Thursday, April 22, 2010

A bullish day no doubt but......

The markets started lower ....and went lower, down over 100 points at one point. Well, the bears had their chances right there but they couldn't take it. The green finish in all the three indices is bullish indeed. No two ways about that. A day like this would make me very confident being on the long side but.....Yes, dear readers there is a but. 

Amazon and Microsoft both beat expectations after hours but that couldn't stop their stocks from falling. This shows how small the margin for error is in these markets after the run up we have had dear readers. I would still advise caution until we make new highs. The odds are still on the long side till that happens but I would keep a sizable cash position too. 

Personally speaking, I couldn't watch the markets until noon except for the first five minutes. Seeing the markets down considerably and knowing that it was due to the Greece crisis, I placed a buy limit order for PAL at 4.80 which got filled while I was away. I was confident that the Greece crisis will not affect the markets. Greece is not too big to fail but it is too important to fail. Greece going down would be a really bad advertisement for the Euro and the Euro nations are not going to let that happen. That is my thinking at least. I also got in and out of PMI at 6.51 and 6.56 respectively. I am still long SWC and NEP. I haven't got the time to run my scans tonight, so am just going with the stocks I am already familiar with. Its been a decent week so far and I intend to end it that way tomorrow.

Take care and good luck tomorrow!

6 comments:

Is It Possible said...

Markets are very jittery at this point, 1 day up and next down... but the best trades I have had so far are earning breakout stocks like BTH, SCL, TXT, etc

positiontrader said...

Congrats IIP! All those stocks had quite a run....Hope you made a decent bit!

Is It Possible said...

Thx, actually the credit goes to this guy:

http://stockbee.blogspot.com/

who is also our fellow mate....

The trick is to identify stocks with earning surprise accompanied with strong volume and buy only after the breach of High of the earnings day.... typically the stock would keep going higher for 10-20% in 5 days to 2 months period....

BTH: Bot after earnings day and sold in 5 days with a return of 12%
SCL: Holding currently, bot after earnings day which means today as it broke the earnings day high
CPY: Missed this one as I lost the opportunity, it gapped up :(
TXT: Bot today after breach of resistance but earnings gave it the lift and should be a follow thru day tomorrow....

I hope this helps :)

BTW, what scanning and charting softwares you use? paid or free?

positiontrader said...

Thanks IIP but I try to purposefully avoid earning stocks due to the volatility and my own time constraints. I use finviz.com for screening and the stockcharts and scottrade for charting.

Is It Possible said...

For scanning you may also want to check following:

1. Stockscreen123
2. Stockfetcher

positiontrader said...

Thanks IIP. I am familiar with Stockfetcher but will have a look at the other one.