September 3rd, 2013

Alright, we're moved into the new house and settled.  My office is set up, and most of the "to do" stuff that needs to be done when one moves into a new house (painting, caulking, spackling, etc etc etc) is done.  This means I can finally get back to updating this blog on a regular basis.

I know the month of August was a huge down month in the market, and there was a lot of talk about the Hindenburg Omen.  Additionally, there's still a lot of anxiety about the situation with Syria.  I'm guessing that if we do go to war with Syria it may negatively impact the markets.

On the whole, though, the market hasn't been that volatile the last week or so.  Today was the first trading day after Labor Day, though, and that means we're watching for the post-Labor-Day "pop" which will be followed by a hard sell-off.

The markets in general, though, have definitely turned over.  I think a lot of what we're seeing is stock prices being over-inflated by the Fed's "heroine effect" of pumping money into the system with their bond-buying initiatives.  Don't get me wrong, I say ride the wave as long as they keep feeding it, but don't expect to ride this tidal wave of cheap federal money for ever.  When this does end (and it will), just be ready and make money to the downside.

Actually, be ready to make money to the downside anyway, because that's where the market's headed for at least the next month or so.  There is still the very real possibility of a crash by October.  Especially since there's possible war with Syria looming, possible fed tapering, and mutual funds have to dump their losers by the end of October for tax purposes.

Today the biggest news came from the tech giants.

It was revealed that Apple's share of the smartphone market rose 7.8% compared to this time last year, and Apple now controls 43.4% of the total global smartphone market.  Apple shares surged early morning on the news, but slowly declined as the day wore on.

Microsoft bought out Nokia in a $7.2 Billion deal.  Shares of Microsoft sank over 6% while shares of Nokia surged over 25%.  Microsoft struck the deal hoping this would give them a larger foothold in the mobile devices market, currently dominated by Apple.

Amazon.com announced a program today called Matchbook.  Matchbook basically lets you get an e-book copy of any real, physical book you purchased through Amazon.com for $2.99 or less (in many cases, for free).  Shares of Amazon.com surged on the news.

Since it's a new month, I'm going to look back at the monthly charts for the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq.

Dow Jones Monthly

Nasdaq Composite Monthly

S&P 500 Monthly

End of July Trends

I decided to try something new.  Since it's the end of July, I took a look at all my trend charts (aka - weekly charts) and did a review of them.  I'll be posting the ones here where I noticed an actual trend, or where I noticed support/resistance levels that are set to be broken.

The thick pink lines on each chart denote either a trend, a support, or a resistance.

Apple (AAPL)

AMD (AMD)
AMD looks like they broke below resistance on the weekly

Citigroup (C)

Goldman Sachs (GS)

Nvidia (NVDA)

Sandisk (SNDK)

Does not have a trend, but DOES have a fat pitch going down on the weekly

Yahoo (YHOO)

July 24th, 2013

Sorry no posts in a while, I've been dedicating my evenings to earnings research and truthfully haven't thought to take a break to make a post.  Today's post comes from my iPad because my back is killing me, so no pictures of charts or anything like that.

Earnings reports are coming full force.  Apple (AAPL) reported last night, and while revenue and profits are down compared to this time last year, Apple still beat because Wall Street was expecting a terrible quarter.  Apple is suffering from a slowdown of iPhone sales in China, but is being buoyed by an increase of iPad and iPhone sales here in the US.  They're practically the only Nasdaq stock that's advanced in the last 24 hours.

AMD reported two days ago as well.  Their earnings missed, and the stock has sunk since the announcement.  Despite the recent dive in their stock price, I am anticipating AMD is horribly undervalued long term.  They are making the GPU for all 3 of the major next gen video game consoles, and they are making the CPU for the biggest two (Playstation 4 and Xbox One).  Add to this the fact that it's July, and retailers have already received so many pre orders that they're worried about having enough supply (of Xbox One and PS3).  Add to this the fact that the life cycle of a console is 5 to 10 years, and you realize this is a minimum of 5 years of massive revenue for AMD.  If I were a private investor, I'd put every ounce of cash I had into AMD.

Other notable earnings beats included Facebook (FB), Baidu (BIDU), and Visa (V).  

On the whole the market has been making VERY small gains this week, going up maybe 10 or 20 points a day.  Today is the first real pullback the major indexes have seen.  Here recently, a lot of stocks and the broader market are acting like they're setting up for a correction to the downside.

And a lot of my charts are showing it should be soon...

July 2nd, 2013

Most of the broader markets began the day with modest gains, and ended the day with modest losses after stocks dipped into the negative in the afternoon session.  My watch list is very much mixed, with about half the stocks on my watch list posting gains and the other half posting losses.

In major news today, housing prices rose 2.6% from April to May of this year, and comparing May of 2013 to May of 2012, housing prices rose 12.2%.  This is very good news for the housing market, and very good news for the broader economy in general.  Housing price increases indicate housing sales, and housing sales mean a boost to the broader economy.  Even if the homes being sold are existing homes, people need to buy appliances, furniture, electronics, decorations, etc. to put in the homes they buy.  So, home sales give a nice boost to the broader economy in general.

Also today, it was reported that auto sales for June were stronger than anticipated with most major auto makers reporting meeting or beating their sales forecasts.  Auto sales account for over 10% of all retail sales in America, so a strong auto industry is a good sign for the economy in general as well.

On the whole, though, looks like trading activity is still light with it being summer time, especially with everyone gearing up for the Fourth of July in a couple of days.  Most people probably are heading to the beach instead of trading (must be nice, huh?).

Anywho maybe we'll all be in that same situation some day.  Would be nice eh?

I wanted to post a picture of AAPL's stock as well.  Looks like they're still heading up, and I marked in pink an upper resistance level and a lower support level.  Looks like the stock is coming off a lower support of around $390 and has an upper resistance of around $450.  It's currently trading at about $423 so it's got a little bit of room to run before it hits that ceiling.