Blog Archive

Grains were mostly higher overnight, but have moved lower in sympathy with the outside markets today.
Jan Beans posted a high last night at 1063 3/4, basically the upper limits of its 30 cent sideways trading range for the past few weeks. Overnight the low was 1044, and so far today, that low has held. SF posted a high today at 1055 and is currently at 1044 1/2 down 8 cents. On the daily charts, there isn’t real solid support until the 1034 area and then the 1021 area. Honestly, this looks like a 30 cent consolidation trade, as the market makes up its mind […]

Grains were mostly higher overnight, but have moved lower in sympathy with the outside markets today.
Jan Beans posted a high last night at 1063 3/4, basically the upper limits of its 30 cent sideways trading range for the past few weeks. Overnight the low was 1044, and so far today, that low has held. SF posted a high today at 1055 and is currently at 1044 1/2 down 8 cents. On the daily charts, there isn’t real solid support until the 1034 area and then the 1021 area. Honestly, this looks like a 30 cent consolidation trade, as the market makes up its mind […]

Pretty quiet day, and most likely what we will see through the Holidays.
To begin with, the Stock indexes were flat, ending lower on the day. There was a flurry of activity when the Fed Chairman spoke, but all in all a non-event. The stock indexes are in a consolidation pattern after DJZ rallied over 2500 points from its July lows to last week’s highs.
SPZ rallied over 250 handles over the same time. The market climbed the wall of worry, and was fueled by short covering as bears continued to load up, get slapped and then puke their losers, driving the market higher […]

Be wary of these Holiday Markets. My opinion is that the markets have mostly had their moves for the month, via last Friday’s Unemployment Figure. For the rest of the year, most likely we will have sideways to possibly higher chop. The word chop, actually, is pretty much an anachronism. Every day is choppy. In every market with computerized algorithms running in the background.
So your trade selection is key, as is your management of losses. My general feeling is to trade very little until the first of the year.

So far today DJZ9 opened at 10365, posted an early low at 10360 and a […]

Below is a very interesting interview with a large institutional broker/dealer, complaining about high frequency trading firms. HFT firms are responsible for about 70 percent of the “volume” on the exchanges. They are computer based, and their software authors have rigged the software to benefit from preferential treatment afforded them by the exchanges. In return for multi-million dollar fees paid to the exchanges, the exchanges allow these firms to co-locate their servers right next to the servers of the exchange. 50 milliseconds advantage, might as well be 50 hours.

If you watch the video, you will understand that the volume is fictitious. These firms are […]

I split up the entries so its easier to digest. The first entry was about the action we had in the stock indexes on this Unemployment Friday.

In the crude oil, we remain unable to challenge the 80 dollar resistance level.
Crude oil opened at 7583, posted a high at 7790 fell to a low at 7485 and settled at 7547 down a dollar on the day An outside day down, and on the charts, it looks like the intermediate term has shifted to cautiously bearish. Since the middle of October, we have been posting lower major highs and lower major lows, with a severe […]

Interesting action today across the markets. As I write this, the markets have been closed for hours now, and I am doing my market recap kind of late. Its about 1:15 AM, but I had a night out with the kids to go see a Christmas Carol play. Decided to take some time before hitting the sack and do a market recap.

I had some computer issues after about 12PM today, as my cable modem slowed down to a crawl this morning. Apparently when the temperature drops from 50 degrees one day to 20 degrees the next, and it snows to boot, the cable connection […]

Perhaps Art Cashin is right. About 3 months ago, I watched him on CNBC, and he was commenting that the rate of job losses was slowing. At the time, he noted, quite accurately, that pretty soon, there would be no one left to fire. Knocking off jobs at 500K plus a month for about 2 years eventually leads to an exhaustion point. Today we were expecting negative 130K and we only got negative 11K losses.
The indexes spiked higher, crude oil spiked higher, while gold and silver finally look to be having a real correction for the first time since we broke through 1000 […]

The Stocks took a powder through the afternoon after looking strong through the morning. With the market sitting at these nine month highs, it won’t take much for the bears to go on a hunting trip and try to set off a big correction as an early Christmas Present. Considering how much the Stock indexes have rallied from the July lows alone, the perma bears are bound to be correct one of these days. SPZ has rallied over 230 handles from its July lows at 865 to today’s high at 1,116.80

DJZ has rallied 2500 points from the July 8050 level to Wednesday’s high at […]