Month: October 2012

Just a quick word before the market opens this morning for the first time in 5 days and after Hurricane Sandy.

If you have been directly affected by the hurricane, do yourself a favor and take it slow wading back in to risk.

I’m talking to market participants here who had a very difficult time during the storm, have been displaced, have had property damage, lost power etc.

As I’m sure you are all aware, the market can be emotionally demanding in its own right and rational decision making is affected by stress.

Multiple stressors often interact with each other in ways that are difficult to predict and compounding.

In addition, sometimes, especially when we are in the middle of the situation, it is difficult to self assess stress and how it might be affecting your behavioral judgment.

So, if you are in the middle of the mess, no need to come out with risk guns blazing.

The $NYT and the WSJ ($NWS) announced that they would drop the pay walls for today and  allow the masses to  behold their premium news content for free.

Let’s think about this behaviorally for a sec:

On a big hurricane news day, when each content portion is more valuable, the WSJ & $NYT are rewarding those who are not customers and who do not pay them with free access.

They are positively reinforcing non payment behavior – pretty simple operant conditioning.

Now, let’s think about this from a self-perception POV for a sec:

What might WSJ & $NYT be saying to themselves about this?

We are so critical to the Eastern seaboard as an emergency information sharing service that we NEED to be free for the masses on the day of the big storm for those who might not get the news from the internet, the weather channel, an email, my mom who called, the local news etc…

Funny, right? Well, maybe this one is closer…

Holy shit, we’ve become so marginalized that no one will even notice much less care if we are not the ones informing the masses and framing the story about this major emergency and potentially historic event.

 

There are few chartists I admire more than Richard Blades (@rsblades) on StockTwits.

He’s a pro who has been studying equity price behavior for over 25 years.

Richard posts high quality charts daily to the stream but he’s not a boastful guy and doesn’t take victory laps after a big trade. Just not his style.

Instead, he quietly follows strong stocks over time and updates his analysis on them regularly. His StockTwits stream is almost like a journal for him that the rest of us get to watch in real time.

The other thing that makes me a fan of Richard is his generosity. If you are a novice or intermediate technician and you have questions, he will get back to you with a thoughtful answer and ask nothing in return.

Pretty awesome.

Here’s a couple charts from RSB’s weekend StockTwits Charts Stream. Enjoy…

Richard has been on $PIR for a while now tracking its steady move higher from the mid teens:

 Richard tracked the break out on $IFF and now the emerging bull flag:

 

You can find @rsblades full StockTwits stream HERE.

 

I will be on a panel at the Broadridge Connect Conferece this morning at the Conrad Hotel in NYC.

Chunka Mui will moderate and we will be joined by Donato Montanaro, Darrell Heaps and Brian Tietje.

We’ll be discussing social media in business and corporate communications.

I had the chance to chat with BuzzFeed President & COO Jon Steinberg about the $FB numbers.

Jon knows about driving traffic, online advertising and the mobile landscape and he generously shares his views with us.

Serious convo…

 

$GOOG

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Dan Ravicher this evening.

Dan is a lecturer in law at the Benjamin Cordoza School of Law in New York City and the executive director of the Public Patent Foundation.

He is an expert in patent law and we focused our discussion on the Google v Vringo patent trial taking place presently in Norfolk, Virginia.

 

$GOOG $VRNG

 

Especially these days, traders and investors alike can get caught up in the very near term during the trading week as price behavior shifts  abruptly.

The weekend is a great time to back up the lens and take a longer term view while markets are closed and no decisions need to be made right here and right now.

On the StockTwits Charts Stream, @berkek posted monthly charts of $AAPL & $GOOG, two of the most closely followed and widely held tech stocks in the universe.

And while the month is not quite over, we do get a sense of  what October might portend.

First, Google where a “textbook bearish engulfing” is taking shape.

Next, the Apple monthly, where “An evening star is taking shape” and as @berkek adds,  “time to move out.”

I would only add that the second candle in this pattern, September, also looks like a gravestone doji to me…

Neither of these patterns are confirmed until the end of the month…

For more on these candlestick patterns:

Bearish Engulfing

Evening Star

Gravestone Doji

 

Last week, I blogged about Michael Belkin’s $SPX to $TNX ratio chart and received little push back on the bearish vision.

Three things here:

1) Big picture, my bias is bullish based in part on the chronic and nearly universal negativity and so his take runs counter to my own;

2) I Love this guy and he has called the last 13 years well on the grand scale;

and 3) There are few things more important than entertaining views that run counter to your own.

Here’s Belkin’s recent interview over at the WSJ. Well worth the view…

 

$SPY $RTH $TLT

 

Doesnt get better than this for me. Chatting the charts with Brian Shannon on recently reported names $INTC & $IBM.

 

Earlier this year I posted mystery charts $WMT & $GOOG at various times. I didn’t mention what the charts were but both were very long term with monthly or annual intervals.

I love these long dated charts because they give me perspective of the asset’s historic price behavior.

At the time both $WMT & GOOG had not done much over extended periods but both broke out.

Now I am looking at another one.

As @StevenPlace pointed out earlier on StockTwits, $JNJ had a 4SD move today after reporting earnings yesterday AM and made a 52week high during yesterday’s session.

This 4SD move, as @JJRoche points out, was only a 2% move!?!? WTF!??!

Well, $JNJ is the Emperor of Sleepy Dow 30 stocks that have gone nowhere forever.

If this Perry Como Name breaks out, it will be super bullish for the $DIA.