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Spin

Last time i checked the total invested was 450,000 USD. with about 125,000 USD showing as unrealised losses. Thats about 25% always has been and always will be.

God knows where you get 50% from but lets face it, who gives a shit.

Spin

Markets consolidated today after the sharp move up. Thats good to see and we booked gains for two days in a row. Thats only happened once or twice, this year. My monies on a continued climb upwards tomorrow, todays action confirms this rally may have some legs which is backed up by the options markets with plenty of "calls" which are bets on higher prices in the future.

Spin

The move upwards continued today, this rally has nothing to do with good news or a turn in the economy or anything like that. Its just the market adjusting itself from so many down days. Its just bouncing back, when the bounce is finished it will head lower and reach new lows. You can bet your house on that.



Key today was that we moved up over 741 which was a key level on the way down.
Tomorrows action will be focussed on whether or not we can move above 752. If it goes over 752 then were off to the races, 765, 775 and then 800 are the targets then. In real life I'll be looking to put some short trades on at these three levels if we get there, seasonally summer time is crap for the markets and expect the true bottom of this entire credit crunch recession fiasco to occur july through August.

The TD portfolio is still down 22% percent today.

Rattanaburi

Where is all this 'money' going anyways? Was it all virtual money? Or did the great sell off put all that money into people's pockets. If it was virtual money than no one is a millionaire until they have cash in hand. There are only virtual millionaires. Spin its all an illusion!

Actually, I hear the same stuff you are saying about a bearmarket rally that will fade. But I can't help but think this is the time to get into the market. I wonder if this movement is going to stump the (I hate to say this nowadays) 'experts' and 'analysts'? Afterall, these people turned out to be wrong wrong wrong about the economy we are in now. So the current logic would say that the experts who now are calling this a bearmarket rally could very easily be totally off the mark. JMHO

Spin

Charts from Friday, sideways movement saw the close near where the open was.



The mainstream media would love all retail investors to believe that now is a good time to buy. Unfortunatley the mainstream media comes from satan himself. Take a look at the macro economic situation and tell me if you see any improvement that would warrant a continued move upwards?
A good time to put a little into the market was last week with the S&P at the 666 level. Today its 756, that boat is missed. Buying now would be a very bad move indeed. The worst is yet to come, I'm 100% convinced of that.

Spin

Well the wheels fell of this rally today, I did say a couple of days ago that the 756-775-800 level would be difficult to crack and today saw things reverse significantly at 775. At that point the dow was up 160 points to 7375 which is a big gain from its lows at 6500 just last week.

The S&P500 had risen 16% from 666 to 775 in just 5 days, that typical of bear market rallies which are notable for their strenght and rate of climb.



The big question is whether this pullback is the end of this "bear market rally" or is it just a healthy pullback before we move higher?

My gues is that the market rolls over here and goes lower, the real estate sector took a real beating today and financials joined in later also. Going on recent history, those two sectors dont change directions too often. The long term trend for both of them is long term is down and theres no development out there that I'm aware of which has changed for me to think a corner has been turned.

Spin

Ok, update on the action for the last two days. The rally continues skyward, driven by 100% hope and some flimsy "positive" news.

Tuesday saw gains across the board of about 3%



Today was heading is the same direction until the market get supercharged by news from the Federal reserve that they now had printing machines that could churn out a billion dollars an hour



So last weeks lows at 666 for the S&P500 seem like a distant memory, thats a shame because the worlds economic problems are deffo not a distant memory. That means that the there is plenty more pain to come in the markets, its just a question of, when.

Tomorrow is going to be interesting, the S&P500 is now at a point where it can break out of its long term downtrend. If it moves above 803 and closes above that level then anybody remaining in the market who is short is going to have their ass handed to them on a shiny silver platter.

Meanwhile, the TD portfolio still licks balls at around 20% down

Spin

Well the 800-803 level didnt hold and the market drifted lower aided by chatter that the governments plan to print ridiculous amounts of money will not actually solve any of the problems.


Basically, this rally has been driven by hope and not much else, but it is over. Fridays action confirms this as the market has made a "lower low" (meaning todays trading moved below 782) than the previous day.
The day isnt over yet but its clear where things are headed.
The next few days should see that "741" level tested again. That should be interesting.

Spin

Its been quite a day.

One of the first things you need to learn as an investor is to ignore news.

News is bullshit, todays action is the greatest example of bullshit news you will ever witness.
The dow ended the day up over 450 points from 7278 to 7745 or a gain of 6.42%
The S&P500 moved up an incredible 51.4 points or 6.94% to 820.

All of this is based on absolute 100% bullshit news that consists of 2 parts:

Bullshit element number 1: Sales of existing homes rose 5% in February.
This number is bollocks, the year on year number was horrific. The 5% gain comes from Januarys number which was ghastly due to most of America being covered in snow and nobody buying houses. 45% of that 5% was banks selling off houses for next to nothing.

Bullshit element number 2: Timmay Geithner announces a hideous plan to team up with private investors to buy toxic bank assets from toxic banks. The entire basis of this plan is pivoting on them finding people to toss up scarce cash for absolute shit assets. Bill Gross from Pimpco and other raging homos might get involved with this. This plan may take months to happen. Dont expect anything overnight.
It might work, then again, it probably wont.
All day CNBC and Bloomberg TV rolled out an endless supply of fully paid up assholes to decalre the start of the "next bull market" Millions of retails investors, have jumped into stocks today. This is a gross error for they will be raped of that investment in due course by the fuckery that is, NYSE.

Meanwhile, the Teakdoor portfolio made 30,000$ today and is now about 17% in the red, much to my eternal shame and chagrin.

Expect this bulllshit rally to continue up towards 865 on the S&P. But just dont forget one thing. There is much more fcukery to come from the US governmint. Expect bad things from this market in the future!

peterpan

Thats the reason after 5 years of online trading I decided to give it away and go safe.
Now our family cash is with a guy at home who invests the money in commercial properties and A grade secured mortgages.
He doesn't make spectacular gains but has NEVER lost a brass razzo of capital either. While this year earnings are SHITE at around 4.5%, over the last decade hes managed an average return of 12.5%.

Spin

Oh, One thing I forget to add is that Oil now appears to be a stock that trades with the Dow Jones. Today is hit 55$ per barrel even though demand is currently diving from the tp board into an empty swimming pool.

Expect to see diesel at 24 baht per litre any day now. Thats up something like 20% in the last 5 days.

Spin

4.5% right now is great. I was getting that on my savings in Uk bank accounts about 6 months ago. Today I get about, erm, sweet FA

I went from getting my rent and lecky and water paid for me to having to shell out myself in less than 4 months

peterpan

The only time I actually made money consistently was when I followed the procedures of a guy name of D Guppy who had a series of buy indicators and a rigid 2% stop loss policy.
It worked but you spent a lot of money on brokerage fees complying with the stop loss rules.

Spin

Yes, stop losses are essential these days. Losses incurred from hitting stops should be viewed as wins, I think. It shows you that your trade didnt work and that you got out before your shirt went. The broker I use charges 1 U$D per 200 shares bought or sold so theres no reason to hesitate when buying or selling.

Getting stopped out is no problem, in this market another opportunity pops up a couple of hours later

Spin

Thats what I said on the 24th March over a month ago and exactly that has happened. The market has hit 875 and there currently exists a huge battle between "bulls" and "bears" to drive the market higher, or lower from here. There are a lot of folks out there who believe things are improving, personally I'm not in this camp just yet but might get enthusiastic again in the thrid quarter. Now is too early, especially as the traditional summer slump in stock prices begins in soon, "Sell in May and go away" is the term used. This is the time when many of the big hitters on Wall Street retreat to their Hamptons retreats to sniff coke for a few months. It might present a good buying opportunity to top up the port before the world economy eventually starts to improve for real, (I think) in the fourth quarter of this year.

The portfolio hasnt moved much as the recent rally has been mostly about insolvent financial companies shares gaining about 300%. We're nicely placed to make plenty of coin later this year though, about 10% as of now, the print below shows losses of 70,000 but we banked 20K U$D already as shown in post number 253 here (Teakdoors stock portfolio)



Heres a chart of the S&P500 showing its blistering run up from the "666" lows, its open to huge debate whether these 850-875 levels will hold over the summer though.

Spin

UPDATE on FSLR First solar....

First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR) reported Q1 EPS of $1.99, far ahead of the $1.51 analysts were expecting. Revenues for the quarter more than doubled year-over-year to $418.2 million, beating consensus estimates of $399.9 million. The company noted that it reached two key production milestones this year; building a total of 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic modules, and its manufacturing costs have dropped below $1 per watt. First Solar also said that the global recession and tightened bank lending will squeeze profit margins for full year 2009 despite federal stimulus grants and loan guarantees for renewable energy.

This traded in the 150$ range before this news broke, in after hours trading yesterday, it jumped to 175$. lets see how it moves today as TD has 600 shares in this company.

Spin

^ FSLR now trading at 181.00$ whicj means TD portfolio banked 22,000 U$D.

Spin

Decent week in the end, various bits of US economic data painted the picture that the economy is improving. I'm not getting carried away because it could be just the grubbermint messing with the numbers but one thing for sure I noticed this week was that the rally from the 666 S&P500 lows, which has been driven by financials, was led by commodoties for the last 2 or 3 days. Its an interesting development, for sure.

As for the the portfolio, all told, about even now taking into account the 20 grand previously banked. Well maybe ten grand underwater, nothing really.

passengers

Once you change Mark to Market in favour of Mark to Fantasy, the numbers can say anything you like. This does not alter the fact that the debt is still real and either has to be defaulted on or (hyper)inflated away.

Spin

^ The worlds problems are over! The markets are up so everything is fixed right?


The TD portfolio has risen about 75 thousand dollars in the last few sessions, with a move of over 31 thousand bucks today.



The S&P500 ripped 3.2% higher today to 905 on news that the Chinese economy is improving and some slightly better housing data in the US.

This rally has legs, I'm thinking it could go on to see 1040 / 1100 level on the S&P500.....or 10,000 on the Dow Jones.

The next test is the 940 area which might get hit in the next 48 hours.

Lets see how things pan out........