Blog Archive

Re:cap. I still want to build a long position here in the dollar. 75.50 is the fulcrum, to bail on this long position. I am looking for the dollar to catch a bid and rally up to the 80-81 level. This is a trade where we are looking for a 4:1 risk re-ward. If it breaks, take a small 1 to 1.5 cent loss.

Crude oil has now blown above that key resistance at 103.50-60. Now its really any one’s guess how high we go. I have written before the trend since the low at 34, has been higher major highs, and higher major lows. […]

Last week I wrote that it looked like a double top in Dow Cash as 12,400. Probably in a week or two, after the market breaks to 11,833, which will be 567 point, there will be an analyst on TV discussing “the mysteries of technical analysis”, and how 12,400 is a mysterious “double top formation”.

Buy 11,833, Look for a bounce. Buy 11,666, look for a bounce from there. I would be a very active buyer at that level, 11,666.

In the S&P cash, look for 1278 to be the next panic sell off low. This will be especially be a good target, because we […]

Generally I don’t speak about specific currency plays. My plate is full enough trading the stock indexes, gold, crude and corn wheat and beans.
However, I do look at the currencies, specifically the dollar, the euro and the yen.

I like to have a general feel for what is going on there, but I generally don’t put direct positions on.
Today is different.

DX, US $ index, is hovering at a trend line at 76.78. It’s not a perfect trend line. It was violated On 11/5 with an intra day panic trade below, however it was fleeting, and DX settled well above that trend line […]

Crude has been in a sweet uptrend for the last 2 years since bottoming out at 34 dollars a barrel in Jan of 09. I have written before that when Hillary and Maxine waters were squealing about “punishing” greedy oil companies in July 08 with oil at 147 a barrel, they were conspicuously quiet when 6 months later we were at 34.

Interestingly, the 103.62 level was a 62% retracement of that horrendous correction from 147 down to 34. Pull up a chart and look at it.

Wow, Wow, and double wow. I am sure no one out there in the national media will […]

Corn shorts were covered. The last short position was covered, I then was fortunate enough to have a sell order at 99.98. That was a good scalp opportunity today.
Grains had their usual 24 hour correction followed by a demand driven rally. Corn and beans look strong. To bounce back from a limit down day, move sharply lower and then settle 35 cents off the low in corn and 55 cents off the low in beans.

The 1400 level in gold, could possibly become a support level.

Today was a very long day and I was very busy. I will write some more tomorrow, but […]

Once the Dow got above 12,000, I thought we would grind higher up to around the next resistance at 12,733 which was the May 2008 high. In the last 5 weeks alone, Dow Cash rallied 1,465 pts from bottom to today’s and last Friday’s high at the 12,390 level.

Perhaps the market will use the events in Libya as an excuse to take some profits. Certainly a 200 point down day with the market at these levels is not as important as a 200 point down day when the market was back at 6500. Remember, its not the size of the move, its the […]

Well, I have been thinking the grains were looking tired. If you follow my posts, I had been buying dips and trying to sell new highs.
Quite honestly, I was getting that funny feeling. I had written that I was not sure what to do, and had been stepping back from the market, scaling down position sizes.

Today’s limit down moves in corn, wheat, beans, cotton, rice, were well overdue.
Corn had doubled in the past 6 months, beans had gone from 9.00 a bushel to 14.00 a bushel, Wheat had doubled since its summer lows.

The uptrend may still be in tact. […]

Last Friday I wrote that that action in Cotton looked like a blow off top. So far today cotton is down 13.50 cents a bale lower. It had been close to 19 cents lower earlier. Each penny is worth 500 bucks on a one lot. $7,000 on a one lot. Not a bad short position.

Crude, once again, rallied on mid-east fears from Libya. 3% of the world’s oil comes from Libya. Oil companies are shutting down and getting their workers out of there, from latest wire reports. I can’t blame them. I would not want to be a westerner in that country if the […]

On a Friday going into a long weekend I don’t have much to say. The grains look tired, but that does not mean they can’t push higher
March options expiration saw liquidation in Beans and Wheat, but Corn continued to hold tough.

I rarely speak of cotton, but overnight developments, suggest a near term top after a rally which gave us 2.00 cotton. A large buy stop was triggered and filled overnight in the ICE market. The price which traded was technically OUTSIDE of what should have traded given market limits. As of this writing, it was as yet unclear if those trades would be […]

The short bean and corn positions are mostly history. I had moved buy stops to insure 20 to 30 cents profit a contract on all positions. I am still short some corn, but I am out of the bean shorts.
For now, I am flat the grains. I want to step aside going into Friday’s March option expiration.

I have no feel as to how we are going to close Friday, so I’d rather not have any exposure.

If you pressed me, I would still say that corn and beans are fighting the acreage war. I’d be bullish, but with very tight sell stops. I […]