July 31st QQQ 21 Minute Intraday Chart

Posting a 21 minute intra day chart of the Powershares Q's.  As you can see by the bold pink line, the 21 minute chart is following a nice little uptrend there.  Let's see if it continues...

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 31st, 2013

Today was a fairly eventful day as far as news items go.  This story on Yahoo Finance does a nice job summarizing them all

The Fed finished up a two day meeting, and the market was waiting with bated breath to hear what Bernanke had to say at the end of it.  Bernanke announced that while the economy is growing, it is not growing at the pace they would "like to see" so the Fed will continue pumping money into the system via it's bond buying program to keep inflation and interest rates in check.

GDP for the 2nd quarter grew at 1.7%.  Originally, 1st quarter GDP was reported at 1.8%, however it was revised down to 1.0% today.  SO.... after revising the 1st quarter number down, 2nd quarter GDP grew at a faster rate.  Seems rather convenient to me, but I'll take it.

Personal savings rates are up to 4.5%, which is good for the economy's long term health.

Unemployment is currently at 7.6%, and is expected to report in at 7.5% on Friday.  So keep a close eye on those Friday unemployment numbers to see if there are any surprises.

The markets themselves remained relatively flat today.  There was a massive up-swing to start the day (lasted all of amateur hour from 9:30 to a little after 10:30), followed by a massive sell-off into the Fed's 2:00 meeting, followed by a massive up-swing after the announcement that lasted till 3:00, followed by a massive sell-off in the final hour of trading between 3:00 and 4:00.  Institutional investors usually play in the last hour of trading each day, so I'd say this sell off is a good indication that institutions are going to unload their wares.

And here's a 5 minute chart of the DOW today...

July 29th, 2013

Been a few days since my last post.  Back was killing me Thursday, July 25th and I spent Friday, July 27th trading.  My results Friday were good.  I successfully executed a put option play on the QQQ ETF with an original position size of $3,000 at 10:27 AM and exited the trade with a profit of $1,000 at 10:50 AM.

Today's results were not as spectacular, however I did manage a $100 profit on a sniper call play on GS.  Toward the end of the trading session I did enter a multi-day put play on GS as their stock is coming off a 52 week high, the market is turning over, and it has a lot of room to close the gap between the trend line.  Plus the entire financial sector is facing pressure with rising interest rates, and the Federal Government accusing JP Morgan (JPM) of manipulating energy prices out west.

Aside from rising interest rates and the JPM fiasco, the biggest news of the week will be Wednesday when Ben Bernanke announces the Fed's position on ending stimulus.  How the market reacts will be interesting, to say the least.

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...

Intraday NASDAQ Futures Charts (July 18th, 2013 - CLOSE)

I was looking over the Futures charts just now on a 21-minute intra day basis, and came across something odd on the NASDAQ futures charts.  Toward the end of the day, from about 2:30 till the end of the day, the NASDAQ futures fell off a cliff.  See what I mean on the 21 minute charts...

See this story on Bloomberg's website.

Basically, the futures fell following the release of Google's (GOOG) and Microsoft's (MSFT) earnings results.  Both companies posted strong disappointments.  No wonder, every company under the sun (Google included) are trying to figure out how to wring more money out of advertising on tablet devices.

Microsoft seems to have no end of bad news these days.  Windows 8 is a MAJOR disappointment on both tablets and desktops.  So they effectively failed at cracking the ever-growing tablet market, AND managed to alienate long time desktop users.  The announcement of the Xbox One alienated over 10 years of gamers who dedicated themselves to the Xbox brand.  About the only thing Microsoft has going for them is Office which, let's be honest, not everyone is tied to like they were in the late 90's and early 2000's.  There's Internet Explorer... which every internet geek worth their salt knows is junk.  Sorry Microsoft, you need to innovate before you go under.

QQQ 21-Minute Update

Just wanted to post the 21 minute chart as of the close of today, July 18th 2013.  The top pink line represents an existing level of resistance, and the diagonal pink line represents what WAS a support line, but which has now turned into a resistance line, as you can see.

From the chart below, it looks like QQQ broke below the supporting trend line to the down side, tried to recover, hit it's head on the trend line (confirming it has now become resistance), and is now set to head back down.

And the chart...