Written by Pat McCubbin
Exact Stock Picks
Good Afternoon,
For much of the day, the market was down on pessimism about weak economic reports — a problem that will continue to dog the market. A day after the Federal Reserve issued a slightly more bleak outlook on the economy, two regional reports pointed to a slowing in manufacturing activity in the Northeast. Meanwhile, the Fed reported modest growth in industrial output nationwide. And the Labor Department said that first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, but that was largely due to seasonal factors.
There appeared to be a shift in investors’ view of the economy. They had been upbeat over the past week on more positive economic signs, in particular forecasts from companies including Intel Corp. and Alcoa Inc. But the latest disappointing numbers now seem to be dictating investors’ moves, and analysts questioned whether investors would start buying again if companies keep reporting strong earnings and outlooks.
In the portfolio today it looked as if we may have had the potential to get out of a couple of positions as the markets sold off. Then Goldman Sachs and a plugged oil well brought the buyers back into the market and we finished almost flat. A difficult scenario to make profits.
All indications are there is going to be more volatility in the markets over the coming quarter. This is going to allow us more opportunities to capitalize on sharp movements. Unfortunately as we tried to sell into the trend eight sessions ago the market turned around sharply and our shorts got killed.
We are going to carry over a couple positions into August tomorrow. We try to keep risk in the area of around 4-8% per trade. If we can find away to buy another month and allow that to happen it makes more sense than to cut and run. Although this has been a tough couple of weeks, it could have been worse. On our losing positions we were capped with our options hedge. They will still be losing trades, but having a definitive loss potential absorbs some of the pain we could have felt without them.
Google came out with earnings that were less than pleasing to the street. They are currently down over twenty points and if this is still the case tomorrow we should definitely see some selling going into the weekend.
We certainly have our work cut out for us over the next couple of weeks. Our goal as always is to generate over $1000 in profits for the month. We are currently behind schedule and need to make up ground. It will be hard for us to get as bad timing over this next period and we feel confident we are up to the task.
Have a great evening and we’ll talk again in the morning.
TEN Exclusive: Portfolio Update – 7/15/10 is an article from: 
