Friday, December 5, 2008

Wire, "Outdoor Miner"

I offered Trader D the pick despite his non-spray, out of sheer kindness. But, luckily for you all, he never responded to my song request, so you get good music instead.

I can't get this song out of my head.

The RO Report, "Another Nice Reversal" Edition

You know what makes this rally more convincing than say, the two 900 point one day rips we've had? Both of those rallies were made from short-term reaction bottoms and you could say they were pretty obvious short squeezes. Our current rally is building from a test of a low, not the low itself and has been much more steady. The volume was better today than during yesterday's tank, and we're being led by the financials... even during yesterday's selloff, the financials were relatively strong.

If this market is truly going to rebound, the financials have to be front and center in its strength. I also like that we closed just above the resistance level of the last two days.

So I see a lot of positives, and again, I could easily see us running to the 50dma in the industrials soon. After that, I get neutral again, and would hope for a long boring consolidation there heading into the holidays, so that we could have a nice springboard for a January rip. That's the best case scenario for the bulls, IMO.

Anyway, it was a fairly solid day for the RO. Trader D made some solid decisions today, getting long the insurance sector and holding on for the ride. It's great to see, because as you'll recall, December hasn't been very merry for him. But there was a nice spread of success today, which is always great to see.

Out of 24 traders today, 20 were gross positive, or 83%. 13 traders finished up over $1,000 while only 3 lost over $1,000. Good numbers there. I was #8 of 24, in good shape.

Oh, sign up to "follow" my blog. You see that new little sidebar thing I have? Do it now.

"Lucky Pierre" - Trader D, $82,702 on 612k shares traded.

2. Trader B,
$44,187 on 352k shares traded.
3. Trader C,
$25,725 on 502k shares traded.
4. Trader N,
$21,886 on 153k shares traded.
5. Trader Z,
$8,222 on 411k shares traded.

"Chambermaid" - Trader A, -$58,856 on 736k shares traded.

2. Trader P,
-$1,990 on 422k shares traded.
3. Trader 7,
-$1,076 on 6,000 shares traded.
4. Trader K,
-$827 on 16,800 shares traded.
5. Trader 3,
$57 on 9,800 shares traded.

Here it is, your daily "heatmap." Compare with the intraday map I published earlier... nice reversal.

The Daily Show Take On The Big 3

A Depressing Market

I'm not exactly thrilled by the tone of the market today. Below is a 30-min graph of the Dow. It basically shows that we broke the uptrend I was hoping would stick.



The intraday heatmap shows that financials are relatively strong... that's the glimmer of hope if you're bullish.

Everyone Is Unemployed

The good news is that you can always be a proprietary trader...

Here are the grim details of today's job report.