Crude oil, which is on the nation's mind like never before, softened up enough today do my puts some good. I am generally short most major items related to oil, gold, and agriculture. We had similar dips in crude oil in late March and late April, both of which were followed by pushes to new lifetime highs, so I am not saying the past few days are game-changing. But at some point this bull trend will be broken.
I mentioned yesterday that I closed out my XAU puts. That was obviously early, and it's a shame that the huge bid/ask spread was the major reason for my wanting to close them out. Oh, well. I could see this easily heading to $160 and maybe even lower.
My NASDAQ puts are pretty deeply in the red. I am watching $MSH closely. If it pushes past 625, this trade is shot.
Crude's weakness translated into strength for the transports. This index is within a hair's breadth of a new historical high.
Apple remains one of my favorite puts, particularly in light of its relative weakness to the broad NASDAQ today.
CNQ is just one example of the formerly hot ag-related securities that are softening up.
I mentioned $250 as a key breaking point for FSLR (which has fallen am amazing 65 points in just a couple of weeks). We're very close.
Both Baidu (BIDU) and Google (GOOG) are also tantalizing at these levels.
Baker Hughes (BHI) is a pretty sweet short with a stop at $90.
The broad OIH has had an amazing run this year. A true tumble in crude might bring this down to the $150 level.
I don't know if I've ever trade OSTK before, but I entered a new position in it today (short).
Another new position for me is VMI, which is forming a broadening top.
I also entered AGN today based on its push higher today, since the risk is lower at these levels. My stop is at $58.
CERN is falling away nicely from the horizontal line you see here.
And Fastenal (FAST) was a new short for me today, again based on the lower-risk entry point. There is a lot of resistance in the $50-$52 range.
Finally, a couple of steel-related issues on the short side.
While I am encouraged at crude oil's weakness, I gotta say, if Friday isn't a down day on the indexes, I'm going to be pretty disappointed with this week. Today's firmness in equities are disquieting, although at least a portion of it was lost in the final 90 minutes of the trading day. See ya Friday!
