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Thursday, August 13, 2009

THURS. AUG. 13- Trading What You See

Once again, the Blogger software is not working properly so I will send the watch list out via e-mail as I did the last few days.
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In what has overall been an amazing time for stock trading (the last two weeks notwithstanding), quite possibly the most astounding story of the year took place in the day trading world a few weeks ago on June 24, 2009. On that Wednesday morning, MTM Technologies (MTMC) issued a press release in which it indicated it had attained a “multi-million dollar” enterprise-wide award to provide data to the U.S. Department of Navy. The stock which closed at 1.39 on Tuesday on volume of 34,000 shares exploded almost 300% to 5.25 on Wednesday afternoon on over one million shares of turnover before it was halted. There was nary a peep from the company until Thursday morning when the company issued another press release in which they indicated the previous day’s release had not been authorized by management. The last sentence of the amended press release was the most telling and relevant note of all: “MTM does not anticipate that this contract will have a material impact on its financial condition or results of operations.” So, the stock should have gone right back down to Tuesday’s level since there was no net new news when all was said and done, right? Wrong-o. The stock re-opened at 2.66, fell to 1.98 and then more than re-doubled to 4.45! So, what happened? The best guess is that many people long the stock decided they were just going to hold it. Yet many people short the stock when faced with the happy prospect of easy money took their profits. However, since the stock had such low liquidity and there was such a seller’s strike, there was nobody left to buy from so the stock raced higher. Even if this analysis is completely wrong, it does not impact my main point: if you are a day trader, you should be looking to get in and out of a stock. You do not want to become an analyst; you should be acting on what you see. We all complain about situations in which we could have/should have made more money. But we don’t often talk about the situations where one could have lost a tremendous amount of money. This MTMC case is certainly a crystal example. If one was short this MTMC on Thursday, one could have asked why the thing was rallied…it is a legitimate question. But, in the end, it doesn’t matter…if the numbers on that computer monitor are not in accordance with your liking, you exit and start anew. Stocks are things; they are not people and have to answer to nobody.


Markets in Asia were nicely higher overnight with the average index up about 1.5%. The trend followed through to Europe with their markets up about ¾% across the board. Oil and gold are strong with the bonds and dollar steady. Wal Mart announced solid earnings tthis morning and the Paulson BAC news was good, but it has been offset a bit by poor jobless claims data. Still, the stage is set once again for an up day overall as long as the market holds in the morning; if not, all bets are off with the most likely scenario being a choppy day on both sides of unchanged. The strong tone should hold most of the day with the focus upon the smaller stocks, the earnings plays, and the financials.

Reiterating-
Please understand that if the ideas do not get to the hoped for set-ups cited below, more often than not, one should not blindly trade the symbol next to said idea.
If the whole story is not there -
If something is good, assume either a short thru unchanged or an A-B-A2 (preferably to the downside in a downside market and the upside in an upside market) based on direction of the market unless specified.If something is bad, assume either a buy thru unchanged or an A-B-A2 (preferably to the downside in a downside market and the upside in an upside market) based on direction of the market unless specified-
Good- The following stocks have good news and/or a strong technical pattern

BAC, COF, RF- John Paulson took stakes in each of these companies

UTA- great earnings

HRS- great earnings

CACI- good earnings

ANW- good earnings

SRX- good earnings

CVGI- closed near a high

CRY- positive FDA news yesterday; closed near a high

TOL- closed near a high on great earnings

ADCT- closed near a high on great earnings

STWD- closed on a high after its initial public offering yesterday

ADP, PAYX, EGO- featured on “Mad Money” last night

URBN- decent earnings

DPS- great earnings

GIL- good earnings

WMT- good earnings

WW- good earnings

BPAX- positive phase III LibiGel safety data

TPI- received Chinese SFDA approval for various tablets




Bad-The following stocks have bad news and/or a weak technical pattern

LDK- bad earnings

AAP- bad earnings

BYI- bad earnings

CHLN- bad earnings

MIDD- terrible earnings

YSI- share offering

SOLR- share offering

EM- closed on a low after its initial public offering yesterday

EL- bad revenue miss specifically

KSS- bad earnings

URS- bad earnings

NTES- poor earnings




Earnings:

THURS AUG 13 BEFORE

ABV BGG DPS

EL GIL KSS

RGLD SPPI URBN

URS WMT WW

THURS AUG 13 AFTER

ADSK APP DAR

DV JWN PVX

RRGB





Good luck today.

Epiphany Trading, LLC

http://www.epiphanytrading.com/

Erik R. Kolodny- Chief Markets Strategist
Brendan P. Byrne- President
Joseph R. McCandless- Managing Partner
D. Timothy Seaquist- Managing Partner

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