Now what?
I wish I knew. As I said in the Weekly Wrap-Up, we’ve been stuck in a range – which has been fine for us as 60 of 80 trade ideas from the last 2 weeks were winners and will be more so if we flatline or head south from here, as that’s how we’ve been playing the market. It’s not that we WANT the market to fall, just like your doctor doesn’t WANT you to have the flu. But, when you show up at the office with a sore throat, headache, fever and congestion – he’s going to tell you you have the flu and write you a perscription to help you get better. That’s what we do! We analyze the market symptoms and determine a course of treatment. We don’t need to be bullish or bearsh on any given day as it’s far, far more satisfying to be right.
In Member chat this morning, we were discussing leap strategies regarding entries on (in this example) KO and we looked at the benefits and pitfalls of trying to establish positions at the top of a big run. I mentioned that KO is not something I’d be looking at now as they are too near the highs and don’t have any particular near-term growth catalyst (and the strong dollar may hurt their earnings, which are more than 50% international).
In the Wrap-Up you’ll see that the kind of long plays we went for were more beaten-down stocks that we still like long-term like SPWRA, VLO, RMBS. WFR, PARD… Even in a great bull market like this one that may or may not be topping, there are still plenty of bargains to be had and, if we don’t see any good ones today, it’s still better to wait until earnings and bargain-hunt there rather than buy stocks just because your cash is burning a hole in your pocket (we went to mainly cash the last 2 weeks and many members are getting antsy already).
Actually, having cash in US Dollars may be an excellent investment at the moment as those dollars could gain 10% as the dollar bounces back. Commodities have certainly continued to fall over the weekend with gold at $1,141, oil at $74.71, siver back to $18 and copper $3.18 (our watch level was $3.20). Futures are pretty lame overall, down about 0.3% at 7:30 but we’re still above our levels so don’t get too excited if you are a bear just yet.
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Fri… |
