Archive for August, 2010

Stock Market Weekly Update 8-23 – 8-27-2010

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Stocks fell throughout the week amid further evidence that the U.S. economic recovery is losing steam as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below the psychologically important 10,000 level and the National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales had declined 27% in July to an annual rate of 3.83 million, the lowest since the data were first collected in 1999. The consensus number for the Tuesday release was 4.65 million.

The steeper-than-expected drop raised fears that a “double dip” in the housing sector—now that homebuyer tax incentives have ended/ combined with new news that home construction had fallen to its lowest level on record in July.

Better economic news came Thursday when the Labor Department reported a sharp drop in weekly jobless claims and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke announced that the central bank “will do all that it can” to ensure the economic recovery continues and the Commerce Department’s revised estimate of economic growth in the second quarter. While the estimate was revised lower, from an annualized growth rate of 2.4% to 1.6%, the decline was not as great as some had feared.

In the 2 markets I hate, Crude oil futures are flat for the week despite volatility, trading around $74.30 a barrel on Friday afternoon and Gold got a lift this week on safe-haven buying, selling for $1,236 an ounce mid-day on Friday.

Index Friday’s Close Week’s Change % Change
Year-to-Date
DJIA 10150.65 -62.97 -2.66%
S&P 500 1064.59 -7.10 -4.53%
NASDAQ Composite 2153.63 -26.13 -5.09%
S&P MidCap 400 734.30 -2.22 1.05%
Russell 2000 617.08 6.41 -2.68%

For the week we gave back an embarrassing 15.3 points and for the month we closed up are up almost 9.1 and for the year we are now at a continued record setting 443.95

Remember…. Each point = $1 in profits x the number of shares you would normally trade… So if you would have been trading with us in all our previous open positions and closed out along with us, with an average 1000 shares per trade you would have given back $15,500 this week.

Open Positions

Note…. In many of these trades we may have already taken some profits which are included in the totals above therefore these totals reflect current open positions only.


STOCK

TRADE DATE

LONG /SHORT

ENTRY PRICE CURRENT PRICE Current P/L POINTS
PRAA

22-feb

S

53.2 63.51 -10.31
DXD

27-jul

S

26.3 27.95 -1.65
MOS

29-jul

L

47.9 58.27 10.37
ETN

3-aug

L

79.2

71.86 -7.34
GDX

9- Aug

L

49.85 53.34 3.49
FISV

9-Aug

L 51.4 50.99 -0.41
BGZ

16-AUG

L

15.5 15.752 0.252
CHKP

23-AUG

L 35.2 35.2 0
EDZ

23-AUG

L 36.55 37.22 0.67
CTSH

27-AUG

L 57.35 58.59

1.24

Stock Market Weekly Update 8-9 – 8-13-2010

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Hello everybody. Stocks fell throughout the week as worries intensified that global growth is slowing while the Fed announces a new policy to stabilize economic activity. Retailers post solid earnings but disappointed investors, while climbing 0.4 percent for July, with expectations of a 0.5 percent gain for the month and a reduced 2010 guidance.

Another poor jobs report with 484,000 people filing. Expectations were for 460,000 new claims for the week of August 7th  and a profit warning from Cisco  accelerated the  decline.

In the 2 markets we hate, Crude oil futures dropped sharply for the week, trading just under $76 a barrel on Friday afternoon but Gold futures were selling for $1,215 an ounce on Friday thanks to the analysts at Goldman Sachs who said gold could rally to $1,300 an ounce this year.

U.S. Stocks
Index Friday’s Close Week’s Change % Change
Year-to-Date
DJIA 10303.15 -350.41 -1.20%
S&P 500 1079.25 -42.39 -3.21%
NASDAQ Composite 2173.48 -114.99 -4.22%
S&P MidCap 400 734.59 -37.34 1.09%
Russell 2000 609.85 -40.61 -3.82%

For the week we gave back 9.95 points for one of our worse weeks ever, but for the month so far we are still up almost 7 and for the year we are now at a continued record setting 441.8

Remember…. Each point = $1 in profits x the number of shares you would normally trade… So if you would have been trading with us in all our previous open positions and closed out along with us, with an average 1000 shares per trade you would given back $10,000 this week. A shitty week no doubt.

Open Positions

Note…. in many of these trades we may have already taken some profits which are included in the totals above therefore these totals reflect current open positions only.


STOCK

TRADE DATE

LONG /SHORT

ENTRY PRICE

CURRENT PRICE

Current P/L POINTS

PRAA

22-feb

S

53.2

64.54

-11.34

CL

12-jul

L

82.9

76.39

-6.51

X

20-jul

L

42.25

45.1

2.85

ICF

20-jul

L

56.55

59.12

2.57

WYN

21-jul

L

22.1

24.88

2.78

TWM

26-jul

S

19.2

14.96

4.24

MEE

26-jul

L

31.45

31.42

-0.03

DXD

27-jul

S

26.3

27.28

-0.98

MOS

29-jul

L

47.9

51.2

3.3

ESRX

3-aug

L

46.2

45.93

-0.27

ERX

3-aug

L

32.15

28.66

-3.49

ETN

3-aug

L

79.2

75.27

-3.93

GDX

9- Aug

L

49.85

49.74

-0.11

FISV

9-Aug

L

51.4

49.19

-2.21

IYT

9-Aug

L

81.8

76.11

-5.69

IBB

10-Aug

L

84.5

81.59

-2.91