I'm moving

I have moved to Wordpress and even picked up my own domain. Check for new posts on www.novicebear.com

Market Continues to Strengthen

I noticed on StockBee that Pradeep has given his all clear for the market.  I completely agree and, even thought the S&P 500 still looks flat, the internals of the market continue to get stronger.

For more explanation about the plot below, check out this link. 

  

Cisco Works this Time

While the market was falling apart I picked up some shares of CSCO as it completed a perfected TD Sequential countdown.  The entry point was very close to the stop-loss so I didn't worry too much.  (That is what is so cool about the TD Sequential and Combo, they have well defined risk)  The trade didn't work out and I was stopped out for a small loss. 

The other day I pointed out that CSCO finished another TD Sequential just as an analyst upgraded the stock.  After the post pop sell-off occured I couldn't help but pick up some July CSCO in-the-money calls for 3.50.  Thanks to better market conditions, I'm sitting on some big gains right now with those calls being priced at 4.80.  The really cool thing is that I expect to see CSCO price to reach 27.50, which would mean a call price of around 5.80. Tags: LongTags: Options

  

Novice Bear on Wordpress

I've been playing around with Wordpress and I'm thinking about moving over permanently. Go check it out and tell me what you think.

http://novicebear.wordpress.com/

Zig-Zag Code

Blocks 3.0 offers the zig-zag swing indicator but doesn't allow you to look into the code. I was interested in this because I'm trying to reproduce Jan Arp's Trender.


What I did was to translate a piece of EasyCode into VB.net from "New Trading System and Methods".

First thing to do is to create a new code block. Then, insert the Kswing code (found at the bottom of the page).

Now create the block diagram given in the white box and off you go. Change the integer number to change the sensitivity of the swing points.

Market Breadth

The market internals continue to heal even though the indexes flatline. Keep a lookout for those new leaders.

Frozen Lake Michigan

The Lake Michigan shore has beautiful ice formations this time of year. The clear area in the picture is solid ice. The tide pushes the ice up onto the shoreline and creates amazing features.

Click on the piture for more detail.

This is my wife Becky.

AAII Sentiment Outlook

It is always hard to time trades based on sentiment, but since I'm bullish (at least for the next few months), I thought I might back up my position with a look at the AAII sentiment survey. The red plot is the 10 week adjacent average for the AAII bull-bear spread, plotted along with the weekly close of the S&P 500. I think it is pretty amazing that the difference between the bulls and bears (with the bears outnumbering the bulls) is greater than the lows of 2002 and 2003. They say that sentiment indicators do not work unless they are reading extreme levels. If this isn't extreme, I don't know what is.

Cisco Upgrade Matches TD Sequential Completion

The DeMark indicators are fairly complex and can seem a little like "black magic" sometimes. No matter what you might think of their usefulness or their predictive behavior, I'm beginning to wonder if some analysts use them to time their upgrades or downgrades.

Take Cisco (CSCO) as an example. Yesterday, CSCO completed a perfected TD Sequential countdown and was immediately followed by an upgrade from Citigroup.

Citigroup analyst Paul Mansky upgraded the San Jose, Calif., networking-equipment maker to buy from hold, calling Cisco attractive for long-term investors based on its valuation.

I have not made any attempt to document this behavior, but I'm certainly going make more of an effort in the future. What I would really like to do is to go back and look at the historical upgrades for a group of stocks and see how they correlate with the TD Sequential and TD Combo indicators. Unfortunately, I do not have the time or resources to attempt such a study. Too bad, if it is true, it could be a significant trading edge.

US Gold Corp: Perfected TD Sequential

Missed out on the gold surge? Try out US Gold Corp (UXG). It recently finished a perfected TD Sequential buy countdown.

Fade the open

I have got to say, the "fade the open" trade is getting as old as the hi-top fade haircut. One of these days the market will open up or down and just keep running.

(For you baby-boomers and Gen-Y youngsters, the picture is of Kid-n-Play)

Confluence of Great Basin Gold

With another good day for gold stocks, I'll continue my recap of how I timed some of my recent buys.

I have owned Great Basin Gold (GBN) since early 2007. It wasn't a large position but one that I liked fundamentally and technically. With gold rising ever higher, I was always on the lookout for another opportunity to add to my shares of GBN.

The chart below is a weekly that has two trends defined by a blue and green line. I have also plotted the Fibonacci retracement levels of each trend. You can see that there is very good agreement between the 0.382 retracement of the blue trend and a 0.618 retracement of the green trend. This overlap is referred to as "confluence" and often serves a support. I was looking for this and picked up some GBN at the 2.50 mark. As you can see, I took a little heat for about a week but overall, the timing of the buy was pretty successful.

Notice also that GBN bounced off another confluence point defined by the 0.236 retracement of the the blue trend and a 0.382 retracement of the green trend. (I didn't buy any more)





More on confluence

Gold Paper

I am a CANSLIM investor above all else. But since there are very few market leaders to buy out there I think it is useful to dabble in some other trading methods.

This recent market weakness has highlighted a potentially powerful divergence between the price of gold and the performance of many gold stocks. Here are some of my recent gold buys and the reason why I bought them. Most of these methods were heavily influenced by Tom O'Brien.

First up is Gold Fields (GFI), which was a simple buy-at-support play. Sure the company was hammered by the energy problems of South Africa, but the price held at previous support and offered a low-risk entry. I have a price target of 18 and, depending on volume, I will either sell half the position and let the rest ride or just sell it all.

Next up is Anooraq Resources (ANO). This is an excellent example of a stock coming back and testing the breakout. I owned ANO from 1.00 to 2.10 and was anxious to get back in. I almost bought at around 4.00, but thanks to some advice from Tom O'Brien, I waited for that test. Well I got the test in late January on lower volume and jumped in at $3.37. Nice day today.

I want to also talk about Great Basin Gold (GBN) but due to my obsession with all of the election coverage, I'll talk about it tomorrow.

Creating TDST Lines with Blocks

The Blocks program is extremely versatile and quite easy to use. The newest version (Blocks 3.0), while still a little unstable, is even easier to use. Here is how you can create DeMark's TDST lines with the program.

To create the TDST line corresponding to a TD Sequential Buy Setup, the first thing you need to do is to create a "value pointer". Right click on it and then left click on the "block diagram". Next, create the block diagram shown below, using the custom block you will create.




To create the custom block, right-click on any blank spot on the above block diagram window and then left-click on the "create code block". Choose the "bar and Int to line" block. Next, insert the code (given below) into the space that says '************ Your Code Here ***************


To create the red TDST line, repeat the above steps but using the following block diagram and code. You can change the Integer input to go back in time. For example, if you want the TDST line that occured before the most recent TDST line, just enter 2 into the integer variable. The higher the number, the further back you go.




I put the code at the end of the blog page. It was written in VB.