My thoughts and journal
- Thread starter Brandonf
- Start date
I am having a blast with them. It's a really great way to show exactly what I am doing. Threei was kind enough to have his tech guy show me how to do it
I just did another one which is now up at http://www.brandonfredrickson.com/videos/weekendscanning.htmlI didnt even swear or say some people deserve to lose money in this one.
Brandon
I did today's newsletter in video again. The audio quality on this one has a little bit of problems but overall it works.
http://www.brandonfredrickson.com/videos/may16.html
http://www.brandonfredrickson.com/videos/may16.html
Aided by continued lower crude oil prices and strong moves in the semiconductors, retail and financial stocks the major indexes put in a strong performance yesterday. The Dow Jones Industreals were up 112.17 points to 10, 252.29, the S&P500 was up 11.64 points to 1,165.69, while over on the Nasdaq the Composite gained 17.65 points and closed at 1994.43. On both exchanges advancing issues led declining issues, 2359 to 930 on the NYSE and more narrowly at 1887 to 1228 on the Nasdaq. The NYSE saw 44 new highs and 66 new lows and the Nasdaq saw 38 new highs versus 100 new lows. Now comes the main problem I see with yesterdays rally. Even though Maria B and the rest of the bulls got very excited by a 1% move in the indexes, wall street did not. How do I know? Volume! It was down on both exchanges, which is exactly the opposite of what you want to see in a healthy market.
Going forward I would not be surprised to see this chip chop range continue in the markets. Certainly it can be frustrating, but it is also needed in the market. If it was easy everyone would play! But the market plays this payout/payback game with all of us. Right now for my style the best thing to do is to trade small. I always trade a little because I feel it is needed to keep a feel for the market, but sizes can be reduced until things become more clear. And certainly things are not very clear when 8 days ago I was bullish, then for the last two days I felt bearish and now I could make a strong case for the bullish again. Thats a little bit manic even for me!
A few stocks stand out as worth watching, but I want to address my open positions first. I had a stop in my AAPL short. These happen and I am looking for a spot to reenter AAPL. Also yesterday some idiot upgraded BMS and the stock gapped up sharply on us. The action in BMS over the course of the rest of the day though was very good for us as it declined all day in the face of a "strong" market, exactly the kind of relative weakness we want to see. Furthermore if someone giving it a substantial upgrade can not get it moving higher for even one day, what does that tell us about the future for BMS? Doubtful that you need to wear shades! On the short side I still like any of the homebuilders and most of the commodity related issues. Some stocks that stand out for potential buying opportunities on breakouts are YHOO, GOOG, PZZA and LCAV. I will have videos of some of them today so check back on my blog at www.brandonfredrickson.com
Trade smart,
Brandon
Going forward I would not be surprised to see this chip chop range continue in the markets. Certainly it can be frustrating, but it is also needed in the market. If it was easy everyone would play! But the market plays this payout/payback game with all of us. Right now for my style the best thing to do is to trade small. I always trade a little because I feel it is needed to keep a feel for the market, but sizes can be reduced until things become more clear. And certainly things are not very clear when 8 days ago I was bullish, then for the last two days I felt bearish and now I could make a strong case for the bullish again. Thats a little bit manic even for me!
A few stocks stand out as worth watching, but I want to address my open positions first. I had a stop in my AAPL short. These happen and I am looking for a spot to reenter AAPL. Also yesterday some idiot upgraded BMS and the stock gapped up sharply on us. The action in BMS over the course of the rest of the day though was very good for us as it declined all day in the face of a "strong" market, exactly the kind of relative weakness we want to see. Furthermore if someone giving it a substantial upgrade can not get it moving higher for even one day, what does that tell us about the future for BMS? Doubtful that you need to wear shades! On the short side I still like any of the homebuilders and most of the commodity related issues. Some stocks that stand out for potential buying opportunities on breakouts are YHOO, GOOG, PZZA and LCAV. I will have videos of some of them today so check back on my blog at www.brandonfredrickson.com
Trade smart,
Brandon
On Tuesday the markets started off soft and stayed that way until the last hour and a half of the day. In fact it looked like we were about to suffer more of the same up sharply one day down sharply the next kind of action we have been seeing for a month or so now. Around 2:30 though some significant buying came in and the markets rallied sharply with the DOW ending the day up 79.59 points, the S&P500 was up 8.11 points and the Nasdaq, which has continued to outperform for the last few days, was up 9.72 points. Advancers led decliners on both exchanges, but new lows continued to respresent more shares than new highs. My other area of concern is that volume remains rather light, though into the end of the day there was a good deal of interest and volume was heavier than monday, but Wendy's used to have a commercial that asked "Where is the beef?" and I'm wondering the same about this up move. In any case though I have never found it to be very profitable to fight the tape, so I will just roll with this for the time being.
Each night after the market I get my IBD Daily Graphs fired up and I look at about 1500 to 2000 stocks. Starting Monday night, but especially last night, I am starting to see a lot more potential long setups. This is good simply because if most stocks are in bad shape technically the markets absolutly won't go up, however if the average stock starts to look better then the market has an easier time going higher. A few names that stand out to me right now include MSCC, TRI, GOOG, YHOO, BMHC, DNA, LCAV, WLP and UTX.
We will see what the market gives us today. If it can hold up either by going sideways or up again that will be a good sign, however I am still only a cautious optomist at this point, so nothing would suprise me. Play things close to the vest and be on defense right now. If we do end up with a leg higher it will become clear to me before it does to the crowd simply because of all the work I do every day and we will profit from it very nicely.
Trade Smart,
Brandon
PS, There are several new video's updated to my site, visit the blog and watch them.
Each night after the market I get my IBD Daily Graphs fired up and I look at about 1500 to 2000 stocks. Starting Monday night, but especially last night, I am starting to see a lot more potential long setups. This is good simply because if most stocks are in bad shape technically the markets absolutly won't go up, however if the average stock starts to look better then the market has an easier time going higher. A few names that stand out to me right now include MSCC, TRI, GOOG, YHOO, BMHC, DNA, LCAV, WLP and UTX.
We will see what the market gives us today. If it can hold up either by going sideways or up again that will be a good sign, however I am still only a cautious optomist at this point, so nothing would suprise me. Play things close to the vest and be on defense right now. If we do end up with a leg higher it will become clear to me before it does to the crowd simply because of all the work I do every day and we will profit from it very nicely.
Trade Smart,
Brandon
PS, There are several new video's updated to my site, visit the blog and watch them.
www.brandonfredrickson.com/Videos/bmhc.html
If anyone has suggestions on improvments to the video's I would love to hear it.
Brandon
If anyone has suggestions on improvments to the video's I would love to hear it.
Brandon
Wow! Wednesday was a pretty good day for the market. I can't really think of anything bad to say, except that we are now pretty much in the middle of a range that started in November and a range is never great. All of the markets rallied on strong volume and the small caps finally broke out as well. Today was an O'Neil follow through day for the rallies that have occured between April 29th and May 4th. What this means is that we will want to be operating from the long side and we can probably be fairly confident in that direction.
As I scanned last night I spent my time looking for stocks that have been leading the market. Whenever markets pull back it is very important that you make up lists of leading names. The stocks that can move sideways while the entire market is weak are the ones that will often move substantially higher when the market does rally. Right now what I would like to see is a pullback on lighter volume in the major indexes. This would cause the frothing bulls to calm down a little bit and give us a chance to buy some of the leading names. A few to look at include DPZ, PZZA, GOOG, BLI, BMHC, UTX, YHOO, CHS and SE. Do not go crazy loading the boat here on shares. The action we saw over the last few weeks was terrible, we had 9 days in a row of up 100 then down 100 which is the worst type of market. I do think that MIGHT have resolved itself to the upside, but a little caution never hurts us as traders. If the market does decide to mount a leg higher we will do well with it. Currently I am long BMHC, UTX, PZZA and GOOG. I am still short BMS, unfortunatly all my other shorts, AAPL, NUE and SPY stopped me out. The good news is that I always keep my losses small.
As I scanned last night I spent my time looking for stocks that have been leading the market. Whenever markets pull back it is very important that you make up lists of leading names. The stocks that can move sideways while the entire market is weak are the ones that will often move substantially higher when the market does rally. Right now what I would like to see is a pullback on lighter volume in the major indexes. This would cause the frothing bulls to calm down a little bit and give us a chance to buy some of the leading names. A few to look at include DPZ, PZZA, GOOG, BLI, BMHC, UTX, YHOO, CHS and SE. Do not go crazy loading the boat here on shares. The action we saw over the last few weeks was terrible, we had 9 days in a row of up 100 then down 100 which is the worst type of market. I do think that MIGHT have resolved itself to the upside, but a little caution never hurts us as traders. If the market does decide to mount a leg higher we will do well with it. Currently I am long BMHC, UTX, PZZA and GOOG. I am still short BMS, unfortunatly all my other shorts, AAPL, NUE and SPY stopped me out. The good news is that I always keep my losses small.
Brandonf: Your asking 4 a responce about your video? We did.
Back on page 15 & 16..
a re-post:
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03-24-05 01:24 PM
Video on PNRA
Hello Brandonf
I took a look at your video. Nice. It is the way many exchanges will go in the near future as higher speed internet and better compression of files will permit. Just plain old text is not enough. A picture is worth 10K words...
A suggestion.. if I may? Color your mouse-arrow to contrast the background. The viewer does not have the physical input you have as to where your moving it. A glance away at the wrong moment results is a "lost" arrow. A "spray can" underlining an area might help too. In other words can your visual movements relay a basis story without your speaking? If it could, then speaking the info will be even better? A double input from audio as well as visual.
What software are you using? Have you tried WMV files? Thanks. agpilot
Back on page 15 & 16..
a re-post:
----------------------------------------------------------------
03-24-05 01:24 PM
Video on PNRA
Hello Brandonf
I took a look at your video. Nice. It is the way many exchanges will go in the near future as higher speed internet and better compression of files will permit. Just plain old text is not enough. A picture is worth 10K words...
A suggestion.. if I may? Color your mouse-arrow to contrast the background. The viewer does not have the physical input you have as to where your moving it. A glance away at the wrong moment results is a "lost" arrow. A "spray can" underlining an area might help too. In other words can your visual movements relay a basis story without your speaking? If it could, then speaking the info will be even better? A double input from audio as well as visual.
What software are you using? Have you tried WMV files? Thanks. agpilot
www.brandonfredrickson.com/videos/may23.html for todays market comments and http://www.brandonfredrickson.com/videos/updatemay21.html for the update on current open positions.