Watch List for 12-23-09

This is my last watch list for this week.  With the market closing early on Christmas Eve, I’m not even going to bother trading.  I expect volume to be light and I’m just not interested in trying to play that kind of weak action.

I made three trades today and I’m holding one over night, as outlined in my watch list below.  My two day trades failed me.  I got out fast to minimize my losses, but it’s hard to pull the trigger when everything I buy goes south in about two minutes time.

AAC – They announced a cash dividend of $.55 per share.  Weird how the press release was after the market closed, but the spike came mid-day.  Not that I’m saying anything…..just funny how that worked.  I will be watching for another try at crossing and holding over $1.00.  It is right at its one year high with its next point of resistance being around $1.20 from September 2008.

ADES – Broke out above its 52 week high early in the morning on contract news.  It briefly went over $7.00 but could not hold that level.  Monday, however, was its second big day on volume and price.  So tomorrow will be its third big day and I’ve found these can be dangerous.

AHD – Another stock spiking up on big volume and at its 52 week high.  This stock went into the last 30 minutes on good volume and strong price action to stop right at $7.00.  This action was based on a Citigroup analyst upgrade from sell to hold.

AMKR – I bought this stock after its morning pull back.  They raised their earnings guidance and the stock gapped up over night.  $7.50 is clear resistance and it made it up to that level right near the close but didn’t break over it.  I’m holding it over night mainly because I didn’t want to burn a day trade.  I would have sold it after it couldn’t break $7.50, but I’ll sell in the morning if it drops too much.  I’d like a second day gap up over $7.50 and then maybe a run at $7.70 (52 week high).  But that’s just hoping.

ATHX – Just when you thought it couldn’t go any higher, it did.  I watched this all day, afraid to chase it, and just couldn’t believe it.  Evidently, they entered into an agreement with Pfizer to develop and commercialize a stem cell therapy currently in development.

MBI, MTG, PMI and RDN – These are all home mortgage plays and all went up yesterday on the existing home sales data that came out.  I doubt I will play any of them, but they are all in my notes for next month when the housing data comes out again.

I hope everyone out there that celebrates Christmas has a wonderful weekend.  We have family dinners planned for Christmas Eve and Christmas night.  Then Sunday night we are having a big dinner party with friends here locally as well as a bunch who are coming into town for the weekend.  It’ll be a really nice four-day relaxing time.

Of course, not everyone will be having such a relaxing weekend.  There are 100′s of thousands of people who won’t be, but having served in the military, my thoughts go to those that are overseas this weekend eating dinner in the desert and mountains with their teammates.  And their rifles by their sides.  They all volunteered to serve and that takes a special person and a special family.  Don’t forget about them this weekend.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone.

Watch List 12-22-09

Sorry, no detailed watch list for tomorrow.

My wife’s sister and her husband had a new baby and we spent most of this evening at the hospital with them and their new child, Orion.  8 lbs, 2 ounces.  They named him after the constellation.  So, once again family takes priority here.

Just off the top of my head, I’ll probably keep an eye on LNG again tomorrow.  I missed the move in the first few minutes of this morning.  I got caught up in the chat and took my eye off it and then didn’t want to chase it into the morning run up.  It pulled back pretty well then bounced off $2.60ish.  I made the comment that $2.60 seems to be the old support and it might.  I will definitely watch it tomorrow in case it jumps in the morning again.  Natural gas seems to be making a come back in the press and this may be a good multi-day play.

That’s about it for now.

Watch List for 12-21-09

Nuts!

I updated this post after I realized I neglected to include my dollar/percentage performance.  The numbers are at the bottom.

ASYS – This is a solar play that made a huge break out last Friday.  It slowly uptrending all day and broke over $10.00 in the last 30 minutes.  There did not seem to be any large volume spike near the end like I have seen with so many stocks on Friday.  The company recently announced $10M in orders, but won’t specify who the buyers were.  I haven’t been doing this long enough to know if that’s odd or not, but it seems like it would be.  $8.75 seems to be the old support and it broke through that rather nicely.  I’ll watch how this plays out and see if it holds $10.00 or if it pulls back after such a large price jump.  I would like to see a bit more volume too.  Only 419k traded on Friday.

DAN – This company got upgraded by JP Morgan on Friday before the open and the stock spiked up pretty good.  It also held that spike and finished strong.  Once again, a large spike in volume at the end as the quadruple witching hour took its effects out on the stock.  They also announced over the weekend they are selling 10 of their facilities to a Mexican firm.  That may put the brakes on me making any trades on this company as I don’t know how that is going to impact the stock.

LNG – A natural gas company that has had a pretty decent run over the last week.  Once again, a large volume spike at the end of the day.  The stock is approaching its old support level here around $2.50 – $2.60.  If it can break over that then $3.00 could be within reach.  No news right now that I could find, so maybe it is playing off the XTO merger last week.

SENO – This company was cleared by a jury in a court case reference a patent infringement lawsuit.  It finished Friday going sideways but with a strong last 20 minutes of trading.  It is well over its 52 week high.  I’ll keep an eye on this for a possible move through $7.00.  Although the volume was under 1M, the volume it had on Friday is not that far removed from what would be considered heavy to move the stock and far above its 3-month average.  It has had only 2 weeks of over 500k shares in the last couple of years, and it did 500+k on Friday alone.

SMOD – Posted better than expected 1Q profit after the close on Thursday and gapped higher in the morning to just over $6.00.  It was able to hold just over $6.00 for the rest of the day.  Maybe look for a pullback in the morning and then another push to break over $6.00.  $6.60 looks like the next point of resistance.

I started this experiment with $10,361.53 and I currently stand at $9,510.22 for a dollar loss of $851.31, -8.2%.

Watch List Update

I’ve been having some issues here at home today.  Our network in the house went down after the close of trading.  Then Cable One internet went down after I got the network working.  I thought I had done something to the internet and wasted an hour shutting things down and rebooting the system.

We are hosting our neighborhood Christmas party tomorrow night and we have been putting the finishing touches on the house cleaning and decorating as well.

So, I’ve been running in circles tonight.

I didn’t get my watch list done last night because I fell asleep on the couch.  Seriously.  I started a fire, curled up with the wife and fell asleep for a few.  After I woke up, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do a watch list and just bagged it.  There is so much time spent doing this that I think it sort of caught up with me last night.  I don’t understand how Tim Sykes, Michael Goode, etc do this full-time everyday.  I was beat last night.

What I’m saying is I am not doing a watch list tonight or tomorrow night.  I just don’t have the time tonight and will never find the time tomorrow with the party.  I will post a trade recap for the week after the close on Friday.  I’ve been writing it as I go along this week.

My dumbest trade of the last two weeks occurred yesterday and so far I’ve been lucky as it is holding steady.  I’ll recap that one.  I also sold LZB this morning.  It really looked like it might break through $11.00 with strength yesterday so I held it.  When it failed late yesterday and didn’t really spike this morning I got out at $11.05ish.  That, clearly, has been my best trade so far.  Especially after the way it finished this evening.  FNM and FRE are both a close second place.   I spotted both of those on my own and made decent profits on both.  I’m still losing more than I’m winning though.

I filled out my Cy Group application and spoke with Stan in the chat at IU on Monday and Steve at Cy Group on the phone today for about an hour with questions about the technicalities of the platform and questions about the application.  He had great patience with me and was able to answer all my questions.  I’ll try to get out a post about that over the weekend as well.

I have been spending all my days this week in IU’s chat.  Learning a lot and missing a lot.  Missing trades because I’m a little gun-shy.  Today, I actually had my trade ready for DCGN when it was alerted in chat.  I had a limit order ready at $.105 when the ask was at $.1035 before it took off to $.30.  I just couldn’t pull the trigger because I had two other trades running and, quite frankly, I was scared to do it.  You always here people say, “Keep the emotion out of it” and I can not tell you how hard that really is to do when it’s your limited money on the line.

Anyway, that’s where things are right now.  I haven’t counted my money, like the song says, but I know I’m still in the red.

Watch List for 12-15-09

I screwed up with my last watch list.  I forgot to list a couple additional stocks that I was long last night.  Both FNM and FRE.  I bought them going into the close on Friday on mid-day news about Congress passing HR 4173.  I was alerted to this on CNBC and watched as both stocks spiked   Once I saw that both held their volume and price I bought them for an overnight trade.  I realized I missed this in the my watch this morning when I got up.

ANX – I bought this into the close on an alert inside the chat at IU.  It’s being pumped and should get a bit more out of it over night.

BEE – Nice move yesterday but its volume was just average by historical standards.  I’ll watch how it deals with the $2.00 mark and see if volume picks up any.  Looking back at September, the big moves took 10M and 15M, yesterday was still around 2M.

FNM – I am still holding FNM because my price target hasn’t been met yet.  I nearly got to it so I’m holding it one more day.  I didn’t really want to hold this two days because both FNM and FRE are basically dead companies.  I only bought them on the momentum of the bill’s passage.  I figured I’d get a little spike out of it and it was a pretty safe trade.  But they are both like TLB from last week.  Not something I want to hold long.  I’m just happy they were a stock I spotted and moved on without any outside influence.

LZB – Still long here.  It moved over $10.50 today in the last few minutes of the day.  Great chart today.  I kept waiting for a pull back and never got one, which I’m happy with.  One more day like that and I’m happy.  Course, I still expect to have to hold it a few more days, but that’s okay.  I have a real comfortable chair to watch it from.

MSHL – This is another alert from IU.  They have drug news coming out on Thursday.  If you look back over the last year, each time they have had news there’s been a little spike.  January, July and September.  The spike in May has no news related to it.  Today was the second day big move.  I’ll be watching this on a daily basis for more trending and get out at the first sign of weakness.  I certainly don’t want to risk holding it in case the news is bad on Thursday.

XRM – 25% move on Monday on increased volume.  The only news I found was their own press release and a notice of delisting.  Interesting.  Have to check my email for other news.  This is the kind of move I’m trying to spot.  Something that is just starting to break out after a one day move.