Slope Of Hope with Tim Knight

August, Die She Must........

Today was a welcome relief, but it still doesn't get us over the fact that this summer's frenetic up-and-down motion is agonizing for bulls and bears alike. Even if we had a single week of a consistent downturn, I'd nail all my financial goals for the year. As it is now, I have to play offense one day, defense the next, offense the next day, defense the next. Feh!

The $UTIL, which you all know I'm especially bearish on, is on the right track again. A break beneath 460 would spell doom for this index and usher in the 20% drop on which I am counting.

I've got a medium-sized position on QQQQ puts; the $NDX is below its retracement line (barely) and below its fan line. Weakness in the $NDX would send it, I am supposing, about 150 points lower.

Every technician on the planet is eyeing 1265 on the S&P. I've tinted in the key area. I know I've said it ten times already, but I'll say it again: a break beneath this level will make the job of the bears really, really simple. Until then, we remain mired in this dread battle. September, "the month of the bear", will hopefully smile kindly on us.

Oil and gold look nicely poised for a tumble; I'd bank on OIH to fall to 165.

And this ten year chart of $XAU positions this instrument for about a 20 point fall in the near term.

One specific gold short I'm fond of is AEM:

The recovery in financials is starting to peter out, I think. The rally following July 15 was gigantic, but the volume is shriveling up. I repurchased puts on BAC today, and both FNM and FRE had sharp percentage drops today.

What follows are a variety of charts, some of which you've seen, that I like a lot as short positions.

We'll close this week out with Art Garfunkel singing "April Come She Will", one of my favorites. This only reminds me that Art should be made a saint.

Energizer Bunny

I am finally (!!!) going through the last several days of comments, trying to get back into the Slope Flow. One person mentioned ENR; I had never looked at this chart, but it's pretty intriguing!

As an aside, some people ask me what the difference between "Original" and "Present" is in the charts. Take a look at this post from just a couple of days ago.  Click on "Present." As you can see, it illustrates what the stock has done since I made the post (in this instance, I was bullish on MER, and it shows the past couple of days how much MER has gone up; nothing huge, but it makes the point).

Chats Morts

And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.

To me, nothing is more representative of the low quality of the recent rally than the kinds of stocks which have been rising the most. Just look at this detritus:

To be blunt, I think the people piling into such issues are fools. They may have not looked foolish through yesterday, but I think the entire bounce higher is simply a pause in a much bigger trend.

As for today, it's nice to get some relief. As of this writing, the Dow is down triple digits. If it holds, we're going to wind up with another complete waste-of-time of a week, since the lurching up and down merely continues. Regardless, as we bid August farewell, we can look forward to September, which has the distinction of being the only consistently "down" month in the year.

I'll see you after the close.

New Post Coming.......

I'll be doing a new post a little later morning, new and improved, with 50% less whining and a small carbon footprint.

Brutal Youth

Well, there is one and only one trend in place - - - that is, me bellyaching about the markets and saying my post will be relatively short today.

This whole Sisyphus thing gets really old. Up, down, up, down, up, down - - all month long. You may ask: "Tim, why not take profits on days you are up?" Because the only way to make real money is to ride a trend...........at least for more than 6 hours at a time! My equity curve resembles the edge of a saw. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Insane!

The broken trendline is still intact and still has meaning. But by exceeding last Friday's highs, the market did some damage to the bears today.

It was even worse in Russell-land; the resurgence in battered financial stocks helped the IWM and $RUT quite a bit, and the series of higher lows and higher highs, shown below, is troubling. Particularly since the downturn we were starting to enjoy a couple of weeks ago was stopped cold.

I am feeling better about my bearish positions on oil and gold, however. Early this morning, oil and gold were briefly strong, but they gave up these gains and moved into the red. The horizontal line on the $XAU at 157.50 is formidable.

You should also take note of the substantial bearish engulfing pattern on the OIH..........

.........and the USO.............

I was looking at the S&P 500 chart, and I found something interesting. Look at the three sharply ascending trendlines I've drawn (not the long purple ones, but the blue ones, below). It may not look like it, but all these lines are the exact same 70% angle. What I find kind of riveting about this chart is how, for the third time in a row, the market's countertrend is cleanly tracked by this line, and eventually prices fall away. Plus, with each succession, the amount of "recovery" time is getting shorter, and the amount of "climbing" time is shrinking too.

I have avoided pursuing dead cat bounces in the financials. Those that have, for the moment, have prospered. Just look at the 300% gain in MBI, for instance, over the past six weeks.

But you need to keep these things in context............as well as the potential for a resumption of the plunge.

The biggest sign of my nausea with the market these days is my complete absence from the comments section. I usually really enjoy reading the comments, getting new ideas, and answering questions. But I am again (for the moment, at least) so put off by the market's whipsaw action that I don't even want to go there. Let's see if Friday does any better for us, or if this week is going to end on a sour note...........

Equity Surge

I've been mentioning recently about the risk of strength in financials - - well, that's happening. From FNM to FRE to MBI and FED, they are all flying higher. That goes for bigger issues like JPM and MER as well.

Gold and oil remain weak, and the dollar strong, which is what I expected. I am far less sanguine about the strength in equities. It is still below the busted wedge, but this kind of strength is certainly unsettling!

I am posting this 90 minutes before the close, and I might not be able to do my after-the-close post until this evening. I'll see you then.

Home on the Range

Trapped! Trapped, I tell you! If this stupid market would just make up its freakin' mind, maybe someone out there - a bull or a bear - could make and keep some cash! Jeebis!

Black Ice

The reason for this post's title is that two of the nine positions I got bounced out of this morning were BLK and ICE, and I thought I'd do a quick post about the value and rationale behind stop prices.

To my way of thinking, 80% of the value in technical analysis comes from knowing when you are wrong, not knowing when you are right. Dealing with things when you are right is a cinch. There's nothing I love more than resetting a stop on a position to an increasingly favorable price with the purpose of locking in better and better profits.

That doesn't always happen, of course, and the more important situation is getting pulled out of a position when a given thesis of yours turns out to be incorrect (or at least delayed).

Take ICE, for instance, which has long been a favorite of mine. Based on its pattern, what it should have done is broken beneath its July 11th low of $80.20 and plunged. What has been happening for the entire month of August, though, is a consolidation in the $80 to $90 range and, this morning, a small breakout above that range. Thus, I was stopped out for a loss on the position.

Does this mean ICE will never plunge? No. Does this mean that my observation of the pattern's potential was wrong? No, unless it eventually pushes above $117.25. What it does mean, though, is that this stock is not behaving in the way it needs to behave for me to make a profit, and I'm not comfortable waiting for "something else" to happen; I would rather be out of the position altogether and continue to observe for another possible opportunity.

Urf

My portfolio took a 5% haircut today. That's no surprise, considering the strength in both equities and commodities. Oh, well; not every day can be a winner!

I have been very absent from comments lately, so please don't be insulted if you think I'm ignoring you. I'm not. I don't even have the chance to ignore you, since I'm not there! I am simply mired in other activities.

As was the case yesterday, I don't have a tremendous amount to say about the markets; there simply isn't much from a technical perspective happening. It was interesting to see AMLN, which I've mentioned a couple of times in this blog, take a 25% tumble. Sometimes it takes a little while for a stock to finally succumb to technical forces. Needless to say, that horizontal resistance line proved important.

The markets continue to be in F.I.M. (Farting Around Mode); here we see the Dow 30 biding its time beneath its busted wedge. Snore.

The Russell was up percentage-wise more than most indexes, but it hasn't broken its modest series of lower lows and lower highs.

A variety of issues that were severely battered by the credit crisis have, over the past several weeks, been up in some cases even hundreds of percent. FRE and FNM have been very strong this week, but to my eyes, this is nothing more than another lurch toward that sharply descending trendline.

I have been quietly accumulating a large position in DUG; this isn't a money-maker yet, and I've got a stop at that red line you see.

The "Jesus Pattern" of ANR (click on Present Chart to see it more plainly) isn't spiritually inspirational yet. A push above the high set early in August would take me out of this position. At least the volume has been withering away.

I am, however, pretty pleased with GOOG. In spite of some big strength in the NASDAQ, GOOG has been sinking. Some overall weakness in the markets could push this back into the three hundreds.

That's it for me today; I'm not trying to squander the wonderful traffic I've built up over all these months with lame posts, but today just doesn't call for any more commentary. And with that, I shall return to my work! See you tomorrow.

MER Ready for a Rise?

Phew, not a very good day for the bears! Ouch!

I'm not too shaken up by the charts I am seeing, but I will note, as I did yesterday, that some of the financials may have been battered enough to mount a rally. MER in particular, based on the retracements, looks enticing. I'm not going to act on it, but I wanted to share the chart.