Everything is relative.
When you get used to the market soaring day after day, and yet again the market blasts 140 points higher, you will gladly take a 40 point gain on the Dow. Not to mention a drop in the Russell 2000 and NASDAQ.
Things were really miserable earlier today. The Russell was looking dangerously in blast-off mode, and everything under the sun was soaring higher. And then suddenly the rug got pulled out from underneath the bulls' stinking, corrupt hooves.
You may be puzzling as to why this happened, but now I can finally reveal it. There was an International Symposium on the Cooperation Between Government and Markets held in St. Petersburg. Everyone was there – – Bernanke, Stephen Schwarzman, Paulson, Abby Joseph Cohen, Jim Cramer – – everybody. This gathering was a shameless formalization of the relationship between the major governments of the world and the principals of the investment banks. This conspiracy excited the markets higher early in the day.
What they didn't realize was there was a certain blogger who had infiltrated the group using false credentials. You can see the mayhem that erupted about 30 seconds into this video. I barely made it out of there with my life.
To add to the confusion, there were "riots", according to Jeff Kohler, erupting over at his blog. For some reason the comments section was getting pretty rowdy with comments comparing Slope with Addict. Jeff had to quell the noise, so he offered this.
All right, on to the markets. First, China. The old saying about "what everyone knows isn't worth knowing". I tend to think this is the case with China. Yeah, yeah, the China century. I've heard it. I get it. We're the new Britain, they're the new United States. I don't think so. And God help their environment and all the health disaster that's brewing there.
This chart still intrigues me. If we break 170 hard, this could get exciting again.
Transports made a new never-before-seen-in-history high today, but gave up virtually all of it. Check out the shooting star on this baby.
Pitifully, I remember the days when I was short OIH and had 192 as my stop loss. Here we are at nearly $220. It's getting awfully close to that Fib fan, don't you think?
Speaking of shooting stars, here's another beaut – – the S&P 500. Don't get me wrong; the markets aren't acting bearish. But this bull is sure looking weary.
I'm the unfortunate holding of DUG right now, and it's been pathetic. We're scraping the bottom of that sloping support line, as you can see. And the explosion in volume over the past few months is amazing.
Now on to a few equity shorts. ABT is pushing up against a major broken trendline.
Albemarle (I have no idea what they do, and couldn't care less…….) is in a similar pattern.
Bottom-fishing is dangerous, but there are a handful of stocks that look intriguing for a bullish play. IFC is one of them.
Akamai (AKAM) is really interesting, its price approaching two important levels of resistance.
And our buddy AAPL, whose puts made some people some green today (and I got a few thank-yous on that; you're certainly welcome).
CELG could be in the early throes of a nice drop, with a clean stop around $66.
I've got puts on Coach (COH), which also has a clean stop around $38.
Solar stocks aren't looking too great these days, and my puts had a nice little uptick today on First Solar.
I'm not sure what's in store for investment banks, but I've put my neck out on puts for one of them – – Morgan Stanley. This isn't a bad head and shoulders pattern.
Google was relatively weak all day, even when the market was very strong. I've got a stop on this one at $592.
Finally, Lindsay, which I don't think I've ever mentioned before. I shorted this one earlier today.
Suffice it to say I ended the day more cheerful than I was a few hours before. I hope to hell things start to turn around. Otherwise, I'm going to have to make more flying contraptions.
