Lyehopper's Roundup....

[spikefader]

Comments fellas on SIRF short right here?.... (reports tomorrow after the bell)

Dude, I think it's a great short, as per the setup I posted here. It's now down to 38.00 so that 2% risk has increased to 5% risk if your stop is over resistance at 40.00. I'd be taking 2% risk with it personally. But while 40.00 holds I think it's a shot duck. Good luck.

[Lyehopper]

Update....

Here's is a current update of my featured trades here. I will post two seperate charts later tonight with the totals for my open and closed trades. Only the closed trades are total'd on this chart.

My average return for the five closed trades....

4.47%.... total average return

430.11%.... annualized return

[Lyehopper]

"How to get rich Predicting Earnings plays"

Dude, I think it's a great short, as per the setup I posted here. It's now down to 38.00 so that 2% risk has increased to 5% risk if your stop is over resistance at 40.00. I'd be taking 2% risk with it personally. But while 40.00 holds I think it's a shot duck. Good luck.

I tend to agree Spike.... But there's this big HUUUUGE "what-if" hanging out there..... The Report!!!! It could be a coin toss here, I've seen em go both ways..... If a fella could accurately predict earnings plays using TA..... he'd be a Kazillionare.lol

Hey!!!! now there's a new hot thread.... AND FUN!!!! "Predicting earnings plays using TA".... Who wants to start it?.... Spike?

[billyjoe]

Lye,
Interesting that you should mention ACTU. It first appeared in week 3 of my cheap stock thread last Nov.28th at 3.35 and is also on my list this week at 4.65. Another stock that was in week 2 (Nov.19th) at 4.98 and still is on this week at about 7.00 is SPIL . The cheap stock port averaged over 30% during a 10 week period ending in late January.
I've got 9 stocks in my current test portfolio and am tracking them for a 5 week period. So far they're doing very good. If it shows great gains this time, I'm going to be buying and probably be holding in 10 stock blocks. Haven't determined a maximum # of stocks or exactly how to shuffle in new candidates yet. ACTU was the only stock on the list with two ** , but I can't remember what it meant.

billyjoe

[New-born baby]

Sirf

Lye-baby.
BUY SIRF and sell those $35 MAY calls at $4.60 . . . then you won't lose any money on it.

[billyjoe]

Lye,
As far as earnings go , I think price stability in a cheap stock , especially one selling for as low as 4.50 such as ACTU is very significant. No big drops over a 6 month period tells me the stock has more than hype going for it.
billyjoe

[spikefader]

I tend to agree Spike.... But there's this big HUUUUGE "what-if" hanging out there..... The Report!!!! It could be a coin toss here, I've seen em go both ways..... If a fella could accurately predict earnings plays using TA..... he'd be a Kazillionare.lol

Hey!!!! now there's a new hot thread.... AND FUN!!!! "Predicting earnings plays using TA".... Who wants to start it?.... Spike?

Good idea for a blog! hehe, but no, if someone wants to throw a thread up here I'll refrain.

But on SIRF, yep, sure earnings are tricky. They can also pay nicely. If I were you, I'd be shorting the pop on earnings up around 39.15-39.50 area. I am.

And if it's OK Lye, if you don't want it, I'll take it in POTW sometime this week!

Updated short chart for SIRF here

[Lyehopper]

Lye,
Interesting that you should mention ACTU. It first appeared in week 3 of my cheap stock thread last Nov.28th at 3.35 and is also on my list this week at 4.65. Another stock that was in week 2 (Nov.19th) at 4.98 and still is on this week at about 7.00 is SPIL . The cheap stock port averaged over 30% during a 10 week period ending in late January.
I've got 9 stocks in my current test portfolio and am tracking them for a 5 week period. So far they're doing very good. If it shows great gains this time, I'm going to be buying and probably be holding in 10 stock blocks. Haven't determined a maximum # of stocks or exactly how to shuffle in new candidates yet. ACTU was the only stock on the list with two ** , but I can't remember what it meant.

billyjoe

When I started buying ACTU I ran a search to see who had ever mentioned it here. I found where you had it in the "Cheap Stocks" thread and IIC had it in his "MoMo" a few times. Never have seen it really singled out though.

BillyJoe?... What do you think of the Earnings TA deal dude?.... Now that would be a fun thread.... and allow us to focus on stocks that are currently reporting or are about to report earnings. I like it ALOT!

[Lyehopper]

Good idea for a blog! hehe, but no, if someone wants to throw a thread up here I'll refrain.

But on SIRF, yep, sure earnings are tricky. They can also pay nicely. If I were you, I'd be shorting the pop on earnings up around 39.15-39.50 area. I am.

And if it's OK Lye, if you don't want it, I'll take it in POTW sometime this week!

Updated short chart for SIRF here

I already have a pick dude (another earnings play)....

First come first served dude.... Ain't no manners in the POTW.lol.... Go for it!

[spikefader]

hehe thnx dude.

[billyjoe]

Lye,
I don't believe it's possible to predict earnings using TA . Even if you could, it would probably backfire. Haven't you had stocks that seemed to tank after great earnings report? If we could predict earnings and load up buying based on prediction, results could be disastrous. Just last year, FDG had a great report and tanked just because the report stated there was a shortage of special tires needed for the coal hauling trucks that would last at least 18 months. Starmine has earnings prediction surprises and whisper numbers. If you buy based on those numbers you'll find the surprise is already priced into the stock and therefore not a surprise. It's a crap shoot IMO.

billyjoe

[spikefader]

Lye,
I don't believe it's possible to predict earnings using TA . Even if you could, it would probably backfire. Haven't you had stocks that seemed to tank after great earnings report? If we could predict earnings and load up buying based on prediction, results could be disastrous. Just last year, FDG had a great report and tanked just because the report stated there was a shortage of special tires needed for the coal hauling trucks that would last at least 18 months. Starmine has earnings prediction surprises and whisper numbers. If you buy based on those numbers you'll find the surprise is already priced into the stock and therefore not a surprise. It's a crap shoot IMO.

billyjoe

But at the end of the day all trading is a crapshoot billyjoe, I mean ya never know which way a stock is going to go, whether it's earnings or not, and no matter how much TA might support the move. Perfect lookin' TA, and perfect counts, and perfect VTP picks (jeje) will just fail a certain percentage of the time. Noone can argue or debate this point. It is the nature of speculation. And I think any TAer who thinks they can predict anything is smokin' bat doo-doo.

But ..... I'd rather trade in the direction of the TA than not. That's one edge I think I have, and that edge allows me to leverage another edge, i.e. applying great risk/reward parameters, where I draw my line in the sand and control the trade to a specific plan. There's the battle; how good is your plan and how good do you execute against it. It's not the uncertainty of post-earnings price movement that is the problem. The problem is accepting that nothing is certain, even if the news is outstandingly good. The fact remains that deep pockets may have got the whisper of the good news in the month leading up to it, bought into it heavy and run the price up that month, with the very intention of selling hard into the strength of optimistic chasers, perhaps the little people who buy simply because the report is good, not thinking about where it sits TA-wise, whether it's at resistance, certainly not knowing what the big boys are doing with the stock. Cuz those deep pockets do arguably control what happens afterhours. Or if there are no big boys interested in the stock, then it's down to the battle between every other market participant and where the majority lies, and how strong their intent is, and normal market price discovery. And there is absolutely no way to know what the majority is gonna do. The majority isn't how many traders believe something, how many forum participants think the good news should be bought or sold, the majority is whoever has the bigger volume to move and with what kind of intent. And we can't know that for any issue. So thus is speculation.

The only real significant difference with earnings is the increased volatility that is naturally a consequence of lighter traded volume and emotional orders that people tend to submit. Specialists take advantage of that, and retail traders without experience are usually the victims.

Afterhours can be madness...and so slippage is gonna be more if you're using market orders, or you may have to get cute with price and play the support resistance game to get out at a good location if you're using a stop limit order and price pops over it or under it depending on whether you're short or long.

I personally have come to believe the best way to play earnings is to be flat going into the announcement (or very well hedged), and then use outrageous bids or asks at extreme areas; volatility bands are good for this. And when the volatile move that usually follows earnings releases does come, you're sitting at the extreme ranges, that you've defined your risk and target areas, and thus you have an edge over others. What you're doing is looking to catch the reversal area for the nice 1-evening trade, or if you're real clever and catch the reversal area well you can swing it for days and make great profit.

And a perfect example of what I'm talking about is AMD the other day. See this post, and this post for details. This chart shows the pop up on earnings, that got sold. And it was good for a +17% short move in 2 days. Just missed that one, but it is a good example of what I'm talking about. I used TA to form the bias on the chart, I set up the plan to exploit the volatility, with defined risk of 4%, a r/r of 7.8, and 2-day target after heavy selling. I was $0.20 off and missed, but the plan was perfect in all other aspects.

So if you were to ask me if you can use TA to predict earnings I'd say of course not.

But ask me if one can use TA to trade earnings? Then I think you know my answer to that one. It's just another trade with another clever plan. Lord knows how it's gonna turn out.

Best to ya!

[billyjoe]

Lyehopper,
Hope you can answer this question. What's the difference between corn liquor and ethanol ? Can either be safely consumed ? Ethanol costs about .93 / gallon to produce. We drank something in college that burned with a pale blue flame , but it was costly. How much does it cost to produce a gallon of Goji Brandy?

billyjoe

[Lyehopper]

Lyehopper,
Hope you can answer this question. What's the difference between corn liquor and ethanol ? Can either be safely consumed ? Ethanol costs about .93 / gallon to produce. We drank something in college that burned with a pale blue flame , but it was costly. How much does it cost to produce a gallon of Goji Brandy?

billyjoe

I guess the biggest difference the amount of love and attention given to the mfg process BillyJoe.... Remember, brandy is distilled from fruit.... Whiskey is distilled from grain.... Fruit costs more than grain. So brandy costs more than whiskey. I've never drunk any ethanol but I sent Webs a jar of it.... Ask him how it was.jejeje

Now.... If you're makin' grain alchohol for .93 per gallon (at what proof does it cost .93 I wonder?) you've probibly got a little bigger operation than your basic Bedford County 30 gallon copper pot.

[IIC]

We drank EverClear grain Alcohol in college...190 proof...They don't sell it in CA...But they did in NE...as I recall...it wasn't cheap...IIC