July 1st, 2013

So wow over a year since a post... way to go me! lol

Decided to get back into the swing of things on daily updates to the journal. Looking at my daily charts, pretty much every stock on my watch list is moving sideways following strong upward movements. This suggests that most stocks on my list are topping out until they either move down or continue going up... for now they are "resting."

The lone exception to this on my watch list is Apple (AAPL). Apple has been clobbered for quite sometime, and actually appears that it may be at the bottom of it's decline. Of course it's too early to confirm this yet, but it's the only stock on my list that A) isn't going sideways and B) isn't at the top of an uptrend.

Anywho, the Fed has made announcements that they may reduce some of their Quantitative Easing policies which has the markets a little spooked, hence why I think they're moving sideways right now. That and it's summer time, I think everyone sold in May and went away (to use an old market adage). This also explains why a lot of the moves the last couple of months have been quick up and down with little long term sustainability. The long term (gravy!) plays should resume in the fall after labor day. Until then, probably best to stick to the 55 minute charts for trading and get in & out same-day.

Not a whole lot of news today beyond a couple of manufacturing reports that spun a positive outlook on things. The ISM reported at 50.9% when it was forecast to be 50.5% (a 0.4% positive surprise) and construction spending met it's forecast of 0.5%, a nice increase from the prior reading of 0.1%.

The only other noteable news item was that Zynga's CEO stepped down, and was replaced by the former head of Microsoft's Xbox division Don Mattrick. Mattrick is the one who famously quoted in regard to Xbox One's originally "always on DRM" that "if anyone wants to play games without internet, they should get an Xbox 360." Basically, all the bad ideas at this year's E3 that were on display when Microsoft announced the Xbox One were his fault. If I were Microsoft I'd say good riddance. The man's ideas managed to alienate and undermine almost a decade's worth of work that Microsoft has performed to etch out a market for the Xbox brand. And actually this works out well for Zynga since Zynga revolves around free-to-play web based games that earn most of their money from micro transactions.