Thursday, October 21, 2010

Diamond Offshore: Market Sentiment Is Shifting, Rare Opportunity Is Ending

From Seeking Alpha contributor Hester.....

Earlier in the year, at the end of May, I wrote a bullish article on Diamond Offshore (DO). At the time, shares of Diamond were getting crushed, as the hysteria over the BP spill was in full swing, with many speculating that BP would go bankrupt. The offshore drilling industry was just starting to go under a microscope by regulators. The drilling moratorium was just a twinkle in Ken Salazar's eye. People refused to go near drilling stocks because of regulatory uncertainty, possible increased insurance costs, the risk of another spill, and most importantly, the general dislike of the sector.

It has been nearly five months since all of this, and most of the reasons to sell are nearly gone. The moratorium and regulatory scrutiny is basically over. Insurance costs will be passed on to customers. The BP spill has ended, it is out of the news, and cleanup is moving swiftly. The risk of another spill is the exact same as before the BP spill (which is low), but perception of the risk is lowered. The general dislike and hatred of anything in the sector is slowly ending. The opportunity to purchase great companies at ridiculous prices is may be ending.

Yet, DO is trading at basically the same price as when my article came out and when I started buying. The stock price took a big plunge, from high $60's per share to mid $50's, after the article when people were speculating that Diamond had a spill themselves. However, anybody who took the time to listen to management or actually read past the headlines knew it was a non issue, and the stock eventually recovered to where it is now. So even though these issues are ending, today's buyers are offered a rare opportunity to buy one of the highest quality oil drillers in the world, at just 10 times earnings......Read the entire article.


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Dan Dicker: A Refinery Buy - Frontier Oil

Dan Dicker has managed to find one refinery worthy of a trade.



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Pinpointing the Top China ETF Opportunities

We have been watching China and their ETF's pretty closely and this article is a good read as to why these are the top three ETF's.....

Think one ETF is as good as another as long as it’s in the same sector, country, or style as the alternatives? Perhaps that was the case ten years ago. In an effort to differentiate their exchange trade funds from others, however, ETF sponsors have really started to hyper focus their funds’ portfolios…. even within a particular grouping.

Take China based exchange traded funds for example. While the iShares FTSE/Xinhua Chain 25 Index Fund (FXI) may have the lead in hearts and minds of China-hungry investors, other funds of the same ilk may actually be the better choice, depending on your goal or strategy.

Just to put this idea into a stunning perspective, check out this performance chart of all the major China oriented funds for the year to date. While one could reasonably expect a mild amount of disparity when it comes to returns, you’d think they’d all basically offer the same result After all, they’re each investing in the same broad cross section of China’s stocks. Take a look though.


A 17% gain for the leader, and a 5% gain for the laggard, but the same underlying stocks? Wow. Even taking out the ‘Honk Kong’ leader, you’ve still got a 100% disparity from the next best performer and the weakest one. Of course, the different performances come as no real surprise once you look under the hood of these funds and really see what each is holding.

Just like many U.S. based ETFs, the idea of a “cross section of the country’s stocks” can have various meanings. For instance, the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index’s (FXI) biggest two holdings are China Mobile Ltd., and then China Construction Bank Corporation. That sharply contrasts with the two biggest holdings of the iShares MSCI Hong Kong Fund (EWH), which are (in order) Sun Hung Kai Properties, Ltd., and Cheung Kong Holdings, Ltd.

To be clear, this isn’t a complaint. Quite the contrary actually, we should be celebrating these differences, so we can get the most out of a regional based opportunity rather than sit contently holding watered down carbon copies of ETFs. With that in mind, that’s where the real China opportunity comes to light.

They may still qualify as ‘new’, but several sector based China exchange traded funds are plenty liquid enough to trade now, and the performance separation within the group is easily wide enough to prompt a trader to pick and choose certain vehicles.

Take a look at the year to date performance chart of these sector-based ETFs, and take special notice a 20% gap between the leader and the laggard for the year so far.


Our favorites are the three leaders…. the Global X China Consumer ETF (CHIQ), the Claymore/AlphaShares China Small Cap ETF (HAO), and the Claymore/AlphaShares China Real Estate ETF (TAO). We either currently own those names in the ETF portfolio, or intend to own soon. Any of them offer a little more ‘umph’ than FXI does at this point.

The point here is simply to highlight the fact that there are obscure trends within the bigger China trend that are well worth tapping into. That’s one of the focal points of our ETF service, and the approach has been very rewarding.

Check out more of Andrew Hart post at  ETF TRADR.com



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Phil Flynn: French Fried

Alright, I admit it was kind of fun snickering about the French Strikes. You know like joking about the French work ethic (assuming they had one). You know the routine. The French have been striking and staging mass protests that have turned violent as the government moves to take away French entitlements they cannot pay for. The French are to vote on raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 (Sidérer!!!). With an aging French population and years of the government giving the country free goodies, the government is going to have to make much needed reforms or face an inevitable economic collapse.

The strikes have shut down 12 oil refineries in France leading to shortages of diesel and gasoline. The International Oil Daily Reported that, “lost French production is driving dramatic price gains in diesel and jet fuel in Europe, France’s 12 oil refineries, all but one of which has been shut down by national strikes, produce around 60,000 tons of diesel and 30,000 tons of jet a day. But even with refineries at full production, the country is a net importer of both products. Minimal domestic production means France is sucking in products from neighboring Germany, Italy and even Spain, as well as drawing from strategic......Read the entire article.


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Crude Oil Consolidates Some of Wednesday's Rally Overnight

Crude oil was lower overnight as it consolidates some of Wednesday's rally. Stochastics and the RSI remain bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near term.

If December extends this week's decline, trendline support drawn off the August-September lows crossing near 77.85 is the next downside target. Closes above the 10 day moving average crossing at 82.67 would confirm that a short term low has been posted.

First resistance is the 10 day moving average crossing at 82.67
Second resistance is this month's high crossing at 85.08

Crude oil pivot point for Thursday morning is 81.67

First support is Wednesday's low crossing at 79.90
Second support is the uptrend line drawn off the August-September lows crossing near 77.85


The "Super Cycle" in Gold and How It Will Effect Your Pocketbook in 2010

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

What is Next for the Dollar, SP500 and Gold

The equities market reversed to the upside Wednesday posting a light volume broad based rally. Remember light volume tends to have a neutral to upward bias on stocks, But it was mainly the sharp drop in the dollar which spurred stocks and commodities higher.

Today’s bounce was not much of a surprise for several reasons…
• Overall trend is up, one day sell offs are generally profit taking
• Panic selling on the NYSE tipped us off that the market was oversold
• I don’t think they will let the market fall before the November election
• Intermediate cycle is turning up this week, 3 weeks of upward momentum…

US Dollar Index – 4 Hour Chart
The dollar put in a big bounce this week filling its gap window… Remember most gaps get filled with virtually every investment vehicle so when you see them remember this chart....


SPY ETF – Daily Chart
SP500 has been riding the key moving average up and Tuesday’s sell off tagged the 14MA along with extreme market internal readings telling intraday traders that a bounce is about to take place.


Gold Futures – Daily Chart
You can see gold has done much the same… A sharp profit/stop running sell off, which took the price back down to support. We took a long position to catch this bounce and hopefully a larger move going forward.


Market Sentiment Readings
Tuesday’s pullback was a great reminder of just how over extended the equities market was. These heavy volume sell offs are typical in a bull market. Without regular pauses in price, traders tend to place trailing stops moving them up each day. With traders chasing stocks higher bidding them up instead of waiting for a pullback we get a very large number to stop orders following the price up each day. Then, it’s only a matter of time before a key short term support level is broken at which point the flood gates open and everyone’s stops turn to market orders flooding the stock exchanges with sell orders causing a rapid decline and panic selling. This is exactly what happened on Tuesday which I show in the chart below.

Understanding how to read market internals provides great insight for short term traders looking to make quick high probability trades every week… Market internals are just part of the equation but very powerful on their own with proper money/position management. Both of these intraday extremes were bought on Tuesday in the advanced chatroom (FuturesTradingSignals.com).. We quickly booked profits and moved our stops up in order to protect our capital as the market surged higher.


Mid-Week Market Trend Analysis:
In short, the US Dollar is still in a down trend overall. The Fed’s I would think will continue to hold the market up into the election. It works well for them… they print money which devalues the dollar, and in return boosts stocks and commodities, plus they get trillions of dollars to spend… I’m sure its like kids in a candy store over there.

While everyone is trying to pick a top in this over extended market I think it is crucial to stick with the overall trend and to not fight the Fed. Using the key moving averages on the daily chart as shown in the charts above, continue to buy on dips until the market closes below the 20 day moving average at which point you should abandon ship.

Get My Reports and Trade Ideas Here for Free at The Gold and Oil Guy

Chris Vermeulen


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Crude Oil Declines After Dollar Climbs, Chinese Economic Growth Slows

Crude oil declined as investors sold contracts against a rising dollar and the Chinese economy grew at the slowest pace in a year, potentially crimping demand in the world’s biggest energy consumer. Futures dropped as the U.S. currency rose against most of its counterparts, limiting the appeal of commodities as an inflation hedge. China’s economy grew 9.6 percent in the third quarter, according to government data. U.S. gasoline stockpiles increased unexpectedly last week, a report showed yesterday.

“Inventories of crude and products are still high so there is no fear of a global shortage,” Ken Hasegawa, a commodity derivative sales manager at broker Newedge in Tokyo, said in an interview. “The currency markets are key for every market at the moment.” The December contract lost as much as 64 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $81.90 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and was at $81.93 at 1:03 p.m. Singapore time. Yesterday it advanced $2.38 to $82.54 a barrel.

Crude for November delivery surged $2.28 to close yesterday at $81.77, the biggest gain in 11 weeks. Prices are up 3.7 percent this year. The increase in China’s gross domestic product from a year earlier compared with economists’ median estimate of 9.5 percent. Consumer prices rose 3.6 percent last month, the statistics bureau said at a briefing in Beijing. China’s monthly crude oil processing volume increased the least in......Read the entire article.


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Hot Markets and Commodities, Yet the Small Investor Continues to Miss The Run!

From guest analyst David Banister at Market Trend Forecast.Com.....

All investors can recall the horror during the five months from October 2008 through early March of 2009 as day after day the markets continued to make new lows. That type of catastrophic drop leaves many psychological scars and probably spooked millions of investors out of the stock market for good. To wit, since the March 2009 lows and throughout this new Bull Market Cycle, Investors are pulling money out of equity funds in droves and piling into Bonds. This is the fight or flight mentality taking hold of the herd, and as they continue to disbelieve in the new bull cycle in stocks, the market continues to power higher.

I’ve long been a believer in Elliott Wave Theory, which was developed in the 1930’s by R.N. Elliott. He was a man decades ahead of his time, and to this day his work remains revolutionary in tracking and forecasting market and commodity trends and cycles. This theory forms the basis of my work for market forecasting and trading and investing. While the crowd continues to wait for the next crash, the Elliott wave patterns I’ve been outlining have continued to foretell a bullish move possibly of historic proportions. Taking advantage of this type of move means you need to tune out the noise from CNBC, all of the jobs data, and the negative mantra. Everyone knows that stocks climb a wall of worry, but you have to have a method to let you know to stay long and where best to invest during a super cycle Elliott Bull Wave pattern as we are in now.

My theory back in late February 2009 was that the market was about to bottom and nobody knew it. I wrote an article on 321Gold.com at the time to outline my reasoning and had a chart showing 1200 on the SP 500 as a likely target. At the time the SP 500 was trading around 720 and had not yet completed it’s drop to 666, but was within a few weeks. Interestingly to me anyways, at 666 the SP 500 bottomed and not randomly at all! That 666 figure was an exact 61.8% Fibonacci re-tracement of the 1974 lows to the 2000 highs Bull Cycle. Often crowds act in patterned behaviors that are formed around Fibonacci mathematics. Typical re-tracements are 38%, 50%, 61.8%, or even 78.6%. Combining Elliott Wave patterns with Fibonacci sequences allows me to confirm or help firm up a forecast. That drop over five Fibonacci months completed a multi year cycle from the 2000 highs to the 2009 lows, and it did so right at a clear Fibonacci pivot point. This is why I believe the next many years will be very bullish for stocks, and most investors will not be on board.

Those Fibonacci and Elliott Wave patterns gave me the heads up to start turning bullish, coupled with the sentiment readings which were equally as bearish as the October 2002 bottoms. In addition, there was way too much discussion about deflation. The rubber band in essence was stretched so far to one side on the sentiment gauges and deflation talk, that it would only take a slight shift towards inflation to move stocks much higher.

Fast forward to October 2010, and we now see the ravages of inflation becoming very apparent some 18 odd months later. Gold is at $1350 per ounce, Silver is at $24, the SP 500 is heading back to 1200, Corn, Sugar, Coffee, Copper are all at huge highs. What investor’s don’t understand is stocks are one of your best asset classes in the earlier periods of an inflationary shift, what I would call an inflationary period of prosperity worldwide. Elliott Wave patterns most recently that I outlined on my market forecast service alerted my subscribers to prepare for a massive bull run once the 1094 area on the SP 500 was crossed to the upside.

Given the understanding that inflation would become the new trend, we took multiple positions in Gold stocks and Rare Earth metals stocks ahead of the curve. Some of our recent picks included Hudson Resources at 63 cents in August, now trading at $1.30. Others include BORN at $8, a Chinese Corn based producer of Alcohol that ran to $19 within 7 weeks. We were investing in Rare Earth stocks almost 12 months ago, including REE at $1.80, and it’s now trading over $13.00 a share! Even up to the present time, my ATP service has been positioning our subscribers into Tasman Metals at $1.54, now $2.28 and Quest Rare minerals at $4.10 now $5.50. These moves are happening in stunningly quick periods of time, so being positioned ahead of those moves is crucial.

Gold and Gold stocks have obviously had a very strong move to the upside. Back in August of 2009 I forecasted a massive five year advance in Gold and Gold stocks. This again was entirely based on Elliott Wave patterns I recognized and crowd behavior. Investors will recall the 13 year bull market in tech stocks that started in 1986 when Microsoft went public, and ended in 1999 when AOL was sold to Time Warner for 150 billion. Well, the first five years of the Tech Bull nobody participated except the early investors. Intel and Dell also went public, along with EMC and others. By the time 1991 rolled around, investors kind of woke up and start buying. The problem was they were late, missing the first five years. At that point Tech stocks bucked and kicked up and down with no net gains for three years. Investors gave up again in 1994, and then we began a torrid 5 year rally to 1999. It was not until the last 12 months of that rally that everyone piled in, herd behavior in it’s finest form. Well, we are seeing the same patterns now in the precious metals areas of the market. The final 5 years started in August of 2009, kind of like 1994 in tech stocks. The first 5 years were 2001-2006 where Gold funds returned 30% compounded per year, by the time everyone got on board the funds did nothing for then next three years. Everyone gave up and lost interest, and that was the August 2009 buy signal.

Bringing us full circle, investors continue to shy away from this stock bull market following the five month crash of nearly two years ago. This is exactly the psychology present in an early stage bull market. Going forward from here, I look for the SP 500 to hit 1220 at the top of an Elliott Wave three from the 1040 lows in the summer. That will be followed by a correction pattern and then we will resume the advance to new highs on this bull market stretch from March of 2009. Gold should work it’s way up to $1480-1520 if I’m right on it’s bull move from the $1155 lows this June. Below we have a chart of the SP 500 on a long term basis, and it is currently in the third wave up from the 1010 lows on July 1st. This wave pattern is powerful and should run to at least 1220 intermediately. In time, this multi-year bull market could power to all-time highs and really upset the Bears.


Inflation is taking hold around the world, and stocks are one of your best asset classes to participate. You can follow along by registering for free weekly updates at Market Trend Forecast.Com.




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Brian Shactman: Where is Crude Oil and Gold Headed on Thursday?

CNBC's Brian Shactman discusses the day's activity in the commodities markets, and looks ahead to where oil and gold are likely headed tomorrow.



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Stock Market and Commodities Commentary For Wednesday Evening Oct. 20th

The U.S. stock indexes closed solidly higher today and saw Tuesday's losses quickly erased. The stock index bulls still have the overall near term technical advantage as price uptrends are still in place on the daily bar charts. Stock index bulls have been very pleased with price action so far this autumn, a time which is normally not favorable to market bulls. My bias is that prices will trade mostly sideways, but with a slight upside bias, into the end of the year.

Crude oil closed up $2.28 at $82.44 a barrel today. Prices closed near the session high today after hitting a fresh three week low early on. Sharp losses in the U.S. dollar index and higher stock index future prices today boosted crude.

Natural gas closed up 0.8 cents at $3.903 today. Prices closed near mid range today and saw tepid short covering in a bear market. Prices hit a fresh contract low this week. The bears still have the solid overall near term technical advantage.

Gold futures closed up $9.10 at $1,345.10 today. Prices closed nearer the session high and were supported by a sharply lower U.S. dollar index. Bargain hunters once again stepped in to buy weakness in the gold market, to now suggest Tuesday's low is just another "reaction low" in an overall 2 1/2 month old uptrend on the daily bar chart. Bulls have the overall near term and longer term technical advantage.

The U.S. dollar index closed down 100 points at 77.41 today. Prices closed near the session low today and quickly gave back most of Tuesday's big gains. Dollar index bears still have the overall near term technical advantage and regained some downside momentum today.

Today’s Stock Market Club Trading Triangles

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