Thursday, January 13, 2011

JPM Earnings Trade

This one reports before the bell tomorrow, not sure when the CC is though.

This looks like it's seen some distribution as well, probably worse then INTC so I give it 4/5 stars.

 The recent 10 min chart action in JPM looks bad, that's a leading negative divergence.

15 min chart on JPM with a negative divergence at an attempt to put in a higher high.

 JPM 30 min. this is a leading negative divergence.

JPM 60 minute-god negative divergence on a slightly higher high.

Remember that JPM is a trade that broke resistance and since then, I've been questioning whether the breakout would hold or turn into a false breakout. There's been some negative action in XLF (ETF for financials) as well.

Take a look and see what you think.

INTC an Earnings Trade?

This is not one I'd expect a leak from, although people didn't expect Enron or global crossing either. There's also the chance that some very good analysts are ahead of the curve on INTC, but they report after the close and here's what 3C looks like. Remember, earnings trades are highly volatile as this reports after the close, a big surprise could send it gapping in either direction so if you play it, play it safe with speculative trade risk management. Also judging by the last time we did this, the probabilities are not in playing just one earnings pick, but several as the success rate was not perfect but very high. Also these tend to be short term trades as a big drop in price will lead to an oversold bounce. If there's an opportunity for a trending trade, that must be analyzed on it's own.

INTC charts

Looking at the negative divergences in red and positive in white, watch what happens to price right after on this 60 minute chart (price action in the boxes). This 60 min chart doesn't look bad, the trade is not based on this chart.

Here's the 15 minute chart. Note the last top at the first red arrow (negative divergence) sent price lower. In January there was some accumulation at the lows and we have since seen a fairly heavy volume rally. Currently there's the start of a 15 minute negative divergence.

The 10 min. chart showed confirmation at the green arrow which makes sense with the 15 min chart above as the negative divergence on the 15 min chart is recent. This divergence is pretty clear and into lateral trend movement where divergences often occur.

The 5 min chart is showing distribution the last few days. This could be for a number of reasons including people not wanting to be in the trade during earnings, however, it's hard to ignore and this is a big company so to move 3C, a lot of shares must have been sold.

Based on the above, I'm bearish on the earnings outlook for INTC-this does not mean I think they will beat or miss, just what price may do after earnings. We all have seen a beat, then a conference call that disappoints and sends shares lower. I'd give this 3 of 5 stars for a short side trade. You may also want to wait until after earnings are announced, but be ready to move quickly should price fall-that would carry less risk.

Huge Euro Volatility

Here's what a 15 minute chart of the Euro looks like for this week.

A Huge parabolic move, you can see that it really took off after Wednesday's Portuguese bond auction and continues today after the Spanish auction. It was just last week we were trading under $1.30!

 And here's the Euro's resistance level to keep an eye on.

UUP has support at the bottom of this big flag.

One of the first places to look is the multinationals...

Here's KO
We looked at KO, but didn't take a position in it, as you can see the Euro higher has KO outperforming the market today.

The multinational trade we picked, MCD (short) on 1/6/2011 @ $77.66 is doing great today.

 Above is the Trend Channel stop for MCD, although I prefer this as a trending position.

 Here's the trend trade position stop. Either way, the trade is at a profit and I expect to see more gains in the weeks ahead.

The CRB Commodity Index has performed on the back of a weaker dollar, but it's loosing steam, this hints that there may be a lack of buying risk as the euro heads toward resistance which is close by.

USO- similar story.

 USO 15 minute, showing a very positive divergence and right around the time that insiders would have known about the ECB's bond purchasing ahead of the Portuguese and Spanish auctions.

Not much help to SLV though and supports my view that the recent bounce in Silver was nothing more then a bounce.

SLV 15 minute showing a negative divergence as it attempts to break $29 (which recently had been a resistance level for SLV). Remember the 15 min chart is excellent to show swings such as the end of a bounce.

 GLD resistance-note lower volume on the bounce as buyers back away from higher prices.

Today's opening gap attempt to hold above resistance met with a 5 min 3C negative divergence.

Morning Brief....

Well the two big European events of the week have come and gone with a fizzle rather then the expected thunder clap. The bond issuance came in better then anticipated for both Portugal yesterday, although it was somewhat mixed between the long and short end with the short end coming in higher.

Spain met their target. This is largely attributed to the ECB taking a few pages out of the Fed's playbook and spending the last 3 days buying up bonds to give a measure of stability to Europe and fears about contagion. The Chinese and Japanese did their part as well. However, the Fear rotation index may have started to tick back toward Europe as French President Sarkozy (I love pronouncing his name in Hungarian as it is a Hungarian name believe it or not; with a slight French accent-"Shardkozee") issued a statement saying Ireland CANNOT keep it's low 15% corporate tax rate, the same rate that drove the huge growth in Ireland through foreign investment during the last 10 years, giving Ireland the moniker, "The Celtic Tiger". So when or if those corporate tax rates rise and drive investment out of Ireland, who do you think will be the fallback? Yes, and with a few pints of Guinness and another prod from Europe, meddling in their sovereign affairs, it could get ugly.

Internationally we are seeing food riots and I love the governments accounting of inflation (minus food and gas-the two things we use everyday), things may be getting worse. From the Wall Street Journal.



As it has been predicted right here at WOWS, foreclosures are slowing their pace dramatically. The robo-signing, bad assignments of title and a plethora of other issues have sent the banks back to the board room to try to figure out how to handle this as Massachusetts's Supreme Court dealt the bankers and perhaps buyers of foreclosed properties, a stunning blow that may set precedent throughout many other states as all 50 states' AG's have investigated fraudclosure. This can't be good for real estate, it will lead to an eventual spike in home inventories as they begin to comeback to market and as perspective buyers steer away from the hassles they may encounter down the road by buying a short sale or bank REO. I didn't even read this story, just the headline  but someone email me and tell me if I'm wrong, People with real estate in the city or around are dumping it because of falling values and choosing to rent instead until the real estate market levels out? Just a wild guess.  As for the banks, the legal departments are seeing $$$$$$$$$$$$$ -you can add one every day- as class action and independent lawsuits from homeowners, both new buyers and foreclosed homeowners file suit, not to mention pension funds which we covered already who have sent the banks an ultimatum and other financial institutions including the Fed looking for the banks to buy back these poorly executed investment packages. Where else could suits come from? I imagine anywhere of a hundred different places so their reserves better cover more then just their foreclosure putback costs.

As for today's disappointing initial claims, remember I said that the last report that showed an improvement in the jobs market was stamped on the front page with a warning that they were using a new calculation for a seasonal adjustment and it was more then likely going to be revised to the uglier side just as last week's initial claims were revised higher. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, initial claims showed a 1 week jump that is the highest jump in non seasonally adjusted claims in a year. Why is it they are never revised lower? It's a disturbing trend that's been a year in the making. Today's Initial Claims shows that all the constant revisions and we WILL see a revision on the last report "Things are getting better trend" is just a BLS fantasy, at best it's incompetence at worst it's outright lies. Don't forget that the Chicago PMI and Philly Fed were also both revised lower. The revisions lower included: the Employment Index, December New Orders Index, December Current Inventories, Current Number of Employees and the Current Average Work-Week. I'm not sure there's any information out there that can be trusted. I'll be looking to alternative, non-government sources (just not ADP) for lines of information rather then lies of information.

Finally, as I've talked about Primary Dealers pumping the market with liquidity in certain heavily weighted index equities, it s becoming clear there's a quid-pro-quo at work between the Treasury, the PD's and the Fed. The Treasury issues debt, the Primary Dealers buy it and then the Fed buys it from the Primary Dealers at ridiculously high mark-ups. It's so brazen that the Primary Dealers don't even hold the Treasury issuance for more then 2 weeks before dumping it to the Fed-alah-monetized debt by the Fed. however, the disturbing thing is the obscene profits the PD's are making on commissions and spreads on two week old bonds. Today the PD's made nearly $50 million dollars in today's Permanent Market Operations courtesy of the Fed. When will someone in Congress finally demand answers and accountability? I'd hope that Ron Paul will be in action shortly, or at least the congressional investigative wing. This is getting totally out of control and the market is showing it, the equity fund outflows show that even basic investors don't want to have anything to do with the ponzi

As for the market, last night I suggested we were looking at a one-day oversold (actually 2 day) condition via the Price/Volume relationship. There are also some charts turning a little bit disturbing, I showed you last night as well. Here's this morning's take on the averages:

 DIA 15 minute 3C (15 minute does a good job in calling swing moves in the market). Yesterday's highs were met with a negative divergence that has gone into a negative leading divergence.

 The Wedge in the Q's is not confirmed by the 15 minute chart and therefore highly likely to be a real pattern. Wedges have been working, but there is a lot of volatility in and after there breaks.


 A 15 min SPY negative divergence on yesterday's breakout of the 7 day trading range. I showed the hanging man last night on the SPY daily which is the first step of two in a reversal. The second s below.


Here we see that daily chart and the hanging man. This morning's gap above the close sets up a possible confirmation of a hanging man reversal if prices are to close below yesterday's open at the white line. If by some wild chance the Primary Dealers don't push the market higher with their new $50 million dollar fund (just counting today, not all the past POMOs) and we see a close below the red line, we have a verifiable false breakout yesterday. I'd suspect that would send the SPY to the lower end of the trading range pretty quickly.

As I've been writing, we saw the market recover a bit, here's the 1 minute SPY chart.

A negative divergence at the top of the intraday bounce starting a mere 4 minutes before the decline began.







 

C&D Trades

CFW just triggered again at $.45, I still like this one.

If it can break out to stage 2 it has a decent base from which to rally.

 3C daily chart showing accumulation throughout the base.

TELK also just triggered

The breakout was $.89, it may pullback.

SBCF also triggered, it's just breaking out now.
Very nice bace here.
I think we need a fear rotation index. As I mentioned a few nights ago,Europe comes and goes with worries over contagion, today they dissipated with the heavily subsidized bond buying by the ECB in the days running up to the Portuguese auction, ad China and Japan providing a backstop to keep their currencies low and keep trade with Europe flowing and the contagion fears seemed to dissipate today. That may change tomorrow with Spain, but this seems to be more like a 2 week cycle of fear on, fear off.

Municipal bonds and Pensions are now in rotation and for good reason. Take a look at the MUB chart below (S&P National Municipal Bond Fund).


Note how 3C trades in near perfect synchronicity with price for well over a year, then in October, there's a huge change of character with a massive negative divergence that if followed by a massive sell-off about a month later (the divergence was the top).

I expect the cycle of fear will continue to rotate between Europe, the US bond/pensions situation, financials, real estate and foreclosure rulings. When Pimco came out and said they're relatively bullish on municipals, that to me means they've got some to sell you.

Last week I told you about the late 2010 inflow of funds to domestic equity funds, that seems to have been revised to a non event in one case and a minimal event in the second. This after 7 months or so of consecutive retail outflows of cash from domestic equity funds. There's very little retail in the market, this is one reason you see so much churning as HFT firms pass shares back and forth trying to make any pennies they can. The first weekly flow of funds for 2011 is an astounding $4.2 Billion in outflows, the most since October. So much for the Fed's statement in the December 14th minutes that the loss of homeowner value has been made up by gains in the market, that may be an arguable case if there were actually anyone in the market. I gave an example of this the day the minutes came out and even if we weren't seeing outflows from equity funds, the numbers simply don't jive. Then there's the insider sales that have trended on the sell-side for just as long. So we don't just have retail getting out of the market, insiders do too. This market is almost like being in the twilight zone, except we know who's responsible for it's levitation-they released the minutes practically admitting as much.

Last night I mentioned it would be important to watch the price volume relationship today as last night there wasn't a single dominant relationship, but a co-dominant relationship, both were price up, one was volume down, the other volume up. Today we see exactly the same, except the co-dominance is even stronger tonight which leads me to think that we may be entering an overbought condition with two days and the second increasing.

Earnings will still be the main catalyst, however, should we see decent earnings sell-off, you know we've hit that overbought level.

Speaking of earnings, there were no plays that I saw for tonight or premarket, but I'll be looking again tomorrow for after market and Friday premarket.

As for a quick look at the market, as of now Asia is trading higher on calmed fears over Europe, however the US averages are putting in some interesting charts...

 DIA 5 min, you can see a small zone of accumulation in white at the 1/10 lows, today the 5 min chart fell off a cliff.


 The Q;s are showing similar action in the 15 minute chart, I'd like to see this divergence lead lower before feeling good about calling it a solid reversal cue.


 However, the Q's intraday price pattern over the last 8 trading days has formed a wedge-volume is correct for the pattern as well. Taken with the next two charts....


 The SPY 5 min accumulation and then falling off a cliff today into a leading negative divergence.


And here's the kicker, keep in mind that ascending wedge which is bearish, today the SPY closed with a hanging man breakout. If this proves to be a false breakout, I'd expect that the market will decline fast and the Q's will retrace the entire wedge within a day or two. Just some things to keep an eye on.

Last up-if you are in any of the C&D trades I listed today around 12:30 or so, you may want to stay in touch to maximize the exit as many of the trades have done well and you don't want to give up those profits as they can disappear very fast.