Healthcare, Dollar and More

The US dollar continues to rise as expected and biotech is still incredibly hot. No it is blazing hot. ZIOP from my biotech stocks list in late January is almost a double already. IBB just broke out again and it looks like more highs in a lot of these stocks is in store. I just added some to my trading watchlist for Friday the 6th. On another note my long-term positions haven't changed much. From top to bottom in percentage I'm long FSEAX Asian Emerging Markets Fund as my largest holding, second largest is PFN Pimco Income Strategy Bonds, third is UUP US Dollar Long ETF, Fourth is USL Oil ETF 12mo, fifth is PKD Parker Drilling, and last is KEG Key Energy Services. EDIT Also long LOJN LoJack and silver. Recently I added some more to the UUP long dollar position. I'm very underweight in the two oil stocks. I like all these holdings for the long-term. I may not hold them all for years though. I'm not totally happy. I really need some more diversified US exposure. I might go with a Nasdaq index ETF and Russell 2000 index ETF here soon.

The trading watchlist for Friday the 6th is LAS AXN CYTX ABTL TTI CYTK ATXH. The only short bias is ABTL. My favorite on this list is LAS. If it starts moving it very well could hit 1.50 in a couple weeks based on how it has moved in the past. With the size of the volume here on LAS I see it moving. Back in 2009 or 2010 I remember it had day after day runs of 10-30%. AXN is only good if it breaks over 1.14. If it doesn't it looks dead. All of these are speculative day trade watches.

Direction of the Dollar

The US Dollar has been on a serious bull run lately. No doubt macro forces via the FED's guidance on rate raising are behind it. Since late January the USD has been consolidating. I've been waiting to see what becomes of it. Well folks it has formed a beautiful symmetrical triangle consolidation. A very clear one. I can't remember the last time I've seen such a clean symmetrical triangle on an index or commodity. Maybe gold in 2009. I mean it's that clean and pretty! Below is a chart of gold I drew up in 2009.

Image above from this old article on gold.
The USD has now spiked up off the tip. The chart says Bullish with a capital B. I expect a breakout over the highs and more gains. Here is the chart of the dollar. I've been long the dollar with the ETF UUP.

How I Got Started In The Stock Market

How I Got Started and How I Evolved
The year was 1996 and my mother told me my grandfather was giving my sister and I each $500 as an investment. He had to open the account in his name as I was only 15 at the time. He took me on the appointment to set up this investment account. We drove downtown to meet his stock broker in one of the city's few skyscrapers. The office suite was like one of those scenes from Oliver Stone's 1987 Wallstreet. We went to the stock brokers lush corner office and he and my grandfather talk a little. My grandfather emphasized he wants this to be "for the long-term." They talked a bit more and we were jettisoned to another office where his secretary took our information. My first stock broker has just split my $500 between two mutual funds. The first fund is called The Alliance Bierstein Technology fund and the second is the MFS Emerging Growth fund. Remember this is the mid 90s and the historic stock market gains from internet technology has barely even started. This is not a bad fund to be in at this time. Infact it couldn't have been a better industry.

My grandfather explained to me how I need to keep track of the ups and downs of these funds and you can check it in the newspaper. I didn't realize it at that time but what he was doing was teaching my sister and I a valuable lesson. The lesson was to start nvesting at an early age. I had little interest in these investments at that time. I guess he knew that didn't matter because simply being exposed was all that mattered. My parents sure would never have thought to teach me about investing. It might have even missed me my whole adult life.

Time passed. I checked the statements from time to time and my $500 turns into roughly $1000 in the bubble in 99' and 00.' I had taken some of this money out before this and eventually after the stock market crash of 2000 there wasn't much in the account. The question I asked is how did this happen? How did my broker let my account crash? I didn't know much of anything about stocks and investing but this was obviously a bad thing. So, I took it upon myself to learn some basics about mutual funds. I end up learning that all the stock broker did was pick a mutual fund on a best guess. Whoops! They were load mutual funds with high expense ratios. At this point I figure I can be a better investor than my stock broker. I have access to the same information on the internet and can see the same mutual funds in the newspaper. Little did I know then that brokers are salesmen. There is a fiduciary responsibility they uphold but they and their firm have to make money. 

The stock market has crashed and I'm getting interested in stock picking from reading all about it on the internet and seeing the ebbs and flows of stock and mutual fund prices in the daily newspapers. I'm reading great free beginner articles on this cool site called the Motley Fool. I spent hours and hours a week learning the basics of stocks and investing in companies. I'm learning everything about fundamental analysis on the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement. Those Motley Fool articles and website taught me a lot. I started learning about these great stock pickers like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch. I'm hooked. I buy my first investing book called Beating the Street by Peter Lynch.

In 2001 I bought my first individual stocks. My first stock investments are purely contrarian plays. I see Lucent Technologies and Kmart's stock prices hammered. I understood their businesses and figure these two companies are going to weather the storm and recover. Things got worse before they got better though. Both Lucent and Kmart enter into bankruptcy. My investments become virtually worthless. It turned out later my thesis was good because after Kmart came out of bankruptcy they listed their stock on a new exchange. Kmart's stock went on to be a huge success. Very huge. It was a multi-bagger. The stock went up over 100%. The only problem was I was still holding the worthless shares on the old exchange.

 I started reading books on Warren Buffett. I became a big student of his. I probably read five Buffett books. This led me to Ben Graham and Fisher. I never cared much for reading about Fisher. I definitely preferred Graham. I read Graham's Intelligent Investor a few times. Around this time I took a financial accounting class in college and a couple other business classes which helped cement my understanding of basic analysis. In 2002 I read one of the investing newsletters my grandfather gave me from time to time when I would go over to his place. One of the authors liked this company called Fortune Brands. This powerhouse conglomerate sold alcohol, golf, home and office equipment. The big brands were Jim Beam, Masterlock, Titleist and Swingline staplers. The stock had a low PE and obvious stable growth prospects. I held onto Fortune Brands for over 4 years and the stock did well. The 2006 real estate collapse really hurt their home products. They would eventually spinoff the office products and the liquor business got bought recently. Some other companies I held for long periods of time were International Game Tech and Stryker.

 I called myself a value investor and solely used fundamentals. I figured that was the only way to go. I picked some bad stocks like Movie Gallery and a value trap financial. With Movie Gallery I had a gain at one point that turned into a loss. I guess after some of these bad choices I realized crunching the fundamentals of a company wasn't good enough. When do you sell for a profit? When do you cut a loser? Most value investors have no idea of risk management or managing a position. There can be a level of arrogance in simple value investing. The other question I asked myself is what is good investing? Peter Lynch called it an art and a science. Well if something is as much art as science I'm sorry that is pseudoscience and not predictable. Trading in stock markets has to be moderately formulaic and predictability is important. A lot of reasoning for stock investments is "a story." The story is they did this in the past and this is happening in the future. What about economic externalities? Government intervention? Unforseen bad management? Basic contrarian investing is probably better than most peoples definition of value investing. I'm getting off on bit of a rant so I'll continue were I left off. It was 2007 and I had made what appeared to be great value investments in Movie Gallery and this deep asset value financial. Movie Galleries stock fell apart and the financial didn't move up or down for a year.

I kept scouring the internet looking for new information. In 2007 I came across this blog by Tim Sykes. Tim turned $12,000 into over $1 million by the time he was 21. He had run the top short-biased hedge fund in one of the years he ran the hedge fund. He had just started the blog before I found it and he was re-creating his success by trading a small account of less than $30,000 with the goal of turning it into $1 mil again. He was transparent and posting all of his winners and losers on his blog. He was mostly using technical analysis and was winning roughly 80-90% of his trades. That caught my attention. Before that I was sure technical analysis was worthless. All the mainstream media and investment industry chicanery pointed to investing as the best approach in stocks. Warren Buffett even wrote that paper The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville!!! And Tweedy Browne's What Has Worked in Investing! What's going on here??

Seeing technical analysis work before me quickly changed my mind. Through Syke's site I stumbled onto another traders site. This guy had a daytrading chatroom. His name was Muddy and his wife Laura traded with him everyday. Also in the chat were some other great traders like Greg Simmons. I started following the chatroom during market hours in the Spring of 2008 in college. They only traded volatile equities. I watched and these people were making money everyday. During the summer I started trading a very small account, got a data feed and decent enough software platform to daytrade. I was using a Tradeking and Zecco brokerage account and DTN IQ Feed run on Quote Tracker. 2008 was an incredible time to be a day trader. During the summer and fall the banks were collapsing along with the market and the VIX was sky high.

Muddy would scan every night for stocks with the highest day range. You type this into Stockfetcher.com "show stocks where the average day range(10) is above 7 percent and close price is between 1 and 10 and volume is above 300000." The top day rangers would be down 30% and up 20% everyday. Very high beta stuff. I would look at my watchlist of 30 stocks at the end of the day and literally all of them would be up or down atleast 10%.  A monkey could have traded those. I'll never forget those stocks like Newcastle NCT, Ambac Financial ABK, General Growth Properties GGP, GFI GFIG, Fortress Investment FIG. As soon as a dayranger went to a new low of the day or red on the day from the previous close it was easy to ride for a gain. The trick is waiting for the momentum. You simply buy when it is going green and short when red. Nine times out of ten if it went green on the day it would keep going green and red would continue red. Just this knowledge was enough for about anyone to trade successfully in late 2008.

Armed with the knowledge that technical analysis worked I read some books on it. I read Darvas' How I made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market and Schwager's Getting Started in Technical Analysis. I read some other basic technical analysis stuff on the internet. Learning from a 30 year veteran trader Muddy was the best thing that could have happened to me. He described his trading style as "like a caveman." I was now more of a trader than an investor. I started another blog on my domain DynamiteStocks.com where I just put up charts and watchlists. I kept StockPursuit.com going with the deep value theme and would find some pretty cool value stocks with good technicals. A lot of these reader reviews on my blog were from around that time. My main focus had shifted to trading but I never abandoned contrarian value investing. You can combine fundamentals and technicals but they are just different. Today I call myself a discretionary momentum trader who also does contrarian and value investing. With fundamental investing in stocks I always prefer small and micro-cap deep asset values.

After all that in 2012 I started a career in sales in financial services with a top 10 financial company. I had to shut down all of my blogs. I got my series 6, 63, life and health insurance licenses. I did that for just over a year. Before I had to shut this blog down I was averaging 50 unique page views a day and bringing in a part-time income from affiliate advertising. I was getting a lot of Google "juice" in the search engine results pages and using search engine optimization very effectively in the discount online brokers niche. My passion for trading and investing led me into a lot of other ventures like working at the financial company and online marketing. I've come a long way since the 1990s and am very excited about the future.
  

Biotech Stocks List

A lot of markets are at crucial areas here. The US major indices are probably going to decide which direction longer term they want to go. They could continue range bound for awhile longer though unless the Patriots get a hold of the air in the futures markets. They are at the top of the trading range here. You can especially see this in the Nasdaq. I was going through some scans and medical stocks kept showing up in large numbers. Biotech is one of the hot industries right now. So, I am putting up some of the best biotech charts I found. If the Biotech ETF IBB is not good enough for you these are some potential trade ideas. These are all momentum stocks in bull flags or breakout plays. This is purely from a technical analysis standpoint. SCMP that I put up a couple days ago was pretty cool because it was nice technically and with fundamentals. It's breaking out again up 6% yesterday. I don't know what is up with the value stock JVA technically. It has some crazy prints the past couple days. It looks like it could be going a lot lower now. Well, good for us value investors. As I'm typing this it is very early Tuesday morning the 27th. Let's get to the list.

First we have Dicerna Pharmaceuticals (DRNA) which has formed a triangle consolidation on light sell volume. Well formed triangles are one of the most reliable patterns. If it breaks out there should be a lot more on the long side but also if it breaks down from the triangle there will likely be more downside. Long bias on this one though but we shall see.

Next we have Athersys (ATHX) This one just broke out off of trend support. It did a hammer first on trend support and is running again.

We have ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc. (ZIOP) next. This is a cool one because it gapped up, consolidated into a bull flag and is coming off the flag with a hammer.

Last is (Agenus AGEN) which is very similar to ZIOP. We have a gap up on very strong volume, a flag on light volume and we are testing the gap now.

Looking Overbought

Even as IPOs are soaring and low interest rates are pledged to infinity the major indices are at a major test here. These highs are following the trend breakdown we had back in the spring. That pull-back was pretty significant. Before that the market was in a tight uptrend. Whether the correction in the spring was just a pull-back or the start of a major top will be decided over the next couple weeks. If there's going to be a double top it is going to start very soon. The Nasdaq has printed two days back to back above the upper bollinger band. This is bearish. A shooting star candle above the upper bollie is very often the "kiss of death" in technical analysis with stocks. A crashing stock price often follows.

The Russell 2000 index is at resistance and could be topping out. I remember the 2007 Chinese stock market crash began with a double top. I don't think anything here is starting to "crash" as I'm pretty bullish long-term on equites but some major consolidation could be in store. As much as I'd love to see us finally clearly break out of the trading range we have been stuck in since the 2000 Tech bubble crash and 2008 banking panic a runaway market has to consolidate. If this raging bull market is going to stop it is going to begin here. However, if we keep heading higher there is no resistance in sight. So, maybe it's prudent to get some protection on the short-side for a bit. Buy some puts, sell some futures or something and get a little short.

Interest Rates and One Stock

As far as macro trades go there doesn't seem to be anything more certain than the fact that interest rates will eventually rise. The FED has said they will raise rates when they like the employment figures. Unemployment rates have been falling across the country and to my knowledge the most recent rate was between 6-7% nationwide. My state of North Carolina is now down to about 6.5%.
A few years back I was almost certain that the FED's unprecedented low interest rate environment was going to spawn serious dollar inflation. Something along the lines of the late 1970s through early 1980s inflation that only Paul Volker saved us from in the early 80s. One of the reasons I feel less concerned about massive inflation is the falling price of gold. To see the true value of the dollar you only have to look at gold. Rapidly rising gold means the dollar is falling and vice versa.
Now to the play. The only place rates can go from here are up. The timeframe is less certain but the fact they will go up is clear. When rates go up bonds go down. The simple trade is to short long-term Treasury Bonds. The Proshares Ultra short US Tresury bonds ticker TBT is a vehicle. I'm not going into this trade tomorrow or the next day or even next month. But some day this will be a good trade.
LoJack Corporation (LOJN)
As I am typing this we are in the middle of the tech bubble it seems. I probably wouldn't touch Facebook with a ten foot pole. I noticed this stock LoJack LOJN awhile back when they reported their 4th quarter. 4th quarter revenue had risen 20%. The thing I like more is that they gave guidance of next full years revenue growth to be 8% to 10% year over year. The business is simple. They help people recover stolen cars and do car security. It's a small company too with just under a $100 million market cap which is good. The market still isn't fully valuing this companies revenue and earnings growth. The stock is currently at 5.60. They should grow earnings atleast 25% a year but the current PE is just 16. Foward PE multiple is just 13!! This is if they just do $.43 EPS for the year.

VIX Setup and Market Direction

After one heck of a run in the major indices this year it's time for a pull-back. At the least a healthy consolidation. I drew up the charts for this post about a day ago and the VIX spiked 12% since then. Briefly, the VIX I believe should spike and the vehicle I like for it is ticker symbol (TVIX) Velocity Shares Daily 2 X long VIX. We are still around the bottom of the trading range for VIX as the chart below shows. Also, there is a lot of room for a pull-back in the S&P 500 as the trend line below shows. So, a correction should ensue. Another major turn of events that very well could and should prompt a pull-back is the FED decreasing its bond buying which they have hinted at lately.

Crude Oil Chart and Position Update

I'm long KWT the solar ETF from a $49 entry. I have a mental stop loss of $46 a share. Around $38 a share is more of an ideal stop area because it is below the old resistance from Fall of 2012. I run a lot of Stockfetcher scans throughout the week and there are a lot of long setups that keep popping up as the market is still in bull mode. I only scan for stocks priced from pennies to $10 a share. This pull-back in the major indices looks like just a consolidation right now after that huge run-up.

I try and follow crude oil regularly. I've posted up a chart that shows the resistance level that crude has failed to break through over the past 12 months. Along the way from where the price is from the summer of 2012 there has been some triangular consolidation that you can see in the chart.

The short-term chart technicals clearly say to get short right here. If I actively traded CL futures the stance here is definitely short biased. We will have to see what becomes of the triangular consolidation over the coming weeks. It may be very telling.

Solar Stocks Play

Solar stocks are continuing to deliver big returns lately. One way to invest in the solar sector is Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (KWT) or the Guggenheim ETF (TAN). The Guggenheim TAN is more overweight First Solar FSLR and it's price fluctuates more in lockstep with the stock. I like KWT more because it's not so heavily invested in FSLR. I wouldn't be surprised to see more double digit returns from solar as a sector this year. Technically, the charts on solar as a sector look very bullish here. See the picture below. I see a lot more upside. Of course, with big run-ups in all solar stocks across the board some stocks not so worthy of such high multiples will eventually fade out. I remember the big run in solar around 2007 and 2008 and the ridiculous multiples pegged on even the best companies. Some of the PE ratios were totally insane like Nasdaq bubble of the year 2000 insane and of course they eventually came down to reality. I'll be looking for some good shorts eventually after the momentum continues. The momentum is going to continue for awhile though.

Watch The Baltic Dry Index and Shippers

The Baltic Dry Index has formed a little base recently. It is far from a confirmed bottom but it has held this area very well. Very big blocks of shares have come into the shippers that haven't been seen in awhile. I really like NEWL FREE and DRYS with a long bias here. Watch FREE, DRYS and NEWL this week.

Some Cool Economic and Market Videos

Economic discussion on currency and gold from the most unique economics blog on the internet. Below is a short talk about market cycles, bubble jumping and the challenges of pure investing. The video quality is bad so just listen to it. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Quantitative Easing and The Stock Market

As you may know it is widely hypothesized that quantitative easing has contributed to the rise in asset prices the past couple years. Here is that in pictures.

click to enlarge

I think in the near-term any QE3 would probably more than likely continue to lift assets. I find now that getting a grasp on major economic trends locally and globally can make industry and equity selection much easier as well. As any QE continues stocks and commodities will rise especially metals like gold and silver. Same dance, only a new song.

Why U.S. Stocks Will Rise in 2011

I think it is highly likely that the U.S. stock market will continue to put up significant gains in 2011. The reason is nothing complex. In-fact, it is just a simple phenomenon that has been going on since the 2009 lows in equities and continues to lift asset prices at this moment. It is quantitative easing and the Federal Reserves commitment to attain significant dollar inflation. Anything else one hears to the contrary is just chicanery.

But before we delve into this and the future let us look at a similar economic situation and how stocks performed in those years. In the depression immediately following the crash in 1929 banks were failing, assets were deflating and commercial credit was collapsing.

But what happened to stocks all through the 1930s despite high double digit unemployment? Stocks went up!

The big catalyst that allowed for the rise in stocks was that we went off the gold standard in 1933. This depreciated the dollar significantly and you can even see it in the CPI below.

click to enlarge

The same thing is going on now with the dollar and equities as it did in the 1930s. Bernanke has even admitted publicly that the goal of QE is to raise stock prices.



Final Thoughts
The macro picture hasn't changed much this past year and likely won't for some time. The FED will continue to try and prop up the debt bubble by rolling cheap money. Stagflation remains one of the best case scenarios. Money will run to the best assets while the bad assets continue to deflate. So, I see major commodities like oil and agriculture continuing to do well while real-estate remains flat. And of course metals like gold and silver will do well. This is all nothing new of course but I think it is going to be the status quo for many, many months to come.

My Movie On The Stock Market

This site xtranormal.com is pretty neat. It only took me about 15 minutes or so to make this conversation on the stock market movie.

Who's Been Buying This Runaway Stock Market?

The stock market keeps rallying but who is buying? Charles Biderman says the pension funds and flows into mutual funds aren't responsible. He says the amount of capital that could drive this type of rally seems to be coming from somewhere else and a lot of it is after market hours in the futures markets. I have no idea if his numbers are even accurate but I found this interview on Bloomberg he did a couple months back interesting.

Click here for Video

Stock Market Crash Round Two?

At the bottom of this post I compare the chart of the 1929 crash and rebound to the 2008 crash and this rebound.

So, the US equities markets have rallied tremendously off the March lows as fear quickly turned to greed. I mean what else really justifies such an optimistic view of US economic and corporate performance going forward. Housing has been in a recession? depression since 2005. What has enabled the consumer to spend for the last 20 odd years? That's right rising home prices. But hey government is committed to softening the fallout. So we get flat growth probably instead of total chaos in housing and the economy.

For atleast 2 years people have been calling for a bottom in housing and real estate in the US. It hasn't come. Is it really any surprise when even today big banks are still dumping residential for fractions on the dollar? Acres of land in Charlotte that once sold for over $2 million dumped for $300,000? This bubble hasn't fully popped I don't think.

I live in Charlotte North Carolina and housing is as bad as ever if not even worse I think. This state like many other states are in bad financial condition. North Carolina is desperate for tax revenues. So desperate not that many months ago they were going to pass a bill to tax online transactions. The kind of affiliate revenue Amazon offers to webmasters who use Amazon links on their sites. I used to use Amazon affiliate links. Not anymore because Amazon ceased doing business in all of North Carolina even before they could get the tax in place.

I made a brief thesis that the market seemed out of whack with even best case recovery over the future.

This is not just another little recession. The economy is not going to blast to new heights any time soon. Forward valuations look more like a regular old recession is about to end I feel. The consumer is different now. The consumer is saving more now and deleveraging the last 15-20 years of insanity. This could take some time I believe.

The question I have been asking myself is just how long can the government spending and low rates continue to have a positive effect on the economy without bankrupting us in the long-term if it is not to late already. Could the FED and government stimulus actually work? They certainly had an effect in the past. But just how bad is the recession/depression? It's not easily overcome right?

Could I be wrong? Yeah. Is this a hard view to still hang on to after the market run? Yes and no. No, because I'm usually a skeptic and pretty cynical even for my age. These viewpoints be it fortunate or unfortunate turn out to be right a lot especially in the world of investments and economics.

On the other token questioning the soundness of this recovery? and historical stock market recovery has definitely made me hesitant to make some trades even though I had to dismiss the fundamentals to be long biased since around April or May. The technical picture was pretty sound especially after the attempts to correct failed and the market kept breaking to new highs. I'll be a perma-bull as soon as housing shows a clear bottom.

The question I have here now that the Dubai bubble is fully bursting is how safe is China and Asia's real estate sector? On valuation alone Chinese equities don't seem like a bubble to me atleast comparable to 2007. However, banks are a big, big part of the Shanghai Composite. This could be devastating if their banks are leveraged. Of course real-estate in China would have to collapse. I don't follow China that closely to know if there are bubble conditions in real-estate there. Maybe someone reading this could point me to a fairly reputable source if they know more on this. I think it would be hard, for me atleast to make a call on housing or real estate in China because it's harder for me to gauge a bubble vs equities and considering they actually do have a seemingly healthy economy and rapid population growth.

Indices are encountering some trend line resistance. If the next wave or healthy consolidation is to come it will possibly be very soon.















These might be two of the scariest charts right now. There is a very similar spike/pipe bottom that happened in the 1929 bottom and uncanny resemblance in the bounces. Even on the rebound percentages from bottom. That's 1929 on top and 2008-09 on bottom.

And notice the failed signal we had in June and July were the market rally looked like it was going to end but just continued upward.


























Whether or not such a rapid decline will come so fast I think at the very least a short pull-back is in the works. This support trend line will have to be tested again. I wouldn't be surprised to see some window dressing by institutions as they try and lock in these yearly gains.















Not a good technical picture on the Russell 2000 small-cap index. This gap down from the Dubai news spooked the market or atleast gave good enough reason to sell. Such a gap at these levels does not look good for the time being.














I've been watching this bull-trap play out in financials since it happened. The possibility of it playing out fully and the financials breaking down is looking very high here now with this gap down and shooting star day.














full disclosure: no positions

Warren Buffett's Big Bet With Burlington Northern

So, I imagine everyone knows Warren Buffett bought Burlington Northern recently and the media has spun it as wholly positive and a bullish bet on the economy of the United States. I'm going to look at this in a different angle and in a more skeptical and realistic fashion. Buffett says,"I basically believe this country will prosper and you’ll have more people moving more goods 10 and 20 and 30 years from now, and the rails should benefit. It’s a bet on the country, basically."

Let's start with the good things. I think it was definitely a good buy for the long-term. A classic Buffett moat company. A safe, smart move. But I think this could be a clue to the macro as well because Buffett is very keen on the macro economy. I'm not sure that I buy the argument that this is a big bet on the economy of the United States though. Right now the railroad gets only about 30% of its revenues from shipping consumer products. "Its next most important segment was coal, followed by industrial products like farm equipment, lumber and chemicals. It also hauls corn, wheat and soybeans, much of it exported to China."1

The media spin on it however is it's a bullish bet on the economy. I think it is a bet on future trends. None of them on a stronger United States economy. It just looks more like a bet on commodities, the fact that the dollar will be very weak, that people will be alive and eating in the future, the fact that oil prices will sky rocket over coming decades and that Canada will probably be stronger than the United States economically.

What is the way to ship if oil exceeds $140 a barrel? It sure isn't trucks or planes. The fact that rails take away from them doesn't seem particularly good, just that they will. This may be a bit of a stretch but buying a railroad seems more like a doomsday economic hedge than a hope that the economy will be strong. Shipping coal and necessities is pretty much a given. And you can't ignore a healthy demand from Canada next door.

Where's the leveraged bet on the consumer? Are you telling me from the extremely low valuations from the biggest stock market crash of his career and the worst economic crisis since the early 1900s that Buffett couldn't find a company any more correlated to the consumer? This is supposed to be an "all-in" bet right? Remember the consumer is the U.S. economy with consumer spending comprising over 70% of GDP. If the consumer does well so will the economy. And this railroad is the best deal he could find to "bet" on the economy? Give me a break media.

A bet on the economy is buying a company related to the housing industry or a service company.

I heard Buffett say he thinks this country will prosper in the future. Prosper isn't that strong a word though really. Buffett is an extremely candid guy to say the least. Why wouldn't he have said do extremely well or better than ever. He was saying this in the heart of the panic of 2008 and 2009 but I think one has to be skeptical of the context of those statements possibly because he is one of the most important statesman.

A low dollar and high fuel prices makes railroads an alternative for shipping to Canada and across the country. In that case it is a strong bet on Canada's economic future. I think that Canada will possibly be doing better than the US because they have the oil, healthier banks and financial institutions and more stable currency.


1. Yahoo! news

another source
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/2009-11-03-berkshire-bnsf-buffett_N.htm


full disclosure:no position in BRK-A,BRK-B,BNI

Emerging Markets ETFs

I was not 100% sure that the top was in in that last post a couple hours ago. I'm leaning much more toward the highs are over now and we've seen the top. I don't think we see new highs anytime this year probably going off what's happening now. I just have to be bearish now. The Russell 2000 small cap index has cracked support. The uptrend is over.

Remember we cracked in July on the major indices and I called it a bear trap which it was and got bullish on the indices. That was a powerful signal. Here are small-caps. For the countries sake I hope they can find some support soon and we trade sideways for some months but this just doesn't look good at all.




Another thing is Shanghai cooled off a long time ago. I guess they will lead us again. EEM is more broad but jeez this kind of sell-off on that kind of volume usually doesn't end well. This is very bad.

Emerging Market ETFs EEM EDZ EDC are at the top of my watchlist. These are some of the most volatile 3 X ETF's right now and I think this will continue for awhile. The bounces should be volatile too.



full disclosure:no positions

U.S. Stock Market Analysis

This runs uptrend is still intact but we are getting very close to possibly seeing some potentially dangerous conditions play out. The bull trap I pointed out on financials is not very reassuring when you take what could happen here in the next couple days.



I just noticed some hammers at the bottoms of the last pull-backs. Bulls will want to see some big hammers soon.

There should be a bounce or atleast an attempt to pick up some stocks at this level I circled on the Naz. If not look out! If the Nasdaq closes for a couple days below this support line the rally from the March lows is over. The momentum will be over. How much more downside could play out? I don't know. We could test the March lows or just go sideways. I'd be more inclined towards sideways or slightly down but all this is getting ahead of the next couple days. These next few days are very important. There could still be a new high soon if the support is broken but that doesn't seem very likely to me with the current economic and fundamental indicators today.



Uptrend still intact. Bigger selling pressure today. The bounce could be huge or the attempt could just get slaughtered. I expect some sort of bounce tomorrow.








full disclosure:no position in Nasdaq or S&P 500 ETF's or futures contracts or XLF

XLF Financials ETF

I did some TA on the financials with XLF a few days ago. This turned out to be the right read as far as the further breakdown coming. My timing was a a couple days off because I was holding that trade as if the VIX was still over 50. I think this move will probably get a retest of some support if not turn into a short-term major top.

Worst Case For Bulls
That's a possible double top with a failed signal forming if this move prints 13.50. No reason to get ahead though but I am just keeping an eye on that if it happens. I think this down-slide the past couple days might have caught some people off guard after that rebound three days ago...or maybe they're just getting in the Nasdaq leaders.




full disclosure:no position