Monday, June 14, 2010

So much for Mutual Fund Monday

Dow Jones 10,190.89 -20.18 -0.20%
NASDAQ 2,243.96 +0.36 +0.02%
S&P 500 1,089.63 -1.97 -0.18%

Back from some work, catching up with today's flop-a-roo action. Bull stampede out the exits. How lame.

I once was a diehard Apple fiend. Even without ownership of an iPod or iPhone, I was and still am a lover of Apple products. Hell yeah!

But ask me if I'd trade AAPL here and I'll tell you, hell no. Today was a prime example. AAPL was up to 258 early and traded down to 254.01 after hours. I'm watching my recorded Fast Money Halftime and they're all bullish about the morning move. Can't blame 'em; Dow was up big. NASDAQ was up bigger on Apple's push.

Things closed badly. Life on thin ice goes that way most times.

METALS
FCX barely held its gain, finishing at 65.26 (+0.51%) while FXI dipped a bit (40.11 -0.40%) and X was down 0.58% to 44.56. SLV flat (+0.06%) at 17.86. This sector was due for a time out, but any time rally leaders hit a pit stop, it's wise to be cautious that it doesn't turn into a complete stall-out.

EURO MADNESS
FXE closed up at 121.89 (+1.09%), a nice gain, but off its intraday high (122.61). UUP down almost 1% to 28.43.

SAFE PLAYS
GLD down fractionally (-0.34%) to 119.60 and TLT down 0.51% to 96.91.

ENERGY
USO up by a hair (+0.29%) to 34.33 and inverse ETN SCO down a skosh (-0.07%) to 14.93. Interesting since BP got chomped by 9.71% down to 30.67. Just when it seemed BP got a nice technical bounce, it may have turned into more of a lower high than a climb back to the mid-30s. BP dropping to the mid-20s?

Natural Gas simply seems so much palatable at this point. My weekly update on the 40 natty gassers on my list was very informative, but I still didn't enter a position in any of them, not even my five favorites. Today's action was interesting. Little more than an hour before the close, 32 of the 40 were in the green. By the bell, only 17 were green and a handful of those were basically break-evens.

MMR continued its astounding rise since Obama's clean energy speech 11 days ago. MMR rose 6.18% today and is now up 13.51% to 11.68 since Obama's declaration. WPRT remained hot, picking up 5.21% to 18.99 and is now up a whopping 29.24% since Obama. This is one of my five faves, being a pure play with a solid balance sheet. It's not the finest of fundamentals, though, so some drastic profit-taking could hit the share price any time. Come on, 29% in less than two weeks ... are you going to be greedy? You can always re-enter after it sells off. I'd sell half and trade that amount for now, and let the rest ride. That's just me.

UNG, the notorious U.N.G., was up 4.65% today to 8.61. Quite nice considering it lagged while the entire sector caught fire last week. Clearly a buy below 8.00 and a sell above 8.50. PETD was up 4.04% to 25.98 and is now up 24.72% since Obama. Also up nicely was PQ, +2.70% to 7.60. PQ now up 22.19% since Obama.

The natty gassers I really like — CLNE (16.99 +0.83%), HGT (21.45 -1.7%), PSE (24.96 -0.64%) and SWN (43.54 -0.84%) — were middling at best today. I'd rather stick with these issues, which have solid balance sheets and little to no debt, than risk the acidic atmosphere of so-so natty gassers that are trading mostly on daytrader momentum (low floats).

FINANCIALS
FAS down 1.43% to 22.49. FAZ up 1.26% to 15.30.

GS dropped 1.62% to 133.44. It's just ugly down there. When financial uber-bull Dick Bove adjusted his estimates lower for GS last week, that was as rock-bottom as it gets. Or does it get worse? C broke even today (3.88), while Euro banks were varied. IRE (4.05 +0.25%), NBG (2.43 +2.53%) and STD (10.45, -0.95%) doing their usual quirky moves. STD has been more steady, bouncing out of the 9-10 range every time. Spain has major unemployment issues, but as a whole seems far more sane than Greece.

Thin ice. Please avoid.

I'm staying 100% cash. Didn't touch VXX after hours. That means it'll probably pop in the AM. Whatever. Take caution. This market is icy hot. Or hot icy. I'll get my sleep, trail at a safe distance and be selective.

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