Quiet Time

When I'm quiet (not posting frequently) that usually means I'm actually doing the opposite of what you might think (sitting and watching the market and waiting for something to write about). I'm actually busier than ever, hoping back and forth between charts, indicators, currencies, interest rates, commodities, and every other thing I can look at because typically there's ALWAYS something out there that the crowd just missed, the JPY (Yen) Carry trade being covered this week and part of last week plus it not being able to levitate the market overnight more than 1 day, are all signs that a VERY IMPORTANT event is occurring.

Why is this so important? Imagine you had a way to see whether Hedge Funds and Private Equity Funds were in essence, borrowing money to invest in stocks, gold or bonds, but the key is knowing that they were so confident that they were borrowing money or whether they were so afraid that they were selling everything they had and repaying any outstanding debt while they still could before their source of funds to repay that debt ran out and the debt all of the sudden hit a penalty rate of say 40% interest per day.

THAT'S WHAT A CARRY TRADE IS. A Hedge Fund may have clients with $2.5 billion in assets invested with the fund, that would be $2.5 AUM (Assets Under Management), but they can't get leverage from Scottrade or TD... They can't get a loan from a bank to invest in speculative assets, the CARRY TRADE is how they leverage up their investments.

When they close it out, and most have been closed for some time, I was actually surprised to see there was still some out there, but they Yen is so darn cheap. That's what we saw and found out, that means something, it means a lot. It's not as good as a stock being above or below its 50-day moving average (SARC.), but it is information the crowd missed.

That tells me what I already suspected, "We're not talking about a 10 or 20% correction" and there's even more data out today from pros talking (for what it's worth.)

In any case, a quiet market for me is a scary market, their up to something.

I've wondered if I was going to see an extreme signal I've never seen before, what I am seeing is a lot of assets that all just broke apart, they have clear signals but instead of the normal herd movement, they are almost acting as individuals.

So I'm putting together watchlists and alerts for what trades in what area I think will be worthwhile.

Take AAPL for example.

 This is the 1 min chart so AAPL looks like it wants to bounce, but I think that the bounce would be fairly small so I'm thinking, "If AAPL sets up a little better with a little less risk and clean signals, I'll use calls". I want to see AAPL below $460 with clean signals for that trade.

The 3 min chart of AAPL shows 2 accumulation areas, but the most recent hasn't seen 3C turn down to complete a divergence or up to make a leading positive, two very different things and this will define whether I go for calls.

The AAPL 5 min chart though has NO STRENGTH at all, so I would take what I can get on a call, maybe even a weekly call and then consider whether I want to open a put or an equity short.

I have seen this "W" base develop and it's in the right place at the right time for where AAPL is for a bear market (AAPL is in a bear market) counter-trend rally, but I'm not so sure AAPL can fight the market tide.

This 15 min chart is one of the longer charts in AAPL that is starting to fall apart, if the 60 min falls apart, AAPL is done and down it goes.

So I'm looking at assets, figuring out where the trade is and under what conditions and setting alerts while watching the market for clues.

This market is taking on more and more character and personality than ever before as it use to be very stale with the Bernie Put.