Slope Of Hope with Tim Knight

Circadian Error

My usual morning routine is:

5:30 a.m. - Son wanders into bedroom, gets me out of bed

5:30 a.m.-6:30 a.m. Catch up on emails, look at charts, tidy up house - generally be prepared for the day

6:30 a.m.-7:00 a.m. Watch the market and assess the lay of the land; consider what stops to update, if any

7:00 a.m. Well-prepared for the trading day

Today, instead, it went more like this......

5:00 a.m. - Son tries to wake me up; I tell him it's too early

7:00 a.m. - Eyes open, glance at clock, I see the market has been open for half an hour; I fly down the stairs. I see all the indexes are way down, but I have no idea what has happened the past half hour, no idea what the charts look like, and no time to prepare. ARGH!

After a very hasty glance at the index charts, I bailed 100% out of my Russell puts and IWM puts. It is very rare I screw up like this, but I'm off to a late start. The morning is good so far, and I'm trying to determine if I should go long anywhere. Feh!

RIMM Job

You Sure Got Pretty Lips

This chart is, to me, a thing of beauty. We'll see how that neckline holds up under the Bernanke storm, forecast for 2:15 EST today.

Pfft, if I had drawn the Fibs on the $TRAN properly yesterday, I'd have reported that it touched its retracement perfectly. Here's the correct chart.

Back in the USSR

All my fretting today was pointless. As is so often the case, just letting the stops do their work, and let the market go where it will, is the best policy. As most of you know, since I was on a plane during most market hours today, I was really stressed out about what I was missing. But, in spite of all the ups and downs - some of them terribly worrisome - it ended up just great. This is the kind of screen I like to see on my portfolios.........all red at the top (the indexes) and all green at the bottom (the net daily change for each of my positions).

I've got to say, since I'm a hopeless worrywart, I am starting to be concerned about an intermediate term bottom. Looking at the Dow 30, for instance, there's a pretty formidable Fibonacci line coming up at around 11,500, which isn't that far away. We have, after all, fallen about 1300 points in just the past month or so.

The Transports, too, are nearing a Fibonacci level, although please note this retracement series is on a much shorter time scale than the $INDU's, above.

My "purple line in the sand" turned out to be just as strong a level of resistance as I hoped. We are getting close to a channel line that - - yet again - - could represent substantial support.

Let's keep beating a dead horse here..........the $NDX is already at its Fibonacci level, and its "spinning top" candlestick suggests a pause here. What better day for a bounce up in the market than Bernanke & Company's announcement.

Oddly, the Russell 2000 looks like a good, solid short to me. I've got a bunch of puts on this, and they're doing terrific. I've tinted in green the target price level. So I'm sort of in love with the $RUT after a hiatus.

As disgusted as I was with OIH, I still watch it, and I really do wonder if we're seeing a failed breakout here. This pattern is pretty ugly for the OIH bulls. It's just one day, but it's not a good sign for them.

Lastly, my $CZH comment a few days ago (about bouncing away from that tinted area) turned out to be correct.

The following avalanche of charts I offer without commentary, except that I really, really like 'em (and have either puts or short positions on each of them).

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is going to be pretty interesting. We've got durable goods orders in the morning, then Bernanke at 2:15 EST, and them a bunch of interesting earnings (ORCL and RIMM) after the bell. I'll probably do a post sometime intraday. See you then!

Layover

Crap.

This is exactly what I was afraid of. I get on a plane during the first few hours of the market. The market takes a big dive and them recovers.

Oh, well. I'm going to quickly looking at my charts before hopping on another leg of this trip. What a waste!

I'm Keeping George in My Thoughts

I received a lot of nice emails about my weepy post regarding George Carlin's passing today. I appreciate those. Sometimes people would rather share thoughts privately than publicly, and I completely understand that.

Please be reminded that I'm traveling on Tuesday, so there will be no post until after the market's closing. I'll be nervously fidgeting in the air, not even benefiting from seeing how the market opens. I'll have a brief intra-market-day layover to check on things. With the Fed announcing on Wednesday, hopefully Tuesday will be sedate.

I'm pretty excited about the prospect of IWM breaking the blue line you see below. I am getting re-enamored with the Russell as a trading instrument.

Whereas I'm sick and tired of energy. This has been a boondoggle. I think I'm just going to stay away from OIH for a good, long time. Maybe crude's oil to $500 a barrel. Who knows. I'm tired of guessing.

Just a few quick ideas to chew on tonight. CSX looks interesting; it violating its resistance somewhat, but appears to be turning back down.

RIMM, which I think reports after Wednesday's close, is just a shot-in-the-dark on my part. This is one of those "well, it's got to fall one of these days" plays that either goes to $0 or works out great.

I like R as a short, but I'm kind of bugged that the options are surprisingly thinly traded.

RJF is one of the financials that hasn't suffered as badly as its peers, but I think that could change soon. I'm shorting this one.

Here's one that got away - AutoZone (AZO). I wrote about its diamond pattern many times, but I didn't stick with it. Shame on me.

Bank of America is the biggie out here in California, and I'm just blown away by what kind of fall this is taking. It has lost about 50% of its value in the past year. Below is a ten-year, weekly chart. What a plunge!

I'm glad I gave up on my GENZ puts. I made a small profit on them, but I was noticing it was not behaving as it should, so I got out. When a pattern acts abnormally, that's a sign to move on. Doing so worked out in this case.

I don't have a position in EZU, but its progress on the H&S formation is pretty to watch.

I'll close with this video, which was from Carlin's last HBO performance. It is simply brilliant. For those who don't know any better, the language is pretty blue in some places, but this 10 minute clip is a fantastic example of Carlin's genius as a writer, performer, and comedian.

George Carlin - 1937-2008

It's very rare for me to get choked up over a well-known person's death. Steve Jobs will die someday (as will AAPL's stock price, simultaneously), and I'm sure that'll affect me emotionally. By and large, when someone famous dies, it hardly matters to me. But when I heard George Carlin died last night, I was really saddened.

For those acquainted with Carlin's work - - and my blog - - this probably comes as no big surprise. His cynicism and ragings against our modern world line right up with mine. In fact, he probably had more influence on my own thinking and disposition than any other cultural figure.

I think one reason I felt such a connection to the man is that I think I understood where he was coming from. Many people might consider Carlin to be simply a misanthrope. A grouch. A jerk. I understand him as a brokenhearted idealist. His verbal assaults against America and its citizens came out of a deep love for the place, since he always wished for so much better from his country and its people. Much of what he observed was disappointing and infuriating.

I experience those feelings most days. Just today, during a walk, I saw an enormous Hard Rock Cafe, many stories high, and beneath its garish logo was a huge neon sign (which is part of their signage) that said Save The Planet. The combination of conceit and hypocrisy in such a sign is disgusting to me. And I doubt I'd have even noticed it were it not for Carlin's endless stream of HBO specials, CDs, and concert performances.

The world is a lesser place with his absence. And he is an example of something else I've noticed - - that some of the best Christians I know are atheists. George was very outspoken about his purported disbelief in God, but here again, I think we are witnessing a yearning spawned from disappointment. Many supposed Christians, of the nitwit variety, would assume Carlin was sent straight to Hell for his atheism, to be tormented for an eternity.

What crap. My belief is that George is already with his maker, who has already told him - -on some astral plane - - that He thought he was a funny son of a bitch.

Thanks, George. You were a real gift.

Good Morning, Baltimore

Well, I guess the Saudi announcement on Sunday didn't mean squat. Energy is just as "up" as ever. I'm typing this 40 minutes into the trading day, and the initial pop in equities has faded somewhat.

I have, after careful observation over the past week, concluded why housing prices in Palo Alto are several hundred percent higher than the rest of the country. It's because much of the rest of the country sucks is less optimal for enjoyable living. At least here in Baltimore.

I keep getting accosted by homeless people, even when I'm eating in a restaurant. Just last night, I was having a nice dinner (in a relatively nice part of town) in the outdoor portion of a restaurant with family and friends. Up comes this bedraggled guy.......

Homeless Dude: Hey, there.....

Your Humble Narrator: Kee-rist.....

H.D.: Hey, can I have something you don't want?

Y.H.N.: Errrr, sure (grabbing big basket of fresh bread)

H.D. (staring at it): This is just bread!

Y.H.N.: (pausing for a moment in amazement): Haven't you ever heard beggars can't be choosers? {Editor's note: I realize that in this modern age, he probably thinks of himself as Chronically Disenfranchised or something, but I still consider him simply a bum....)

H.D: Well. All right (Takes baskets and leaves; the restaurant will never see that basket again)

In any event, I'll be flying off tomorrow morning back to the land of zillionaires and wannabes. At least the homeless people there will be ones that I know.

Once Around the Quad

Seasick

My favorite part of the day is reading to my beloved children at night. (Indeed, I have had such vast experience reading these books, I keep toying with the idea of doing an excursus for my readers on Curious George; one day, perhaps; and I'm serious about this.) Many of their books tend to be science-oriented, even though my kids are pretty young.

Tonight I was reading a book about genetics; I get a little sheepish when it gets to the sperm and egg part, but I did read the bit about how all human embryos start off as female but, after a few days, about half of them become male. A portion of the dialog with my son (who, by the way, is gorgeous, thanks to his mother's genes, not mine) went like this:

Son: "So everyone on earth would be a girl if that didn't happen?"
Dad: "That's right"
Son: "Oh, that's good. Otherwise it would be pretty unpleasant."

Oh, he's a wise one.

The big news in the market today was that crude oil took a wallop. But don't be confused. The past ten sessions have been nothing more than a trading range between about $131 and $139. The market doesn't know what to do with itself. If it pushes above $139, you're going to see an explosion to the upside. And if it breaks below $131, I think we'll easily move to $123. The longer this range persists, the more substantial the eventual break will be, regardless of direction.

The sucky part for me was that almost all the profits tacked onto my portfolio yesterday was eliminated today. I don't mind if I suffer a "wash" if the Dow is down 130 points one day and up 130 points the next. But if the market is down 130 points and then up merely 30, and I still am no better off, that worries me. Why shouldn't a 130 point tailwind help me more than a 30 point headwind?

Even more troubling to me is the graph below. Friday is quadruple witching, and the bullish engulfing pattern expressed by the NASDAQ could make for a bullish day. The market really needs to take it on the chin for me to have a good Friday. Otherwise, I think it's going to be in the hands of Beanie & Friends.

The Russell 2000, on which I own puts, has been stuck in its own trading range for many weeks now. This isn't at all a clean pattern. A break below 717.50 would be terrific, but I'm not holding my breath.

My bearish bets on crude oil may pan out after all, though. The MACD and Slow Stochastic both turned south recently.

And OIH, which came within two pennies (!) of my stop price earlier in the day, sported a nice bearish engulfing pattern. But let's keep in mind the range I was talking about. Unless crude slips beneath $131, we'll just continue farting around. And a push higher by crude could supercharge OIH above the $220 level.

GNK has, for three days now, been tickling its resistance line. Let's hope it stays beneath.

A number of red-hot stocks, like MOS, POT, and CNQ (below) had some pretty big dollar drops today. The next few days could be interesting for these issues.

I bought MDR puts today based on what appears to be a failed bullish breakout.

I also acquired, early in the day, puts on PXD.

I'll probably have more to say tomorrow (although if the market roars higher, I'll probably be too bummed to say much). I'm off to bed now. And I leave with you this - - a local story from Maryland, the state I am currently visiting. This has to be one of the best headlines. Ever.