Early in the mornin'

Make a profit, turn fiat into gold and silver

2:25 am (Hawaii) Got my two cans of Red Bull, ready to work. Sometimes that means being alert and doing not a thing. This was different. I let go of my small position in AAPL at 372 for a small loss. It can easily ride out a minor bump in the road and surge back to 380, 390, 400 and beyond. But this is no minor bump and I'm not willing to ride AAPL down as I have in the past.

Spot gold hovered between roughly 1740 and 1777 overnight, currently 1764. In other words, it's almost exactly where it was when I added more DGP at yesterday's close. I'm not expecting a rocket move today or this week. I am expecting consolidation and some range-bound moves. I don't mind a dip. I just want to be in as gold continues to gain traction and momentum. By cashing out of AAPL, now I have the option to get more DGP or, if the market tanks again, FAZ.

Good news for silver is that it has moved higher. AGQ is at 195 (off the high above 198). It's quite early and volume is light, but this is a plus to see both PMs moving up. Brother Turd Ferguson forecasted a move to 44 by silver. Maybe he's right. Maybe he's wrong. More often, he's right. As much as anyone, he explains his reasoning, his technical analysis and all the forces in the market.

Unlike other momentum movements I've seen in frankly cultish stocks (DNDN anyone?), he breaks silver and gold down in a simple way without losing all the details. That's great for peon traders like me.

AAPL continues to drift lower, bit by bit, now 371.78. Futures are all down — Dow Jones is down 123. Maybe this is just shifting sand; yesterday showed exactly how irrelevant 100 or 200 or 400 points are — in the span of one hour — when the algo devil machines are in control. So I'm taking it cautiously and I'm content to allow AAPL to get lower before I re-enter. Maybe it explodes at the opening bell. Neutral here. Not leaning in any direction with AAPL and the equities.

Update 2:47 am (Hawaii) AGQ above 197. FAZ nearing 64. Again, too early to tell where this goes, but with AAPL below 371, I may inch into a small position in AGQ and/or FAZ.

Update 2:49 am (Hawaii) Bloomberg TV reports that Apple is being sued over e-book price fixing, something like that. Might explain a bit why AAPL is down 0.9% in premarket, though the decline probably has more to do with yesterday's big run.

Update 3:01 am (Hawaii) French, Italian banks getting cracked in the nose. As Reggie Middleton has written and said, French banks are in a huge pile of manure. Just a matter of time before those inadequacies are revealed.

FAZ is still above 64 (+5.5%) in premarket. AGQ is up 5.7%. But is this a setup? Though Dow futures are nearly -200, are the algos prepared to take the market from 200+ points down to 200 up? I wouldn't doubt this possibility.

But one thing is simple in consideration: Euro banks stink today and FAZ has no choice but to rise. Small position, use a stop-loss? Perhaps.

Bottom line

2:42 pm (Hawaii) Zero Hedge with a piece about total physical silver at Comex dropping to less than 30 million oz, which Turd explains is the primary reason why the puppet masters crushed Spot Silver price today.

Thing is, I've seen all these wars within wars before over the years. Just when something seems so definite, so guaranteed (Dendreon's Provenge), guess what can happen? Yep, the naked shorters can win and the regular joes get smoked. I'm not saying it will happen with the silver market, but all the logic in the world will not ensure victory just because it makes sense. He who has the gold, no pun intended, will make the rules, and in this case, if the Fed and JP Morgan and the CME decide to cave in the majority, they'll do it. For whatever justification.

So I'm staying out of the way, mostly cash, not playing paper silver at all. If and when physical silver (and gold) get cheap, I'm ready to get more. But I'm not subscribing to an us-versus-them mentality. I believe the system is screwed, no doubt, but I have nothing to gain by yielding to emotion. Ask the people who were long DNDN at 7 when the FDA pulled one of the most heinous rejections of a medical treatment in history. That sent DNDN back to 4 and stalled the approval of Provenge for another two years. None of it made sense except that there were numerous conflicts of interest within the FDA. And there was nothing anybody could do about it.

Silver is no different. The good news is that DNDN eventually did explode, but not without further bullshit and naked shorting — as well as the first real flash crash incident — on the way to 50. But losing to emotion is just that, nothing but a guaranteed loss. Stay cool.

Zero Hedge: Scotia Mocatta loses 60% of physical silver in 1 month to 'reclassification' (June 1 2011)

Turd: Deserving of its own post (June 1 2011)

Natural beauty of Australia

A golden start

2:07 am (Hawaii) Does it mean anything just 7 minutes into premarket trading (the peon market, that is) that AGQ (ultra silver bull), NGD (gold), GOLD (gold), AG (silver), and DBS (silver) are all 1.3% (or more) higher already? Crude Oil UCO is up 1.1%.

This could be tricky ... there's no data, nothing reasonable, to stimulate the market into being favorable to precious metals this morning. I say PMs churn in this channel up and down and up and down until something big comes down from Congress (debt ceiling) or the Middle East/North Africa.

Less than 24 hours until gold futures trade on the Hang Seng Hong Kong Exchange. Two days until LinkedIn's IPO. I think LinkedIn has a chance to explode only because it's a social media company with a faint resemblance to Twitter and Facebook. We'll see.

Update 4:16 am (Hawaii) By the opening bell, the 2:1 ratio of metal stocks/ETFs/ETNs up versus down had turned upside down. It's still 2:1 in favor of the losing plays today. I tried ZSL twice, missing the boat at 21.40 before a big run to 22. I entered at 21.81, sold for a small loss. Re-entered at 21.99, sold again for a small loss. In both trades, I was above break-even, but bought in too high as ZSL became range-bound.

Though there's not much positive on the playing field for PMs today, even the bear ETNs can't carry through very far. There isn't a single play on my Metals List doing better than 1.5% up, and that includes the bear and double bear ETNs.

I haven't slept yet tonight. I would've been better off getting some zzz's. Or shopping around for some cheaper physical metal. Spot Silver touched 33 flat, but has rallied back to 33.64.

Update 8:32 am (Hawaii) Just woke up, still in bed, not a clue what's happening on planet earth. Well, there are a couple of charts. Spot Gold has stayed on its feet after that hammering early this morning. Nothing goes down in a straight line like that unless it was a billionaire pulling a "Soros." Spot Silver dipped below 33 and is bouncing off an intraday low again. The zig-zag lines are a bit too obvious, but I'm not going to bother going long or short (via ZSL). The choppy waters make mush out of guessers like me.

My Metals List is 38% green, 62% red. Only two plays are doing better than 1.5%: REE and GLL, the latter being an ultra-short gold ETN. The worst five performers on this list are silver plays: GPL (2.69, -4.3%), AG (16.66, -3.3%), SVM (9.85, -2.8%) , EXK (8.19, -2.2%), PSLV (15.27, -2%).

This is something a neutral observer can't fathom. From the outside, it's about revenue, profit margin ... and with miners, it's not exactly a small-ball kind of strategy. It's hit or miss in this world, so low stock prices are expected by those of us who don't know any better. For many of us, PM miners are mostly penny stocks.

The strange directions taken by PM plays in general today, yesterday, for the past few weeks, go beyond PE ratios and quarterly growth and debt, however. Silver is a stage where, more than any other, the script is altered midway through and not all the actors are told their lines have changed. But knowing that, as a trader, is why I can never go buy-and-hold in silver.

All the jeers and accusations of CME Media's selfish interests are so much DNDN a few years back, except it was the FDA panel in the role of Comex. It was a couple of people with great pull in the FDA who rejected Provenge, the life-extending treatment, rather than Blythe Masters and her puppetmasters. There was shareholders' hard-earned money lost easily, bleeding out into the gutters of a city with no mercy, taking DNDN down from 7 to 4 with one swift thrust of the dagger. What seemed to be a 99% certainty proved, in hindsight, to be overconfidence, even arrogance, if not ignorance of Dendreon longs.

How did we not see the possibility of failure? Most of us simply didn't, and those who did not hedge with puts were severely wounded. A great, great majority of us weren't just long; we put most of our portfolio into a single stock, and the naked shorts played our emotions and our human nature — wanting to help patients, greedily counting the profit possibilities at $xx,xxx per patient, etc. — to perfection.

Sure, a few years later, DNDN rewarded its long-suffering longs with an improved Provenge that was finally approved by the FDA, but I was out of the trade ... until that first day when approval was almost imminent. It was at 21 and the entire DNDN community was ready for liftoff. But just at that point, DNDN had what I consider the first true flash crash. It rose a dollar a minute for several minutes. I'd seen nothing like it, then suddenly DNDN spiraled off a cliff. I panicked to get out, losing most of my profit, but scared like hell when the stock froze or was halted. The machines got stuck. Nothing worked. Not a buy or sell. Fortunately, a good soul at my broker took my phone call and secured me a sell order at a point prior to the flash crash.

DNDN later recovered and began its run to 50-plus, but I had nothing to do with it by then. And now, years later, I still smell similarities with Silver. The accusations. The conspiracy. The manipulation via naked shorts. In some ways, it's playing out exactly the same way.

So I watch, mostly, and dabble now and then with a quick trade. Precious metals are in a different spotlight than Dendreon was. Instead of a drug, PMs are in the middle of a complete breakdown and street brawl involving incredibly powerful forces behind the curtain. There is no guarantee of a gold-based world currency, though all indications point that way. There is no clear strategy for the debt crisis, though it appears we as a nation are bound to our debtors one way or another.

Provenge had little competition in its developmental stages. Our Dollar is a pauper against not just the yuan, but the currency of many former small-time economies who are now far less debt-ridden than ours. The peso? Really?

But it's not my job to find answers for unprecedented times like these. It's my job to protect my meager, modest assets and to grow them at a rate better than inflation. This is not the time for a small fry like me to cling to losing blueprints out of pride or foolishness. I am, like it or not, a pilot fish with no desire to be in the way when this battle turns bloody.

Longings of a madman

9:24 pm (Hawaii). One convenient aspect of watching futures charts is that I don't have to follow global news to figure out what might be going on. Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures are tanking overnight. Crude oil was back above 105 (now 104.85). Gold is back over 1430 and silver is staying above 36. For now.

Copper continues to be ravaged and pillaged. Who knows what happens by the opening bell, but apparently, someone in Libya is not in a good mood.

Day of Rage just two days, no, 1 1/2 days away.

I don't trade futures, have no plans to do so. I don't care much about the details of copper and cotton, etc., except for the one thing the commodities tell me in general: when demand for industrial metals plummets, we're all in for a long, mediocre ride. The market goes flat (especially without QE3) and there are few winners on either side of a trade. 

I'd love to see silver explode as much as the next guy, but it still reeks of overconfident, arrogant bullish mania as Dendreon did a few years back. We don't know exactly who's playing who, and we don't know exactly who's a shill or not in some cases. We don't know if JP Morgan is truly teetering on the brink of collapse due to (fill in your theory here), or if they're simply honoring a longtime tradition of planting shills among the rest of us, encouraging the average Joe to dive headfirst and 100% into a "sure thing" like silver. Then came the rush of DNDN naked shorts that hammered the masses in "flash crashes" that were precursors to the actual market-wide Flash Crash of two years ago. 

That's part of the reason why I enjoy the view from the rafters. I'll get in and out occasionally, but long-term holding is out of the question. Marrying any stock (or short) right now warrants a thorough mental examination. 

Update, 9:52 pm (Hawaii). Adding EDZ and TZA to the watch list in the morning. Still like UCO as a hedge if I dare go long AAPL, but that's not a comfortable situation, not even close. The only way I'd go long AAPL is if the situation in Libya, Yemen and Saudi Arabia were cooled off, starting with the removal of said madman. Appears that won't be happening anytime soon, at least not with help from US naval forces. Unless this info is all a trick. Then that would be a very cool trick. 

Sometimes sleep and work are enough

7:05 pm (Hawaii). I slept through most of the market. This turned out good. It wasn't my plan. No, I thought I'd be wide awake for the first few hours, but by 4 am (30 minutes before the opening bell), I knew it was hopeless. I slept well.

Had I been awake, I'm not sure how I would've played today's market. It started weakly and never got going. Maybe I would've taken a ride on EXK, SLW and UCO. But I slept in. Later in the day, I refused to chase, even if there are substantiated claims that Tuesdays have treated silver well lately.

This is the common theme of my investing/trading life: Avoiding too-good-to-be-true scenarios that actually turn out to be home runs, while actually getting burned once in a great while on other too-good-to-be-true scenarios. If you were scorched by DNDN years ago, you might understand why I'm skittish about this silver bull mania.

Monday night reading
Zero Hedge: Short squeeze! Here comes 50-dollar silver (May 7 2011)
Commodity Online: Silver investment in China soars (Mar 7 2011)
Rick Munarriz: Apple's next challenge (Mar 7 2011)

Sure bet?

Coming into this week, silver seemed like a good place to be. By that I mean SLV, the ETF. Then I learned that SLV is great for a daytrade, but horrible as a buy-and-hold for any time period because there really is no proof that there is actual physical silver in the vaults of JP Morgan and Comex to back the paper. Chances of Comex defaulting on paper silver ... who knows? Worth the risk? Never. I made a decent profit on a weekend-hold trade and ran for cover. (Watching a potentially large profit via silver futures get whittled down — purely manipulated by JPM? — before Tuesday's open was too crazy for me.)

I also learned how cloaks-and-daggers that whole world is. All good-guys-vs-bad-guys, conspiracy theorists and evil doers. Could be true. Probably not so extreme in reality. It all just feels too much like Dendreon (DNDN) a few years back, when uber- and hyper-bulls and unproven products faced deadlines and highly questionable FDA decisions cost longs half their DNDN value ... only to win five-fold a year later. The numbers supporting the longs' argument are undeniable ... but the twisting daggers of Big Brother via corporate parternships, i.e. naked shorting — unbeatable for peons like me. I don't want to deal with any of that kaka ever again. Too much drama.

So SLV is scratched off. SLW, on the other hand, still a possibility. The metal itself in physical form just doesn't lie. And SLW, like myself, has built-in advantages in play. (Mine is that I refuse to lose money more than ever, even at the cost of missing some opportunities.)

SLW 5-year weekly

SLW vs. SLV, Gold/Silver, 6-month daily

Or is this a bubble in silver? 

source: Bullion Spot Price

Then there's oil. It's going up whether we like it or not. Our dependence as a nation on importing the crude stuff is well documented. That's why Cramer was quite timely with his Bakken Shale recommendations today. How poignant was he? Each of his four recs have boosted in past half-hour since. Here's a quick look at the four.

Note the after-hours boost to each after Cramer's recommendation/pump/boost/et al.

NOG (Northern Oil & Gas)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 31.70 (31.99 after hours)
float: 45.66M
revenue: 42.6M
quarterly earnings growth: -37.8%
total cash: 39.5M
total debt: 400k
trailing p/e: 149.53
forward p/e: 29.91

HAL (Haliburton)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 47.03 (47.49 after hours)
float: 910.7M
revenue: 17.97B
quarterly earnings growth: n/a
total cash: 2.05B
total debt: 3.82B
trailing p/e: 23.35
forward p/e: 13.55

NBR (Nabors Industries)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 28.34 (28.90 after hours)
float: 273.4M
revenue: 4.17B
quarterly earnings growth: n/a
total cash: 801.19M
total debt: 4.44B
trailing p/e: 85.62
forward p/e: 12.38

CRR (CARBO Ceramics)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 119.57 (121.05 after hours)
float: 16.16M
revenue: 473M
quarterly earnings growth: 65.3%
total cash: 46.6M
total debt: 0
trailing p/e: 35.17
forward p/e: 21.66

Source: Yahoo Finance

Of the four, the most interesting is CRR because of 1) tiny float, 2) no debt, 3) moderate P/E. Doesn't mean the stock will continue to rocket. But it's definitely appealing. I'll do homework this weekend as time allows.

Back to precious metals for a sec. Here's a cool video I just came across. If you're a silver or gold afficianado, this video won't help you. But for the rest of us, it's good stuff. 

The end of Dend?

Not really. I just have no track record of success in trading Dendreon (DNDN), but let's look at someone is a master of the stock. StockGuy22 went long for a short-term trade today and explains why on this chart. He's one of the best at reading charts and riding bounces, and his biggest gains have come on DNDN on the long and short (puts) side. Worth checking him out.

I have no plans to trade DNDN unless it dips back to 25 (last week's low), but that won't stop me from watching StockGuy22's strategy.

Waddling Wednesday

Dow Jones 9,774.02 -96.28 -0.98%
NASDAQ 2,109.24 -25.94 -1.21%
S&P 500 1,030.71 -10.53 -1.01%

It's becoming a habit, this getting up with an hour left in the market. I was up by 9:15 am Hawaii time, early enough to see AAPL trade at 253.33, down a few bucks from yesterday's lower close. I rubbed the makapiapia out of my eyes and AAPL was at 252. A few minutes later, shares dropped below 251 and set to plunge below 250.

That's where it held ground, at 250.01, and closed at 251.46, down 1.84%. Never mind the repeated rumor about Apple and Verizon coming to terms on a deal for iPhone 4; the stock has tanked since hitting 279 little more than a week ago. From a short-term low of 242 to 279 in one week was drastic, and now AAPL fades despite good news. It had to sell off on the release of the new iPhone, but market forces are always too strong, even for Apple.

There just aren't enough buyers out there. There just aren't enough reasons to go long here. The recovery has slowed, China is continuing to hit the brakes and people are on vacation. That makes it a playground for the high-frequency traders and their robots.

TECH KINGS
GOOG dropped 2.05% to 444.95 and is looking more attractive than ever. But I continue to wait. The Apple-Verizon partnership could hamper Google's Droid X campaign. Two winners are definitely possible in the future world of mobile communications and advertising.

Apparently, Google hasn't given up on China yet. Until there's something firm between the Googsters and the People's Republic, though, it's superficial.

ALL THINGS CHINA
Baidu finished up 0.75% to 68.08, a nice surprise despite falling off an intraday high of 70.35.

FXI lost 0.46% to 39.13 while Freeport-McMoran (FCX) dropped 3.18% to 59.13. US Steel (X) fell 1.43% to 38.55 and Posco (PKX) lowered to 94.32 (-0.55%).

PetroChina (109.73 -0.71%) dipped again, but CNOOC was up (170.17 +0.81%).

Solars Yingli Green Energy (10.18 +3.04%) and Trina Solar (17.28 +0.12%) also bucked the general trend.

ENERGY
US Oil Fund ETF (USO) slid 0.61% to 33.96 and natural gas plays petered out in response. My list of 40 natty gassers dropped 0.83%. Interestingly, Westport Innovations (WPRT), my favorite, gained 1.88% to 15.69. UNG picked up 1.04% to 7.75 and REXX climbed 2.75% to 10.10.

In accordance with crude oil, FSLR dipped 0.52% to 113.83.

In a related clean energy play, Tesla ran wild on its second day of trading only to falter at the finish. TSLA closed at 23.89 on Tuesday, opened at 25.96 today and reached 30.42 before selling off. Shares closed at 23.83 (-0.25%) on volume of 17.1 million shares.

EURO ZONE
FXE gained moderately (0.26%) to 121.87 despite unrest in Greece and more troubles for Spain. Merkel's candidate's victory was good, apparently, for the Euro.

Banco Santander handled the negative news from Moody's well, gaining 2.04% to 10.50. IRE lost 2.37% to 3.29 as austerity measures in Ireland continue to wreak havoc. NBG dropped 2.69% to 2.17, nearing a one-year low.

SAFE PLAYS
GLD (121.68 +0.34%) and SLV (18.21 +0.44%) were nice trades today, as was TLT (101.75 +0.67%).

PROTECTION
ETNs continued to provide shelter to beleaguered longs. FAZ gained big again, adding 3.57% to 17.42. TYP rose 5.48% as tech stocks dipped. BGZ (18.25 +3.22%) and TZA (8.18 +3.41%) were also big winners.

VXX gained 1.33% to 31.20, but didn't exactly trade up while AAPL declined — an unusual lack of coupling that I've seen only twice in the spring and summer. It probably says more about the level of familiarity the general market has with this level of volatility. It's enough to shake out weak longs and conservative traders, but not enough to be truly defined as a panic. Plus, volume is so light. For AAPL to make a higher percentage move than VXX says it all. VXX may have topped near term.

QID (UltraShort QQQ ProShares) did much better, gaining 3.13% to 20.04.

STRANGE BUT TRUE
Shares of CBOE gained 2.49% to 32.55.

DNDN continued its crash, falling 3.75% to 32.33, then losing another 15.47% to 27.33 in afterhours trading. It may be another bear raid on Dendreon shares.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services posted this online and is seeking public input on the effects of Dendreon's prostate cancer treatment. It seems to be a routine CMS procedure, but shares are tanking nonetheless.

If it's another bear raid without substantial facts and news, this could be another buying opportunity. But I'm staying out and I remain 100% cash in this circus of a market. The elephants are on the loose and I'm staying way up in the bleacher seats.

Mundane Monday

Dow Jones 9,816.49 -115.48 -1.16%
NASDAQ 2,173.90 -45.27 -2.04%
S&P 500 1,050.47 -14.41 -1.35%

Market kept hopping the fence between positive and negative for a long stretch today before bears took control. AAPL held up the bulls as long as it could before selling off after Steve Jobs' presentation of the iPhone G4. After hitting an early high of 259.15, AAPL closed at 250.94. It was probably sell-on-the-news movement, but there really is no catalyst in sight to aid the bulls, and the S&P closing below 1,060 is going to make technicians tremble if they're still long this market.

Nine of the 39 nat gas plays I follow finished positive, somewhat disappointing after a large majority of them were up most of the day. UNG finished with the biggest gain at 2.69% (32.27) and is trading at 32.50 after hours. GDP, REXX, ROSE, SWN, KWK, NFX and STR finished green.

Since Obama's clean energy speech on Thursday, 25 of the 39 natty gassers on my list are up. Most have gained 3 to 13%. Even WPRT, which was down 5.4% today, is still up 10.96% since Obama's speech.

FAZ was a winner today with a gain of 5.08% despite opening to the downside. VXX closed up 3.13% to 32.27.

GLD closed up 1.93% to 121.49 and SLV finished strong, up 4.46% to 17.81. It was mostly the inverse ETNs that had strong moves today. TZA finished up 7.82% to 8.13 on huge volume (59.3 million shares).

TLT held up fairly well at +0.77%.

DNDN took a big hit of -10.14% and closed at 36.70. A lot of traders had big profits and closed out their trades, not too different from traders and funds selling AAPL off to cover losing trades and/or margin calls. (Margin is evil, but that's just my point of view.)

GS down 2.51% to 138.68 on more Fed investigation news. C down 3.96% to 3.64 and NBG -5.6% to 2.19. IRE held on to its gain (+2.91%), but was a far cry from its intraday high when it was up more than 10%.

BP closed near its low at 36.76 (-2.44%) despite reports that it's capturing more of the leaking oil in the Gulf. SCO (+0.42%) and DTO (+0.43%) didn't move big despite BP's drop because other oil plays like Haliburton scored pretty nice today.

IMAX lost its early gains and finished down 1.3% (15.91). Just about every high-flying stock of a few months ago got knocked down for a second day in a row. BIDU lost 4.63% to 69.81. NFLX not too bad a loss, just 0.56% to 109.16. 


FXE down fractionally and UUP up a bit. Stronger dollar each day. Weaker Euro each day. It's probably by design on the part of the EU, which is crappy for the US market. In turn, more people go long the dollar. 

If the market does, indeed, fall through thin ice, there's so little support in terms of willing buyers. The outflows have been significant, and the psyche of traders and investors who left in May will take a long time to heal. Nothing's really changed in the past few weeks. Europe is still in the midst of financial rehab. US banks are going to take a hit because of their relationships with French and German banks, who in turn are going to eat some of the debts of EU laggards like Greece. 

As summer beckons, there are going to be more and more traders who drop everything and escape to their long-awaited vacations, possibly earlier than planned. It would make plenty of sense to get away from this market and its wretched addiction to debt and subsequent withdrawl symptoms. 

I entered small positions in UNG and VXX before the close. I'll probably exit within the next hour. Currently 75% cash. 

Pulling back

AAPL started peeling back off its high while the rest of the market was still teetering near its highs. AAPL dipped below 257. A drop back to 255-256 would've been welcomed. I'd re-enter as long as the market was still fairly positive.

IRE's gain is slipping, now up just 8.04%. IMAX up 3.85% to 16.73.

DNDN getting hit today, down 2.84% to 39.70. That's the nature of biotechs. No news for the longest time, traders lose patience and sell.

Morning lows

Who wins this morning: bears or bulls? I'm not sure. Having Kim Jong Il as a wild card in the market picture is unsettling, to say the least. The guy just doesn't give a shit. At least with Eurozone and the Gulf mess, there's accountability and real pressure.

That being said, here are the premarket lows so far for some stocks.

• AAPL 241.55 now, 238.96 low

• BIDU 68.10 now, 67.99 low

• C 3.64 now, 3.60 low

• DNDN 41.63 now, 41.25 low

• F 10.64 now, 10.45 low (yeah, holee crap!)

• FXE (Euro ETF) 121.95 now, 121.78 low

• EUO (short Euro) 25.05 now, 24.78 low

• FAS 20.99 now, 20.21 low

• FAZ 17.48 now, 16.99 low

• FXI 36.80 now, 36.51 low

• FXP (short FXI) 48.44 now, 47.79 low

• GLD 116.84 now, 116.12 low

• GOOG 470.00 now, 466.84 low

• GS 134.69 now, 134.00 low

• IRE 4.48 now, 4.26 low

• NBG 2.48 now, 2.43 low

• VXX 35.68 now, 34.75 low, 36.70 high

Sometimes, premarket patterns are a microcosm of the regular session. This might be one of those days because I don't see any good news coming that would spur buying by retail traders and investors. But if the fundies pile in like they did on Friday morning, just a few minutes after the opening bell, this could change quickly.

Danger lurks?

Early Monday Mosh Pit

Bulls are stomping the bears on the ECU's near-trillion dollar package and US commitment to send dollars into battle. In premarket (no peons allowed for another 2 hours, 14 minutes), on very little volume:

Up

• AAPL 251.00 (+16.89 +7.16%)

• ABK 1.57 (+0.19 +13.77%)

• BIDU 640.50 (+1.01, +0.16%, no volume)

• C 4.31 (+0.34, +8.50%)

• F 12.28 (+0.77 +6.69%)

• FAS 30.76 (+3.91 +14.47%)

• GS 149.10 (+7.01 +4.90%)

• IMAX 17.54 (+0.18 +1.04%, no volume)

• NBG 3.25 (+0.78 +29.21%)

Down

• DNDN 43.63 (-0.39, -0.89%, no volume)

• FAZ 12.85 (-1.96 -13.25%)

• GLD 116.45 (-1.86, -1.57%)

• VXX 26.57 (-3.15 -10.77%)

• UUP 24.60 (-0.10 -0.40%, no volume)

When an 'm' is a 'b'

Does anyone really believe the 2:30 (Eastern) blowup was caused by human error? Come on. If all it takes is to type "BILLION" instead of "MILLION" for the Dow to tank almost 1,000 points, it would've happened many more times before today. Human errors don't happen once a decade or century.

Every firm would have a built-in, fuck-up-proof program to prevent any dumb mistake like typing 'billion' instead of 'million.' I say it's a 1% chance this was actual human error. It's 90% pure manipulation. And 9% we just don't have a frickin clue yet.

AAPL got scooped up post-blowup at 240-242 by traders. Got to 249 before the close, selling off to 246.42. A steal here, but is the market really immune to another "human error" tomorrow or the day after?

Frankly, most of my gains since January have been obliterated in the past week. Frankly, it was my own fault for not staying in cash. Timing is everything, true today as much as yesterday.

Even my initial sell order on NBG (2.76), then the cancellation, didn't execute quite right. Another sell order, at 2.66, eventually executed. Brokers aren't built to handle these kind of days. Reminded me a little of the bear raid on DNDN a couple of years ago. Most shareholders got screwed.

To make things just a little worse, one of my favorite bloggers actually bought some NBG at 2.72. He's practically a genius, someone I've been studying much more lately as skill and selection prevail over irrational exuberance and sheer momentum. This selloff has created a universe of new (recent) lows for most stocks, and he's digging in.

Waking up to a nightmare

Well, I had to get sleep sooner or later, so I did. I woke up about 15 or 20 minutes ago, just in time to see the market go into one of those hyper selloffs that only a bunch of machines could engineer. Some people call them quants. Who knows?

The Dow was down 800 points a few minutes ago. Now it's "settled" in at about -409. I saw Apple tick down at warp speed to 200 (technically, 199.25 was the low). A bunch of people added shares of AAPL below 225. Wow!

I tried to get out of NBG, but it wasn't happening. Between my inner conflict — why sell when the machines will bring prices back up tomorrow or next year — and the speed of it all, I couldn't get those chunks of baklava sold at all through my broker. I'm not mad at the broker. I'm mad at myself for not being in cash, at least 60% as I was most of last month. But I'm also moving on.

Somewhere, someone has calculated the possibilities and odds of this kind of day. It probably happens once or twice a year. Maybe more. He or she has loaded up their dry powder for such a day. When the quants kick in a full bore, this genius sets all phasers on kill and does all the buying necessary for at least one season. The genius swooped in and bought AAPL (low 199.25, now 243), BIDU (low 625, now 656), C (low 3.90, now 4.06,), DNDN (low 42.45, now 48.46), F (low 10.59, now 11.48), GS (low 139.06, now 142), IMAX (low 17.50, now 18.54), NFLX (low 90.00, now 94)...

Not to mention the contrary weapons like FAZ (closed yesterday at 12.74, opened at 12.56, high 15.97, now 14.49), VXX (closed yesterday at 23.33, opened at 24.01, high 31.54, now 27.45), UUP (up 0.22 to 24.83) and GLD up 2.61 to 117.70.

The talking heads on CNBC were basically undecipherable for that stretch when the Dow was -600, then -700, and then -800. One person talking over the other talking over the other. Just about the only sane human was Jim Cramer, trying to explain that the machines were (briefly) in control.

Yes they were.

Tell a little Fib

ITMN ... what a spectacle to watch. I feel for anyone who's held a biotech stock through the FDA process, then got hammered. I was there when DNDN was rejected and the stock fell from 7 to 4 some years back.

But watching the shares of ITMN today is on par with any great comeback in sports. It ran from sub-10 to 11.14, then bounced nicely off its Fibonacci retracement levels (10.61, 10.44), actually touching the 50% retrace (10.44). Now trading at 10.70. How long that holds, who knows? How many shorts can hold out? How many of the shares are being controlled by day traders? It's compelling action. I hope ITMN gets back to 40 some day, regardless.

NBG is another story. It never returned to Fib levels after hitting an intraday high, bouncing off 2.90 before racing up over the 3.00 mark. Now at 3.03. I did not chase this thing. Holy crap. After being down huge early, NBG is now up 7%.

BIDU is at 689, or 11 bucks higher than it was when I got shook out. Tiny position, but my feelings are hurt anyway. Waah.

And as I type, NBG is now 3.10. Great Aphrodite!!

Trash Can Tuesday

Dow Jones 10,927 -224.76 -2.02%

Nasdaq 2,424 -74.49 -2.98%

S&P 500 1,174 -28.66 -2.38%

A lot of folks dumped their holdings and ran for the hills today. Grabbed whatever they could find out of their goody bags and trash cans, and dead sprinted out of Dodge.

Me? I had another good night's sleep aside from the four or five times I was awake enough to check my stocks. The first few times, my responses were slightly negative. "Shit!" Sleep another hour or two. Check again. "Fuck!" Later, a more sedate "Fuhhhck..." Late in the session: "Aaah." Then, the predictable bagholder's creed: "It'll bounce back..."

Technically, I sleep from 3 or 4 a.m. to 10 or 11 a.m. Hawaii time, so it's a good morning's sleep. But the market plain sucked for longs. Everything on my list, before I crashed out, was generally positive in premarket. Heck, even IMAX was trading at around 19.48 and I had a chance to get back to break-even.

But the "done deal" of Greece's bailout is turning into a Big, Fat Greek Maybe. The market panicked and collected profits. I like to think that investing and trading involves much more sanity and discipline than junkets to Las Vegas, but have people ever cleared out of a casino because of an economic issue in Athens?

It's always interesting to see how things come full circle. This circle of the euro and the yuan and the dollar is far from complete. It's also interesting to see how different viewpoints tackle the problem. Some traders cash out and watch from the sideline. Others look for buying opportunities. If I were still 60% cash, which I was for most of April, I would've been opportunistic. Maybe.

• Apple (AAPL 258.68 -7.67 -2.88%) continues to surf the channel. Though it hasn't reached its near-term high (272 intraday last week) lately, it did bounce again off its support at 256. It's clockwork, the second third time AAPL has floored and held ground there. Uncle Sam wants to put a lid on Apple's supposedly monopolizing methods, but he can't stop the masses from satisfying their lust for the iPad. Clearly a buying opportunity for the brave, but anyone going all in here is crazy. Maybe crazy good.

• Baidu (BIDU 693.00 -15.99 -2.26%) is making sensitive shareholders seasick again. Since the otherworldly gap on earnings day, the stock has ridden the elevator up and down in big chunks. A trader's delight, I suppose. My little position is fine; I expected volatility in this name. Like my AAPL position, the long term is a good deal for the stock. Do not bet against Mao (or Deng, actually). Google's only loss in history.

• Citigroup (C 4.26 -0.15 -3.40%) broke support at 4.33, though not by a huge percentage. It's still concerning, though, since C really has little or nothing to do with last week's Goldman Sachs meltdown, nor the Greek financial tumble, and as far as I know, not much to do with the Gulf oil spill. Touching C shares here is dangerous — burns to the touch — but the price is quite attractive. If the Euro zone/league/futbol association decides on a measure to solve the Greece/Spain/Portugal problem, C will ramp. Vikram Pandit in the hot-air balloon, baby.

• Dendreon (DNDN 52.89 -2.54 -4.58%) proved vulnerable to the greater market today. Strategies to buy DNDN long before FDA decisions have been overall profitable lately, unlike the earlier years. Maneuvers to buy DNDN at the end of the day on huge spikes have also proven profitable. DNDN was available just above 50 on the day Provenge was approved last week. Shares then went to 57. Below 53, it's very alluring. But again, what happens in Greece stays in the U.S. stock market.

• Ford (F 12.85 -0.45 -3.38%) had blowout numbers again in monthly auto sales, but today's drop isn't a bad thing. Those of us who enjoyed trading F in the spring might get discount prices here. The last time I traded F was right here below 12.90. Trading it between 11 and 13 was very nice back then. I missed the ride to 14-plus. Like AAPL, BIDU and DNDN, Ford is positioned with an advantage in its industry. Likey.

• Goldman Sachs (GS 149.45 -0.05 -0.03%) has been resilient at times, but that's how it goes when a stock has bottomed out. Talk of GS falling to 125 or 100 ... really? I would love to acquire shares at those levels. That would be like giving the Patriots five extra draft picks, or giving LeBron a chance to play with D-Wade, John Wall and Dwight Howard. Until then, GS is the bankster who will prove, eventually, to be teflon. Fine? Fine. It's about the food chain, the democratic, capitalist food chain. There can be regulation and limitation, but ultimately, every ecosystem has its top and its bottom. Hate the Yankees? They have to exist. If it weren't them, it would be someone else. Food chain. GS will rally at some point. I probably still won't own a share.

• IMAX (19.07 -0.20 -1.04%) has been bottoming lately and didn't get hit as severely as the NAS as a whole, but it did drop intraday to 18.18. Oh, while I slept like a baby, buyers stormed the castle and looted, snatching shares nice and cheap under 19 bucks. As the toxic toga party overseas continues, Iron Man 2 news will be out soon enough and IMAX shares will swell. I'm selling quick with a profit. This stuff moves often, as I expected, and missing a sell point really sucks, as I've learned.

• Netflix (NFLX 99.36 -2.63 -2.58%) isn't my favorite growth stock at this price. I liked it in the 70s and 80s, when I didn't think to start a small position. The looming competition from Apple, Amazon, Coinstar, etc. is real. Smart company, but what can they possibly do at this point to add value aside from Hollywood Video closing shop? Buyout talk will grow, no doubt.

• National Bank of Greece (NBG 2.84 -0.36 -11.25%) rose from 2.60 to 3.30 (or so) in the past week. Another pummeling today. It's all about the news for this stock. I like watching it, not as a potential buy, but as a thermometer on the situation there. I don't think of Greece as an economic workhorse. But if the bailout works out, NBG goes up and someone makes money by jumping on that wagon.

• FAZ (12.52 +0.87 +7.49%) has been on my screen for several days. I used to watch it a year ago for entertainment value. Now, as the only green light in a sea of bloody red, it is probably the one (or two) relatively safe issues I would get on board with on a day like today. A position at the 12.07 open (intraday low 12.00) would've been a profitable day trade (12.72 high). Tricky steroid stocks like FAZ and FAS move so quickly. Catching the bottoms and selling the tops are much easier said than done. But this was the only profitable possibility on my screen, benefiting from uncertainty in the tanking euro. Even GLD finished in the red today, probably because it's been overbought.

• iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term F (VXX 22.37 +2.04 +10.03%) is a mysterious entity that I hear more about these days. All I know about volatility is that it thrives when the market is quivering and peeing itself. VXX closed at 20.33 on Monday and opened this morning at 21.08, and it was fairly profitable after that, hitting a high of 22.71. The one-year high was 91.96, and it's off its one-year low (17.84). A lot of smart people hedge their bets with puts and spreads. VXX, though, seems like the simpler way to go at it. With 9.3 million shares traded today, it's liquid enough to start examining. Homework time.

For now and, maybe, a few days or weeks, I'm stuck. I lost discipline when I should've remained largely in cash, and now I'm holding on for a bounce during this correction. I held my AAPL shares through the last correction in mid-February. At higher levels now, odds work against the bulls, at least more than they did in February.

Trading off economic news, global crises and unnatural disasters is fine. So is locking down on a few great stocks and blocking out all the noise. Someone out there trades AAPL long when it's beaten to a pump (78 in March 2009) and trades it short or with puts up at 270. I'm not that smart, having sold it a few times much, much too early. But I'm not convinced that paying attention to external factors is mandatory to profitable trading.

If AAPL breaks support and trades below 256, or even 250, most traders will get out regardless of Greece, Spain, Pluto or Klingon. But I continue to explore.

I approve of these

Vehicles for short-term trading

• AAPL. The next catalyst, 3G iPad, is near. Anticipation is there, though this is probably baked into the stock price. Nothing, though, would've indicated a month or two ago that the iPad absolutely would have the Apple store filled to the gills like it is — at least when I'm there.

So that's in a week or two. After that, nothing, really, until the new iPhone is launched this summer. So, any breakout above 271 has to be handled carefully. Maybe a move to 280, and then 271 would become a new support level. Maybe.

Would it come with the 3G iPad? Probably. If not, AAPL will likely continue trading in this 256-271 range.

• C. Definitely ranges between 4.30 and 5.05, give or take a few cents. Discard emotion and trade this vehicle like a machine.

• DNDN. Great day for all supporters of Dendreon and prostate cancer patients. But emotion has no stake in these new levels, 51-52. I first bought DNDN at 7, saw it sink to 4 with the FDA's rejection of Provenge in 2007. There must be some folks who had the same experience, but let their shares sit still for the past three years. Hat's off to them. Not touching DNDN here, though it could start moving again with any kind of partnership or takeover talk.

• F. Ford moved nicely today (2.5%) to 13.60. It's stabilized at 13 plus and worth exploring again as a swing trade.

• GS. Closed at 160 today, up from 152 earlier in the week during the public flogging by Congress. With interest rates still basically zero, GS and the banks are printing money, making easy profits. So why am I not in GS or C?

• IMAX. Not happy about this morning's blunder, but I am expecting a run to 23 or 24 as Iron Man 2 premiere day nears (May 7). This is not a long-ter hold for me. It's strictly in and out, maybe even from week to week. Buy Thursday or Friday; sell Monday. Rinse and repeat all of May and June.

• NFLX. Up to 103 today, but smells too much like Blue Nile to me in price action. Too much competition coming soon. A day trade at best.

• PCLN. Have never studied this.

• SBUX. Howard Schultz is king of all coffee. Missed this comeback.

Specs like JMBA and NBG are on the backburner. I'd love to toy with them, but I've got to make some solid profits first.

Allocation comfort zone

I'm almost 100% in equities right now. My game plan was to be out of IMAX and BIDU by the opening bell this morning. Fail.

I'd rather be in 60% cash (and still 40% long AAPL). I'm leaning toward short-term trades in stuff I can rely on, like AAPL. Speaking of which ...

Reliability ranking

Stocks that have both good growth and relative stability.

1. AAPL. New stores to open in Europe and China. Coolest products on Earth.
2. C. Pandit has cleaned house, cut toxic assets and plays the PR game astoundingly well.
3. F. On a roll. Earnings were superb. Mullaly is king.
4. GS. The worst is over. Higher-percentage move more likely in C, however.
5. BIDU. No real competition and serious China penetration is still in the early stage.

There are a ton of good stocks I don't mention. That's fine. I'm interested in narrowing down to a group of vehicles that I can get comfortable with and understand well. I don't need a list of 100 stocks to make a good profit every day. And when I'm interested in going outside the box, there are great traders with great ideas I can glance at.

Looking at longs

A few more charts of some favorite core holdings.

Cramer says Nasdaq CEO on next week

A caller from Oklahoma asked Cramer to find out what the hell happened with that shady situation on Tuesday when DNDN was screwed over. Cramer says it looks like someone tried to "paint the tape" and that he'd get the Nasdaq CEO on air to get some straight answers because "he's a straight guy."

Yeah right. Bernie Madoff's disciples are straight shooters. Really? I'm not optimistic that Nas will uncover the bullcrap.

You snooze, you lose

Just back from a work assignment. Sunny Manoa, where the league chiefs meet every few months. On the way to lunch -- couldn't decide between cashew nut chicken (Bangkok Chef) or rib-eye steak (Ducky's), so i got both.

Somewhere between here and there, I realized why Jim Cramer was so weary of DNDN (though he supposedly is bullish now). Cramer used to work at Goldman Sachs, and he was a successful hedge-fund manager. He probably knows tons of those traders and managers, and the scheme that knocked 45 percent off DNDN's price yesterday (Tuesday) before the company's Provenge presentation at AUA was something that Cramer, and even Guy Adami and Pete Najarian of Fast Money know quite well.

Collusion. Backhanded dealing. Whatever it's called, they recognize the fingerprints. That's why they're all so, so quiet about something that rocked the market on national TV, so to speak. Cramer railed against naked shorting on Monday, calling out the SEC (again) and demanding that the uptick rule be revised in full (not watered down). I agree with him on that, but when these Wall Street guys go quiet on something like the manipulation of DNDN's stock, it feels a lot like a gag order. Or like being in a witness protection program. Nobody wants to spill the beans.

I was worn out last night, fell asleep on the couch and didn't wake up until about 4:30 a.m. -- an hour after the open. I have no idea how DNDN traded in premarket, but it opened at 27.02 and rose to 27.40 while I caught my Z's. Unfortunately, it was down to 25 by 4:30 and I watched. No stop-loss order. No way. But when I left to go work, it was down to 24ish and later closed at 22.94.

Should I have sold at 27? Yeah, and I might have done that if I'd gone to my bed and set the alarm for premarket. It would've made my late buys yesterday (at the 24 range) profitable.

Should I have sold at 25? In hindsight, yes, even if I plan to buy and hold DNDN shares. Sell at least half, look for more pullback to get shares cheap. Instead, I held on to most of the shares, hating the droppage and thinking about going back to sleep. Staring at the real-time quote is meaningless unless there's a purpose or plan to sell today.

I did sell a couple hundred shares at 23.95 (break even), which gave me a little cash to look at LVS, which popped big (with the rest of the market). Too bad I sold my LVS at 7 last week. I plan to build that position back up bit by bit. Same with ATVI, which I re-bought today after Goldman Sachs called it a buy. Unfortunately, I bought at 11.15, near the top, and it sold off to 10.73 by the close. GS targets ATVI for 14. Maybe GS had a lot of dead money in ATVI and used the new target to unload the shares.

Turns out, I should've bought LVS, which ran from 6.98 (yesterday) to 7.40 (open) to 7.72 (close). LVS flirted with 8 for awhile and is there in after hours. I'm aiming for a re-entry but not at 8.

More and more, I'm apt to leave shares alone, especially if they're my long-term favorites. I will not sell my AAPL shares again. Not selling F, which rose to 5.45 (5 percent).

It's a trader's market, like it or not, and there's no way to deny that selling DNDN at 27, then re-entering at 23 (or lower) is fiscally responsible and prudent. Of course, nobody knows for sure at 27 whether DNDN will pull back big. Good rule of thumb will be to sell 1/3 or 1/2 at the top (above 26) and expect to trade shares short term on pullbacks and spikes. It happens with all good and great stocks, including AAPL.

Holding DNDN is stressful, no question. Part of that is because I am committed to holding a core position long term. If I were trigger happy and simply trading all the shares all the time, it wouldn't be stressful at all. I have to measure that element -- stress -- as a factor in the equation. After all, I'm not a robot. And I really needed some sleep early this morning.

The other reason DNDN stresses me is the way the MMs and hedge funds manipulate it, as yesterday showed. In the back of my mind, I can't help wondering if I'll come home one morning to find the price leveled down to 5 bucks because of another sick scheme.

I still think DNDN survives the gauntlet of haters and arrives at 40, maybe 45, as analyst David Miller predicts. It won't happen this week, apparently (rim shot).