Quick Note

The market is rising off that low and I am backing up the truck some now.

I bot more GOOG and AAPL (heaviest on GOOG) and I added ISRG. I shorted more SKF (long the financials now - woot!). I also covered the retail shorts JCG and COH. Once we reverse, I will look to add more names from my yesterday long-list.

I'm naked and long now kids and the Nasdaq is still down 22 points.

That will turn higher quickly though, if I know what I think I know; which is that I am crazier than Belushi.

But sellers have done their handy work - we should start up now on seasonal strength.

GOOG is acting strongest, up more than 1% already.

Okay - I Didn't Mean Straight Up

Getting in front of this a day early was a bad idea; even though we got that lovely late reversal yesterday on rising-volume.

I'm stretched-out on the market rack, pleading for mercy - pulling turducken bones out of my ass and cursing the horse I rode in on.

Fine.

Be that way.

Europe and Asia were not so impressed by our late comeback and we pummelled stocks to within earshot of yesterday's lows at today's open. As of yet, aside from a couple St. Sebastian's of strength, were still loitering there as I write.

If we break it open and drive to lower lows here (for more than a brief moment) - I have to take my lumps and unload this new plate of crow claws. At least I didn't stick my neck out to any terrific degree and so far I have not gone crazy today adding much more.

Yep, I did add a little, you saw that. But that is because they are so resistant in going down. I let out more GOOG and started the first nibble of AAPL.

Seasonal strength should begin right about NOW (for crying out loud) - so let's see if the market is really washed-out here or not.

The put-to-call measure's today are extreme and like all good seasonal strength, there is the tendency for sellers to get their selling done early; thus allowing the market to drift higher on lackluster volume the rest of the holiday week.

We'll see if it plays out.

Either way, I have to unload these titans by the close of Friday. Then we'll see if any meaningful signals show up allowing further long-side trading.

If we crash now, we'll have to do the first day without me. And yes, Friday could potentially see such a thing. In a scenario where Europe and Asia are severely pummelled while this country eats smashed potato's tomorrow, we'll be opening Friday's affair with very little liquidity; so the chance of doom then would be real.

Otherwise...well, we see a normal seasonal strength rally, or bounce in this case, which by my watch is about 30 minutes from due (~11:30 est).

Good thing, since the NDX is taking out the early lows now, as I eat this paper. I'm standing on an island. Why do I still think this trade will work?

Because I am nuts.

Enjoy the bounce. Good trading.

Turduck and Cover

Okay, there's a little more flesh on those short bones today and much of the market is reeling - but still volume is on the light side and the NDX continues to resist selling.

Oil is surging again, another financial shoe has dropped (FRE down >27%), the Fed is forecasting lower growth and new 52-wk lows continue to expand. Good game market, right?

I'm still not very satisfied.

I am actually accumulating a little long here (GoGo, hot-money names for the turducken holiday strength). Yes I am insane, thank you for noticing.

I'm not jumping up-and-down bullish and I remain light in overall exposure so far. But I will add longs aggressively tomorrow if we can begin moving higher; I think we will do just that.

I've taken profits on my remaining QID, and added GOOG and MICC long. I even went short a little SKF above 107 (double short financial ETF), but that should be kept quiet, since it really shows my madness. This too, is a temporary fling.

But I am looking to add more long-side trades tomorrow, assuming we are not still dropping.

Pre-holiday strength begins around late-morning tomorrow and runs through the close of the shortened session on Friday - I expect to be very light again, as far as positions, by Friday's final minutes; possibly net-short again, depending.

Long-side names I am considering for tomorrow are AAPL, ISRG, more MICC, more ONXX, more GOOG, RIMM, FSLR, STP, MA and TKC. I won't play everything here, but that is my Turducken Hit-List so far.

GOOG, AAPL, and RIMM all pivoted nicely off of their 50-day moving averages (MA). I like each of those stocks for a trade, but especially if they can get above their 10-day MA's; that would allow me to trade them heavily, if only for the 1-2 days.

MICC and ISRG are already above their 50-day and 10-day MA's. I played MICC so far, but would add more there and take on ISRG if these show strength tomorrow.

ONXX is well above the 50-day, a potential monster, but it is currently below the 10-day mark and I will add only if it wakes up. Onyxx is the latest, greatest cure-for-cancer play - I'll dump it like the plague if it doesn't kick-up by tomorrow.

FSLR and STP are high-ranked solars in the energy-other group and have maintained their positive relative strength throughout this decline. MA is a leader among financials and I am only considering a brief seasonal-strength trade here. TKC is a high-flying mobile phone play from Turkey and has so far showed no signs of retreat. This one also would be just a trade, trying to take advantage of the hot-money at a time when the market is rising...assuming it is rising.

We'll see what sets up, as you can see I'm really only interested in buying strength here, but if strength is good I will buy heavily.

If we crash instead, then I am as much a fool as anyone out there right now. I'll be bailing out as quickly as I can tell and hopefully snorting back my shorts in that case; but for now...

I'm loaded for Bear.

Shame in a Single

This is getting annoying.

The market is flirting with the recent lows, new 52-week lows are expanding nicely, breadth is miserable today - but where is the god-damned beef?

Volume is pathetically low, Financials are down again but refusing to make lower-lows and the NDX is still a hero; refusing to give it up on the downside.

I'm chewing on ham bones and beef jerky, drinking coffee and ice-water non-stop, throwing CNBC-clickers into the drywall - wondering when (if ever) I'm ever really going to be able to fire at this market again.

For now (forever! it seems), I'm holding my same paltry amount of short positions (retail uglies JCG and COH and I'm long a small length of Ultrashort QID),

To be honest, I doubt now we're really setting up to break this. Maria is way too excited and Bob Pissanti is pointing out as I write about all the clear breakdowns throughout the market. Who hired this guy - this is awful.

It's not that I don't think we will go lower - we very well might. But the set-up is not there and if it ain't right, I can't trade it; not with any meaningful sized position.

Hence the vehemence.

That might sound shallow, I suppose, but I just can't do it; especially short, since the counter bounces there can be so dramatic. I'm a little peeved that I let go of most of my position late last week and prices kept drumming lower, but still...I couldn't really justify it when the re-trend lower failed to impress on so many levels. Indeed it still does.

I need panic, I need blood, I need to see broken indices sticking bones right through the skin.

This is a flesh wound.

On top of that, seasonal holiday strength is coming Wednesday, so we are running out of time; as far as a green-light set-up is concerned.

So I wait; barely short; scrawling and drawling. I even bought a little ONXX long today (Ave. 56.675). That's how upset I am.

What a pisser.

Sleeper Waves

I was out of town today. Out of sorts and out of mind, I suppose.

Being almost entirely sidelined since mid-session yesterday, I was content to basically check-out, keeping abreast only in case we were setting-up for a break of recent lows.

But that didn't occur, even though we had a smattering of negative news to fuel new selling. Wall Street's brighter faces got to smear hopeful lip gloss all over again. Nothing unusual.

I was off the coast of N. Alaska all day, hunting polar bear and clubbing baby pup seals, but otherwise - no carnage to speak of.

Actually, it could have been a good trading day, seeing we opened up, reversed quickly down, reversed up again, then down yet again, but ultimately reversing up (yet-yet again) and closing higher at the end of the day.

All of this was on higher, option-expiration volume. zzzzzzzzzz.

Anyway, I don't really care about participating in any potential upside at the moment, as the risk remains too high vs. (what I see) as potential short-term reward. If we're not falling apart again by later next week, I will certainly trade a couple of leading stocks long for the US post-holiday session on Friday (generally this trade is best placed the 2nd-half of trading on the pre-holiday Wednesday and then sold late in the shortened-session on the next trading day, Friday.

But that's a mighty long time from now. From Monday until the first half of Wednesday I'll focus on the shorts and whether the sucking sound looks ripe to continue. Should we manage to re-approach the recent November 12th lows, I will get very active, very quickly; shorting as we approach those levels and then firing as much as I can fire upon breaking below there.

So basically, I am going to react to the market here. I'll lay off the short-snorts as long as we are rising or hanging tough in the face of further negative news. If we rally sharply, I will likely take some shots, depending, because I do think you can and should sell strength into this market. However, selling strength is really best for those stuck long. For the short bully's like myself, selling failure is where it's at.

Good weekend!

Hold the Malaise

A Barnacle of Truth...

A broken market, when OVERSOLD, has a tendency to bounce sharply, but in 1-day hurrahs.

The CNBC faithful and virtually everyone I read or listen to was expecting Tuesday's heroic upswing to sustain at least throughout the week. So far that has not been the case.

Oversold readings are for losers.

Seriously, you can sharpen your technical pencils and pinpoint spastic-stochastic oscillation extremes until you're blue in the face, but at the end of your life you'll discover that trade had a negative expectation value.

If you look at crash-like declines of the past, in the indices as well as in individual equities, you will find one distinct commonality. They tend to come from an oversold condition.

So while you might see a majority of positive results stemming from buying these oversold set-ups, that is rendered insignificant once one little crash smacks you in the face.

Based on oversold technical conditions, Enron was a buy all the way to ZERO.

Ok, with that out of the way let's get to the point of the day. The market is under pressure again and breadth is sufficiently negative, but so far the major indices have not managed to hit fresh lows. You know I like to complain - well, my short-soup is a little luke-warm here. The decline is not yet accelerating.

Volume is also drying-up suddenly. Yesterday's volume was below that of Tuesday and today volume is declining again. That is not conducive with a market that is about to break apart.

Negative sentiment, meanwhile, has shifted back to worrying, having lost the hopeful luster from Tuesday. Maria is rattled. I don't like being short when she is rattled and we are not hitting lower-lows.

Further, new 52-week lows are not expanding and the NDX is declining somewhat reluctantly compared to the other major indices; the opposite of how I would write the short-script.

What's a trader to do? Well, take profits. While I was hoping to just keep adding more and more short into an accelerating drop, this mere malaise-decline has me unloading them now instead; at least for the time being. I"m taking profits today on all index shorts. I continue to hold short retail names COH and JCG.

I will be sleeping with sleeping with one eye open, however, in case things liven again; which obv. can happen quickly.

And hey, how about that silly Fed? Like Mr. Rogers recently said, that nut Bernanke is going to print money until we run out of trees. The Fed reportedly pumped another $47B into US money markets today, another post-911 record. Last week they fixed us with $32B and the week before injected our previous high, $41B.

I'm counting just under $150B now since October 24th. Wow.

Quick Note

I have swapped out of QID (39.27) and replaced it with TWM (Ave. 67.69), as the NDX continues to lead all averages on the day, while the Russell 2000 remains weakest. Holding COH short and SKF long and I'm still working the entry on a JCG short. If the market is not retreating by tomorrow, I will move back aside; however, if we are making lower-lows tomorrow I will let out more short; so keeping cautiously short until I see clear failure - then firing with both hands.