ExOdy

My biggest down day ever for my portfolio. So tough to endure.

time to get back into the skf trading channel.

sahtt

I'll be a little more specific. I got in AAPL off some technicals on the 3m chart a nickel under 150, also because I expected a bounce from a ton of people having buy orders at 150. Volume did go up and so did the price action. It's 152.50 AH right now and my system at works trades AH as well under certain conditions [bid/ask spread has to be within a specific range etc. to make sure I don't get a bad fill]. I've got a pretty tight stop and am preparing for a little "rally", maybe 50-75 points, as the market digests what LEH's (and Indymac's) earnings are etc. I've got a ton of stuff foaming at the mouth if the market dives but I need some things just in case it doesn't and AAPL will move 4-7pts on some green tape pretty quickly if things go well. If not, I have a stop at 149 and I sold a third of my position up 2$, otherwise I wouldn't have held it overnight, even with the AH support.

sahtt

SKF is still extremely cheap compared to previous levels, but don't let that fool you because it doesn't trade like a regular equity, it's strictly a mathematical relationship off the XLF. We are at 11,200 down from 14,000, keep that in mind before you get too bearish. Also note SKF was in the 90's when the DOW was in the high 12's/low 13's for a second, so it doesn't correlate "that" well with overall market moves.

Overall, just the massive volume and trading in the SKF makes it valuable these days.

cthree

Interesting strategy and probably a sound one. Definitely carry tight stops.

Mine is a little different. If we get into the mid 160's next week then I'm golden. Otherwise I'm focked on this trade.

sahtt

Working out so far. NASDAQ is up 15+/- right now, 20 mins til opening bell. I still don't know what to think of LEH.

cthree

Not to nit-pick but Mae/Mac were bailed out when they were created. They have always been back-stopped by the treasury. It's not like the gov't came in out of the blue and took them over. They just paid up as they promised to do all along when they became insolvent. Mae/Mac got the freedom to operate as independent firms and so long as they did the gov'ts bidding and accepted loans which were inherently risky and could make a profit at it the gov't let them go. Then that failed (who would have guessed?) the taxpayers had to pop for the losses.

Not a surprise and overall it had no appreciable effect on the state of the market and after a couple of days it all shook out.

LEH is a bigger problem as are most of the big banks. MANY have been insolvent for a very long time but so long as they kept quiet about it and creatively accounted for it they could remain in business. Because they aren't fessing up to the whole scope of the mess they are in the problem drags on and on as layers of the onion get peeled back one by one.

You can't swallow a trillion $ in worthless loans without choking on them. We've had $300Bish of writedowns so far. I don't see this problem going away until we see at least another $300B of writeoffs and the failure of at least 2 more major banks (and a whole lot of little ones).

This is going to fester for at least another 2 years.

sahtt

[QUOTE=sahtt,Sep 9 2008, 07:42 PM] I've got a pretty tight stop and am preparing for a little "rally", maybe 50-75 points, as the market digests what LEH's (and Indymac's) earnings are etc.

PearlwhiteS2k

My portfolio is flat for the year eeeww

cthree

Another day of gloomy news and another leg down.

martha

^^ It had to be. I actually had a green day yesterday and the stock gods never allow that to happen 2 days in a row. They have to make up for it by ensuring that today's red day is much bigger numbers than yesterday's green was.