Slope Of Hope with Tim Knight

The Strangest One Yet

Praying for a Retracement

There won't be any need for interepretation. Here's what I believe and thus how I am positioned:

• The market is going to engage in an explosive rally, shocking everyone, and taking tons of fear out of the market. My target for the S&P is somewhere in the 1075-1100 range.
• The VIX will plunge back into "the new  normal" of the mid-30s.
• Once the rebound is done, around Halloween, it will be the bearish opportunity of a lifetime.

By stating the above, I have distinguished myself from 99.99999999% of bloggers and financial journalists by being extremely specific. The risk of this is twofold: one, looking like a complete moron if the opposite happens; and two, losing a lot of money, since I've never owned so much stock in my life. I bought many securities at the depths of Friday because - - and this may be the only time you ever read these words from my fingers - - they were cheap.

The speed of the plunge was simply breathtaking. The Russell 2000 lost 30% of its value in seven sessions.

I don't usually keep "fervent prayer" in my playbook, but if by some miracle we were to retrace to the breakdown point of about 650, you'd see me on the street corner selling my soul to the devil in exchange for the cash I'd want to short this market. OK, OK, I've got enough cash. I can keep my soul. Suffice it to say, this would be the stuff of which bear legends were made.

The Dow Utilities have the same beautiful pattern. My analysis of this pattern was astonishing. My trading of this pattern was astonishingly amateurish. I sold SDP at $70 and it doubled in value in a week's time.

As regulars know, I made another bold move by buying a very large OIH call position Friday afternoon. At first OIH sank a little below my entry point, then it surged higher. I feel this is a solid trade, at least until $110.

All my positions are long, and all of them are ambitious. I have not a single bearish position in any of my three accounts. Some are particularly aggressive, such as ABK, which I managed to buy at $1.34 on Friday (notice the declining volume over the past few weeks, when the price was also declining).

MBI is a similar story.

I bought SOHU,but this is actually a stock that looks genuinely good for the long haul - - or at least until it gets back into the $70-ish area. This is a beautiful chart, and the fact I think China is going to recover strongly too only bolsters the case.

Not to mimic Trading Goddess, but "look at the volume!" SSO traded a few million shares a day in August. On Friday it traded over 130 million shares. I own a lot of SSO in two of my accounts.

Besides the "retrace to the neckline" pattern, the other one I'm seeing over and over again is the one where the price has fallen far, far, far away from the major broken trendline. It's tougher to know how long to hold on to these.

The past four weeks have been very good to me. If I had been a lot braver, they would have been ridiculously, obscenely, horribly "Lear Jet" good. But let's not go there :-) The traffic to the blog this week was also spectacular. I imagine it will soften up quite a bit as bear-mania starts to fade. But I've already got my fiendish plans in place for when the bulls think everything is OK again. Until then, I'm going to innocently blend into the herd and be one of them.

Banksta

So you have to do new entries!

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The Vomit Comet

OK, I'm going to disappear for quite a while today. First, I've got a "Spotlight" session on thinkorswim (go to www.thinkorswim.com for details) half an hour after the closing bell. Second, I've told every person in my life to bug off all week, and it's high time I communed with some folks beside you good people.

Today went very, very well for me. I was scared to pieces at times, but I held tough, and it worked out great. I'm slamming the book closed on this week. Let's all pray for some peace and quiet next week. This is like being in a never-ending state of war, and I think I speak for most of us when I say we're all really sick of it.

I'll do a post either tonight or on the weekend. Thanks!

Going Long OIH

In spite of getting burned very, very badly so far on any long positions, I am entering a large OIH call position at these levels. The confluence of the Fibs and the absurd battering over the past seven days makes this attractive to me. I am getting January calls, deep in the money. Nothing crazy. But big.

The symbol I got is .OIDAL and the price I paid was $29.

Fear--->Cash

I'm in full-blown safety mode right now.

My IRA account? Zero positions. A ton of cash.

My Personal account? Zero positions. A ton of cash.

My "big" account? Twenty-three little longs, and two big longs (QLD and SSO). Plus a ton of cash.

This is a relatively conservative position for me. Not a single option of any kind. This market is stark, raving mad, and even for me, I'm hiding in the cave.

WMDs? Hans Blix Picks VIX!

Playing UTIL to the Upside

Regular readers know about my "premature anticipation" problem with SDP, having closed it out at a nice profit and then watching $140,000 of additional profit accumulate that I missed. I have not "chased" the $UTIL all the way down, but I think it has reached a point of reversal, so I'm going to ride it up. The lines you see emanate from 1942!

It's Hammer Time

I have been selling puts and closing shorts as fast as my fingers can type.