Hiring is soft, pay is barely up, consumers are cautious and economic growth has yet to pick up. And yet today, the Federal Reserve is expected to take its first step towards reducing the extraordinary stimulus it has supplied to help the U.S. economy rebound from its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. That begs the question....
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Every Success,
The INO.com team
The media love to get a hold of buzz words and then give them a spin and a life all their own. Recent examples were the mainstream media's presentation of 'Operation Twist' – which was simply an official yield curve manipulation designed to sanitize and dampen inflationary signals – as an inflationary operation, and the 'Fiscal Cliff' drama that sent herds of conventional investors to the sidelines* when they should have been contrarian (and bullish) back in Q4, 2012.
Now we have the media on the job tending the 'Taper' herd. Among the many hyped up implications of 'Taper' according to the media are that it is bearish for gold. But I would put forth not only a rejection of that assertion but just maybe a call for the opposite; a bullish stance on gold in the face of a Fed being coerced by natural movements in the Treasury bond market to talk 'taper'.
As part of its QE operation, the Fed buys long-term Treasury bonds with newly printed money. It does so to try to keep interest rates down so that the economic recovery they have promoted does not fold in on itself, wheeze, roll over and die. They also buy distressed MBS, but this is a story about Treasury bonds. Continue reading "Gold: "Taper This""
We have had a very good run in the stock of Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and the question now is, has Netflix topped out?
There is increasing evidence that Netflix is having problems over the $300-$310 area. With a lower close in this stock today, it will confirm that it has put in an intermediate top.
Yesterday, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) put in a Japanese candlestick pattern known as "a dark cloud cover." This is confirmed as a top if the market closes lower today, September 17th. Candlestick patterns can be very powerful. This is not to say that Netflix has put in an all-time top, but rather in the interim the market has stopped going up and is probably going to see a pullback.
Pullbacks are always interesting and I like to use our Fibonacci retracement tool to measure them. In 2013, most of the pullbacks were in $30-$40 range. Measuring from the recent high of $314.18 on September 11th and subtracting $40, takes us down to $274 area. Coincidentally this is very close to a 50% Fibonacci retracement if we measure from the recent high on September 11th to the low seen on July 25th at $239.91.
I have two other concerns with Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX). We are at a cyclic high and the MACD is beginning to roll over, which is similar to what happened in the May and July periods.
Please be aware I am not recommending shorting Netflix, as the longer-term trend for Netflix remains positive and I can see this market doing well longer term as it dominates the space of streaming video and home entertainment.
Let's watch today's close in Netflix very carefully. A close below the $301.13 level will represent a new 5-day low close for this stock.
This is just a heads up that Netflix may be running into some headwinds and profit taking.
Please feel free to leave a comment or your own view on the stock.
Have a great trading day,
Adam Hewison
President, INO.com
Co-Creator, MarketClub
By: David Goodboy of Street Authority
For a brief time in 1991, there was no question that I was going to earn a fortune.
By making a few lucky stock and option trades, I had accumulated a modest sum of trading capital in my brokerage account. Knowing that the United States was about to invade Iraq, I had no doubts that the markets would plunge as fears of Iraq's weapons and military capacity reached a fever pitch around the globe.
I decided to short the market with all of my meager funds. Knowing that the U.S. would invade any day, buying put options on the SP 100 index provided the most return for when the market plunged. As fate would have it, my timing on the invasion was dead on -- the U.S. launched the first airstrike the day after I purchased the put options. Continue reading "What The Syrian Crisis Means For Oil Prices"
The price action last week and today in the stock of Apple was reflecting the perception that Apple's new offerings were not up to par and offered no major breakout technology. The press and the general markets were generally negative on Apple's latest offerings. The new iPhone 5S and 5C have been largely pooh-poohed in the media.
I think the market has overreacted in the sense that no company, not even Apple, can keep coming out with groundbreaking technology with every press event they host. I believe the market has overlooked the fact that these are very strong offerings and that Apple has a loyalty base like no other company on the planet, myself included.
The security fingerprint technology that Apple introduced is quite remarkable, and lends itself to so many other applications. Security is going to become more and more important to even the average smartphone or tablet user in the future. Apple's introduction of this technology is going to be very important in the corporate and enterprise world and may send a crippling blow to Blackberry. Fingerprint security could be used in so many yet-to-be-discovered applications for financial transactions and online commerce. It has an enormous future, but the market just hasn't recognized it yet.
As a reader of this blog, you know I look at the market on a technical basis and one of my technical indicators is telling me that Apple may be close to a turning point. The Williams%R indicator, shown in the form of yellow lines on today's chart, indicates the cyclical pattern of Apple and shows that this market is very oversold. Apple has also pulled back to an area of previous long-term resistance. This resistance area should now act as support.
The stock of Apple has also pulled back to our major trend indicator, which remains bullish. This is not so unusual to have a retest of the long-term Trade Triangle signal, in Apple's case at $465.75. The current pullback in Apple is approximately a 50% retracement and is a Fibonacci support area.
This week I expect Apple to begin to find support around current levels, give or take $5 to $10. I believe that Apple is close to an important cyclic low period and the roll out on Wednesday of Apple's IOS7 system could be the catalyst to once again turn Apple to the upside.
What do you think?
Feel free to leave a comment.
Adam Hewison
President, INO.com
Co-Creator, MarketClub
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