The Risk

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Greetings from the San Francisco Marriott, where the Money Show is taking place. I'm way in the back of the room, waiting to go on stage for a couple of hours to throw charts at Tom Sosnoff. On the way down, a couple of gents recognized me and wanted to say they read my blog. One of them was very friendly and cordial. The other mentioned how he learned from "the mistakes people who write blogs make". Glad to help! 😐

Anyway, today was obviously a really rotten end to an otherwise really cool week. As my prior post stated, it's getting really frustrating dealing with a market that lurches – alternately – up and down. On the whole, it goes nowhere. This is like the third or fourth week that I basically haven't budged in terms of portfolio value, in spite of huge swings up and down. That's a hell of a lot of work to be standing still.

A person actively trading can either (a) take profits daily or (b) play for a trend and work toward much, much bigger profits. I've been focusing on (b), and it's been a dud. Doing (a) is fraught with risk and missed opportunities, but lately, it's been the way to go. I don't get my jollies out of spinning my financial wheels. Although I guess treading water is better than losing money.

Looking closely at $XBD, we need to watch that 165 level closely. Breaking the descending trendline would be bad news, bears.

The DIA was very disturbing; it had huge volume, the biggest upmove in weeks (if not months), and a clean pierce above the resistance line. Not good. Super-firm resistance isn't in place until 122.

The IWM is also very disturbing. We're above the Fibonacci and also at risk for cutting above that descending trendline. Next week puts us very "at risk".

I've drawn a horizontal line on the NASDAQ to suggest one possible demarcation, but let's face it, there's not much holding the market back from pushing above this level. A rally to S&P 1320 might be a cinch for the bulls at this point. It's only 20 points away.

Oil has been amazing week the past 30 days. I think the bull's back is broken on this, but I also think we're due for a meaningful bounce higher next week before the downtrend resumes.

At this point, I'm sitting on a train with a bunch of rowdy baseball fans (it's a long story………..but I was speaking in San Francisco with Tom Sosnoff), so I'm going to end it here. I'm probably going to have a chunk of time in Las Vegas to put together something lengthier, but if not, please understand! I've got a big three-day show I'm doing with thinkorswim, and I'm speaking on four separate occasions, so I'll be pretty tied up. Today was rough, but try to have a good weekend! And to those of you going to Vegas, I'll see you there soon……