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Extraordinary response–thank you!

@ 12:15 am

The response to my first two posts has been unexpected and welcome.  Thanks to a link from a most valuable investing blog (www.thekirkreport.com), I received over 1400 hits Tuesday.  Some emails/comments asked for more trading details.  That will come as I become accustomed to this medium.

I have found that the daily news breaks cause only minor effects on the market– temporary deviations from the market’s trend.   So I do not pay much attention to tonight’s earnings announcements from INTC and YHOO.  Yes, we may get more of a bounce in the techs, but still within a solid downtrend.  A 56 point rise after a 400+ point drop in the Dow is quite puny and reflects a sick market.  The DOW could rise another 300 points and still not break the downtrend.  The NASDAQ composite would have to rise to 2,000 before I would begin to question the bear trend. 

After the market confirms a real turn, there is plenty of time to get on board with buys.  We are interested in a trend that lasts months not days.  I don’t let the pundits scare me into the market prematurely–there is plenty of time to ride a real bull. The successful traders say there is a time to be out of the market–why trade long before the market meets my conditions for maximum success.  Real bottoms typically take time to form with at least one re-test of the lows.

So, right now I am sitting with puts in stocks in housing, auto-related, employment related and mortgage related industries.  My puts are good through June or beyond, so I can wait for the decline to resume.  (I buy deep in the money puts so there is little time premium to pay, but more risk.)

XMSR is looking sick to me—maybe the decline in car sales will hurt their subscription growth.  I originally bought XMSR when it was $2/share and traded it several times.  The company still has no earnings. (I don’t have a position in it now.)

Because I swim with the tide, I should own no stocks now.  However, I could not resist nibbling on a drug store stock (MHS) that has been hitting new highs. I think new medicare prescription benefits will take effect early next year.  Perhaps MHS and LDG are benefiting from this.  I set a close stop one point below my purchase price–I know the odds against a long profitable rise are against me.  In a weak market traders take profits quickly, thus truncating the rise.

I have no reluctance to take quick small losses.  I make a purchase and set a sell stop and forget it–take the emotion out of it.  Every loss brings me to the next gain.  It took me 30 years to get to this point.  Trading is about making money not being right.  A big ego gets in the way of successful trading.  More on all of this later.

Thanks for listening.

Put me on, IRA

@ 10:46 pm

Well, the market didn’t collapse today.  So what. Did you really think it would just tank like it did in 1987?    Most people hope it is over, and think that a further decline is not justified by the state of business, and especially, with all the bargains that have now materialized. However, the market always goes further than everyone thinks is justified–up or down.    This bear has plenty of time to smell the roses before it hibernates again.  It will take its own time.  Especially ominous–the short term interest rate index I follow jumped today–as much as it did when this rise in rates began in the first week of January.  Is something going to convince the Fed to become more aggressive?  Stay tuned.

Experienced traders do not care which way the market goes, as long as it moves in a trend.  Do you really believe the old adage, "Don’t sell America short?"  While the market spends most of the time going up, when we can buy stocks, why not profit in those periods of decline, when we can sell stocks short?  A good bear lasts 10 or more months and prices decline quicker than they go up–fear is quite a motivator. Why play only one side of the game.

Selling short scares people.  You ask your broker to borrow someone elses shares so you can sell them at the  current price.  He puts the proceeds in your account, but you can’t touch the money until you give back the shares you borrowed. When the stock falls, you buy the shares back at the lower price and give them back to the broker. You, however, get to keep the difference between the price you first sold the shares at and the subsequent buy back price (sell short at 80, buy back at 70–you make $10/share). What scares everyone is the idea that if the stock rises, you have to buy it back at a higher price and the price could theoretically go to a gazillion.  However, when you own a stock, the most it can fall is to zero.

Now, this fear of an infinite loss from a short sale is unrealistic.  When you buy a stock at, say 50, you place a stop order to  automatically sell your shares and "stop your loss" at an acceptable price, say 48.  If the stock falls to 48 you get sold out and take your loss.  You just reverse this for stocks you have sold short.  Sell short at 50, place a stop order to buy if the stock rises to 52.  Either way you have a strategy in place to limit your losses.  (Note, if the stock gaps up or down–jumps up or down in price and skips over your stop price–you may have a larger loss than your stop order would indicate.)

Now, to sell short I must trade in 100 share blocks in a margin account.  Margin, because the broker will charge me interest when he lends me the shares to sell short.  But I can’t trade on margin in my IRA account.  However, some brokers allow customers to trade options in an IRA.  Enter the Put option, IRA. 

A put option gives me the right to sell 100 shares to someone at a set price for a set time.  Thus, if I think stock XYZ, which is trading at 50 is going to decline, I could purchase a put option to sell 100 shares of XYZ at 50 (or 55, or 60 etc.) good for a few weeks or months.  I could then buy the stock, if it declines, to say, 45 and put them to someone at 50.  But I do not have to purchase the shares.  If XYZ declines, the put option (which trades like a stock on the option exchange) will increase in value and I can sell the option at a profit.  But if XYX rises, I can sell the option at a small loss or let it expire worthless.  Either way, if the stock rises, the most I can lose is the cost of the option.  So much for the myth of the infinite loss from selling short.

I can even buy put options on the stock market indexes (QQQQ, DIA) or ETF’s, if I think we are in a bear market–all in my IRA.  I cannot possibly cover all of the ins and outs of options here.  I am just trying to whet your appetite and show you how I profit from a declining market.  For a primer on options go to the learning center at www.cboe.com.  I disregard the media pundits looking for the rare rising stock to purchase and bet on the many stocks that are declining.

APRIL 17, 2005–Short or in Cash

@ 3:37 pm

It is amazing to me that people I talk with who are in the market and are more than casually interested in trading continue to look for stocks to buy.  We are in a serious decline and I have been mainly short or in cash since early this year.  People refuse to accept what the market is saying–they only want to buy.  I have always done best when I ignore the media and just look at my charts.  The great Nicolas Darvas made 2 million dollars while traveling around the world.  When he camped out in Manhattan, he lost his objectivity and consistently made losing trades.  He had to leave the country to get back on track.  You can’t make good judgments if you are glued to CNBC and tipsters.  I want a life, too.

The year after a presidential election is typically bad and the 4 year bull/bear cycle suggested to me a top in 05  and a bear market bottom in 2006.  Bear markets have occurred almost on schedule since I began trading in the 60’s:  bottoms occurred in 62, 66,70,74,78,82,87 (came late), 90, 94, 98, 02,  0?.  It does not take a Ph.D. to discern a pattern (even though I have one).

I cannot predict the future.  I can only read the present market conditions and react when it changes.  We are in a sustained decline in the major indexes that began in January.  More than 70% of stocks go with the indexes.  So, instead of searching for a stock that will fight the trend (with a 30% chance), it is better to go into cash or short (where we have a 70% chance of success).  To make money in the market one must go with the better odds.

So, what looks sick?  It appears to me that the housing stocks are finally beginning to drop.  I will short a housing stock this week.