADING UPDATE
Well my day job (fearless consultant) trumped any market activity for the past 24 hours or so in the panic to get some P&L number-crunching done, so today’s trading update is actually for yesterday’s trades. In fact I don’t really know much about what happened today, other than I see that oil got hit [...]
November 22, 2008
TU#104 21NOV2008; who goosed gold?
TRADING UPDATE
For no particular reason, December gold today exploded upward by $43, or 5.4%. But gold stocks were up a crazy 25%, as measured by the 2x leveraged Horizons BetaPro Global Gold Shares Bull+ ETF (TSX:HGU), which rose 50%. What a difference a day makes. Conversely the Horizons BetaPro Global Gold Shares Bear+ ETF (TSX:HGD) [...]
November 21, 2008
TU#103 20NOV08; balance-sheet bargains
TRADING UPDATE
Following on yesterday, today was pretty brutal as all indices broke hard to new lows. The S&P500 was down 54 points (6.7%) to 752, and the Dow down 445 points (5.6%) to 7552. The good news is that I’ve never seen bargains like this – ever. I’m early in making my move, but I’ve been [...]
November 20, 2008
TU#102 19NOV2008; the bludgeoning continues
TRADING UPDATE
Same-o, same-o. Another 52.54 points down on the S&P500 (-6.1%), and 427 points on the Dow (-5.1%). Personally I think the problem is fund redemptions. As people’s home equity is wiped and/or they’re losing their jobs, more and more are having to tap into their retirement savings for living expenses and redeem mutual funds [...]
November 18, 2008
TU#101 17NOV2008; walkin’ after midnight
TRADING UPDATE
“Walkin’ After Midnight” doesn’t really have anything to do with trading, unless you’re trading the overnight markets and decide to close your positions and just go to bed. It’s one of Patsy Cline’s old hits, and one of four songs my “band” practiced last night. Earlier in the day I had rented the Stanley [...]
November 15, 2008
TU#100 14NOV2008; just a sign of the times
TRADING UPDATE
Today was just one of those days where what worked well yesterday sucked wind today. Basically all of yesterday’s gains evaporated on a day where there wasn’t that big a point loss in relative terms. All my stuff just seemed to not want to get out of bed.
So I let REAP do a couple [...]
November 13, 2008
TU#99 13NOV2008; darkest before the dawn – or, nailing the bottom
TRADING UPDATE
There’s an old saying among the veterans on Wall Street – when the market’s so against you that you feel like puking, that’s the time to double your position.
Again this morning the account equity was slowly eroding, and my REAP system was calling for another trade. Since I felt some kind of interim bottom [...]
November 13, 2008
Tu#98 12NOV2008; puttin on the shift
TRADING UPDATE
Yesterday I talked about easing out of 2x commodity ETFs because of the way they erode in value over time, and scaling back on the short bias to not get caught on an overly neutral stance when the market takes off (and miss the meat of the move).
I also talked about an agribusiness closed-end [...]
November 11, 2008
TU#97 11NOV2008; slowing it down
TRADING UPDATE
Today the market continued down with the Dow slumping almost 300 points. It did rally later, but recovered only about 50% of its intra-day losses. REAP signalled another trade, but I also decided to raise a little cash from the issues that were doing better than the others, and to also begin easing out [...]
