NASDAQ 2,289.09 -20.71 -0.90% chart
S&P 500 1,113.20 -4.31 -0.39% chart
Another good night's sleep. Away from the home office, just enjoying family time over the weekend and through the early part of this week. Seems that the market had quite the day, rolling higher on China/yuan news, then completely selling the bulls out. As David Byrne once bellowed, "This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!"
Whether the Chinese are being facetious or factual is beside the point. The market was quite overbought and all the ripe fruit had to be plucked at some point. I slept right through most of it and slept well. Seeing CNBC (on mute) post charts at about 6 am Hawaii time showing the market 's steep decline from the early gains was no surprise. I went right back to sleep in a quiet neighborhood (not mine, which is noisy most of the day and night) and relished the trade winds coming down the slope.
There are just too many uncertainties and too many certain negatives around the globe for me to trust any whiff of irrational exuberance. That's right, in the right circumstance, I'd go long a frothy, bullish and silly trend. But this ain't it.
I'd rather be picky and catch a chunk of the up side (or down side) than try and guess a bottom or top. There's no reason to allow the market to have an edge on me. It gives us a direction, then maybe I re-enter. Aside from that, there's a lot of fun under the sun to be had. Summer is here.
TECH KINGS
Did AAPL just hit the wall? Shares were up nicely in premarket, hitting 278-plus, and later hit 279.01 before traders banked their nice profits. AAPL was at 242 less than two weeks ago. Closed today at 270.17, not too bad considering it fell to an intraday low of 268.73.
There's still more than a week left before Q2 ends, so more selling by fund managers will allow for another cheap entry at some point. I missed this run, but I didn't really "miss" it. I'm not feeling hurt. I'll just wait.
GOOG lost 2.29% and closed at 488.56. I like sub-490 as a possible entry point. I still like what they have in growth with Android and AdMob. You and I may not like Google as much as Apple, but they still draw billions of eyeballs and are about to corner the burgeoning mobile ad industry. With Apple, of course.
BIDU lost some gains, but still finished up 3.06% to 76.83 on the bullish China news. I've always believed that Baidu is simply Big Brother's baby. Even Mao would be cheering for these home boys to win — extreme filters provided, naturally.
CHINA & HEAVY METAL
It's time for a new band called China to invigorate the stagnant music industry. They could name all their songs after metals and chirp about the beauty of destroying perfectly fine agricultural regions by building dams.
FXI up 2.31% to 41.60. This ETF has held up well despite global poo-poo and will probably find its way to 50 before summer's done. The Chinese hold all the cards and they know it. The real estate bubble is a serious thorn in China's side, but they're managing it better, it seems, than the US handled its subprime mortgage issue.
FCX gained 3.31% to 68.08 as copper regained momentum on China's news. US Steel (X), which had floundered mightily lately, picked up 3.59% to 44.97.
South Korean steel manufacturer Posco (PKX) was a huge gainer, running up 6.69% to 103.76.
FINANCIALS & EURO
GS was flat (-0.32%) at 137.74 after losing early gains. C flat, too, gaining 0.25% to 4.02.
FXE (Euro) dropped a bit (-0.47%) to 122.78 while the US dollar (UUP) gained 0.36% to 25.03. Euro banks closed weakly: STD (11.46 -0.61%), IRE (4.18 -2.79%), through NBG gained 2.07% to 2.46 after a huge gap up.
Not touching these finnies for a long, long time.
ENTERTAINMENT
IMAX gained 1.94% to 16.46 after a huge opening weekend for Toy Story 3. Shares were up to 16.79 before losing ground.
CSTR plummeted 3.25% to 47.36.
ENERGY
BP sold off 4.5% to 30.33 as CEO Hayward did his jolly best to fuck his company again. It's not just that millionaires and billionaires should step away from the spotlight after causing an environmental disaster. It's just that they might think about heeding PR's advice about not cavorting around on a yacht. That fact that he didn't give a fucking damn about his own company's advice, plus the fact that it seems he doesn't care about the oil 'volcano', tells us that maybe there really is nothing BP can do to halt this catastrophe in the Gulf ... what else are shareholders supposed to think? Of course, they're going to bail and bail and bail.
Despite Hayward's idiocy, USO lost only 0.23% today. Inverse oil ETN SCO gained just 0.50%. Oil prices keep going up, which is good news for the industry and even BP.
Meanwhile, only six of the 40 on my Nat Gas list were positive today, and most of the positives were up fractionally. Only BRNC had a substantial gain (+2.36% to 4.34), resuming its hot run. As a group, my Nat Gas 40 lost 1.36% today, but is still up 10.66% since Obama's clean energy speech 2 1/2 weeks ago.
Top gainers on the list:
1. PQ 8.34 (+34.08%)
2. PETD 26.77 (+28.52%)
3. BRNC 4.34 (+24.71%)
4. WPRT 18.22 (+24.03%)
5. MMR 65.29 (+22.35%)
Conspiracy or not, as long as oil goes up, the need for alternatives rides along with that. The clamor for nat gas (subsidy bill pending) and solar will climb. Maybe owning nat gas and/or solar and/or USO are simply ways to hedge against your growing gasoline bill.
I just like WPRT for its great balance sheet and unique position in the industry.
SAFE PLAYS
GLD lost 1.99% to 120.39 today and SLV dropped 2.24% to 18.32. TLT was flat (97.41 -0.29%).
PROTECTION
And, finally, FAZ was up a bit (14.22 +0.57) while VXX soared (25.48 +1.64%). VXX was low as 24.03. The last time it was this low, it made a run to the mid-30s. Is the world a calmer place now than it was last month or six months ago? Again, I won't touch the VXXen unless I'm using it to hedge a long position. The times I've attempted to trade VXX as a stand-alone, she was way too smart and whirling dervish for me. I admit that.
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