Tuesday, March 13, 2012

ORCL Trade Idea (Short)

There are a number of different ways to play this idea, from short term trades to longer term trade, options, straight equity shorts, etc. The reason why is it appears to be a long term top that is near completion, but there are also shorter term components of it that look as if they are close to moving. Lets take a look at it first.


 ORCL on a 5 day chart, you can see a long term up trend and what appears to be a descending triangle top, a very large one, but about the right size for the trend.


 On a daily chart you can see how big the top is, ORCL not making up to the top trend line on this recent move (and I don't think it will make it there, is a sign of weakness, it's most often seen a sell signal in broadening tops after at least 5 points of contact with the trend lines, which we have exactly 5 points of contact. There was also a recent very strong gap down on big volume that found support at the bottom of the pattern for a bounce.

 Here's that bounce in a channel.

 For perspective, I drew some trendlines on this 60 min chart representing the top pattern. You can see the accumulation periods have been much smaller then the distribution periods, remember, Wall Street wants to sell in to strength, they need those bounces to do that.

 Here's a closer look on a 30 min chart,  just like the 60, the 30 min chart is recently negative in the channel.

 The 15 min chart is also leading negative, while there's a chance ORCL tries to break above the recent lateral movement of the last week or so, I doubt it would be able to hold very long. Furthermore, I have some doubt as to whether it can even make that move, the broad market will have a lot of influence on that outcome.

 The 5 min chart shows this gap up as unsupported...

As does the 2 min and the 1 min below.

There are several ways to play this, a move back inside the gap would be one potential set up, a move below the channel would be another or if it can manage it, a move to the recent lateral range would set up a beautiful trade, but again I have doubts about it being able to do that.

As usual, I would prefer initially a wider stop with fewer shares, but it depends on how you are looking to play it. I'll set some price alerts and keep an eye on this and update any set ups that form.

No comments: