HedgeFundTradeAlert

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.

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.