Some update

We moved to Columbia, Missouri yesterday. Not settled in yet. We opened one checking account in Commerce Bank but when we went to the Wal-mart we found that they have a branch of Bank Midwest inside Wal-mart which gives 1% interest interest on MM account as long as you maintan a balance of $1K and is open longer hours and the weekends. Compare that to the Commerce Bank which was offering 0.5%. The two outfits are only 2 blocks of each other. We will close the commerce bank account. Meanwhile, I have been too busy and too tired to really follow the stock market till just now. I missed all the fireworks in the market. Technically, the stock market is in a really dangerous zone --- I can't tell (even Fibbonaci is not working on SPY chart) how far the market will go on the upside. From the technical standpoint there is considerable problem with the upside movement since there are major gaps from Aug/Oct 2008 directly above us. Oil is on fire and the gasoline prices are also rising too fast. Just the other day, price had changed between the time we went to shop and when we returned. Sounds really crazy, but thats what happened. If the price of gasoline really goes to $4/gal this summer I don't think it would have the same effect as $4 gas had last year. People seem to be just fed up and don't care if they don't have money they will just live their life as they want to live. They appeared to be tired of doom and gloom. This time we will need $5/gal gas price to break the demand. So, I don't know what catalyst will cause the stock market to come back to the ground. The stock market should be trading in a trading range of $800 $ 1030 till the emplyment picture clarifies the economic situation. the market action overshot 800 on the downside to 666 and maybe it will overshoot 1030 by 200. so, we might see 1230? Thats a whopping 25% from where we are today! That would give a very wide trading range. The danger of this kind of range is that it will suck in all the money that goes for MA200 signals and will whipsaw them making that strategy not pay off like it has done for the last 25 years. Every market strategy eventually must yield to the Central Limit Theorem. We were told that commercial property loans were going to be big problems for banks. But banks are flush now with all the money they need. Even the equity offerings went quite well. Most freakish thing: on the day that we saw the largest bankruptcy in the US, the market rallied to new highs! Wow! Who could have predicted that? I have been out on the sidelines in my own trading portfolio. I also did not have time to day trade for the last week. Based on the charts of the last couple of days that was a good thing for me since all the action was over within the first hour which I tend not to participate in while day trading. Sell in May and go away may be the best advice. Summer is a beautiful season to relax away from such nerve raking markets. Have fun and don't bet much on even a "sure thing" because nothing is ever sure!

On vacation from trading till June 2

I am taking few days off. Good luck trading. The market sentiment is now turning negative but global economy appears to be recovering. See nice analysis of current state of affairs in the economy: http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/2009/05/green-shoots-turn-red-hot.html. So, be careful out there. If the market corrects then I will be out there with a boatload of high dividend paying international companies to buy. If I can get 10% on the dividend from solid companies, whose dividends have been safe over decades, then who needs more and who cares where the stock prices go? That's a really good return on my equity. Over the next six months buying sharp sell-offs will be profitable. Probably 820 on sp500 will prove to be difficult to crack. Only when economy shows further weakening that buying on sell-offs will stop working and we may go down and stay down for a long time. But I don't believe that this coming sell off will be that kind of irreversible event since the economy is flooded with so much liquidity. With that much liquidity, the value of cash relative to other goods is bound to go down, i.e. share prices and commodity prices ought to go up. For the purpose of the portfolio in the blog here, I will keep the strategy intact - buy 1/3 SDS when we crack 875 and then buy the last 1/3 when we crack 850. And then, sell the position at 820. I don't think we are going to go much further than that in the coming sell off.
Sami.