ParkTwain's Parlor

[ParkTwain]

Park,
An interesting book with some pictures is Fisher's "100 Minds That Made the Market". Interesting short biographies on investors categorized as innovators , scalawags , crooks , bankers , speculators , economists etc.

-----------billyjoe

Very good to know. It's available CHEAP via amazon.com for as low as $1.94 a copy.

http://tinyurl.com/q8hc8

[ParkTwain]

"Y ... Y ... Greenblatt ... You Can Be a Stock Market Genius"

First book I read about investing, oddly enough. It was in a bundle I bought to get a book about Godel.

Well, I guess you would agree that this book is not intended for beginners in the stock market.

[Lyehopper]

Park,
An interesting book with some pictures is Fisher's "100 Minds That Made the Market". Interesting short biographies on investors categorized as innovators , scalawags , crooks , bankers , speculators , economists etc.

-----------billyjoe

I highly recommend this book BillyJoe.... And it has great pictures!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/cgi-bin/apf4/amazon_products_feed.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=1580173276

[ParkTwain]

ORCL follow-through, and MMM a turnaround?

No one around here has been talking about ORCL's steady rise all this year. I had been considered doing a trade, but it had been a creeper facing mounds of overhead resistance. In the last 2 months its rise had picked up some pace. It had given a clear foreshadowing of its recent earnings news.

Many of the establishment commentators are expecting large-cap to do well going forward. Look at the chart for MMM and watch for continuing improvement.

[ParkTwain]

Started reading Justin Mamis's "How to Buy" (1982)

Recommended. Lots of good horse sense in this book. In Chapter 3 he gets down to brass tacks and identifies these buy scenarios:

* Buy during a selling climax
* Buy on the testing of a (sellling climax) low
* The breakout buy
* The pullback (after a breakout) buy
* Buy on the correction (for a trending stock, buy with the long-term trend, but against the short-term trend)

[Runner]

No one around here has been talking about ORCL's steady rise all this year. I had been considered doing a trade, but it had been a creeper facing mounds of overhead resistance. In the last 2 months its rise had picked up some pace. It had given a clear foreshadowing of its recent earnings news.

Many of the establishment commentators are expecting large-cap to do well going forward. Look at the chart for MMM and watch for continuing improvement.

Orcl hit screen here http://www.mrmarketishuge.com/showpo...&postcount=270

[ParkTwain]

"Opposite" and "simpatico" sector Relative Strength (vs. S&P 500) charts

Notice the sector relative strength charts shown in this post on the Birinyi Associates blog:

http://tickersense.typepad.com/ticker_sense/2006/09/sector_relative_1.html

Notice which plots move in sync with each other and which are opposite:

* opposites: energy vs. consumer discretionary, energy vs. technology, utilities vs. materials, utilities vs. industrials

* simpatico: utilities and health care and customer staplies, materials and industrials, customer discretionary and technology, financials and telecom (this is the only pair of "simpaticos" that are both outperforming the S&P500 and have been in a steady uptrend for all YTD)

This shows where the "sector rotation" actually occured YTD vs true outperformance w.r.t. the overall S&P500. The net performance of each of the "opposite" pairs versus the S&P500 index appears on these charts to be about 0% YTD.

[diogenes]

Well, I guess you would agree that this book is not intended for beginners in the stock market.

Yes, I can agree with that.
Since the author goes into great depth about company reports etc reading the book can be a daunting task for the novice

[ParkTwain]

Couple of ideas to consider

I'm behind in doing my normal research for all-time high breakouts, but lately I have a couple of other ideas going. I'm watching Tim Horton's (THI), the recent spinoff from Wendy's, which is about to bottom, I suspect. Wendy's just Friday completed distribution to shareholders of the remaining common shares it had owned. THI should prove to be a significant gainer from that bottom for the subsequent 9 to 24 months, pick your holding period.

I'm also watching for MMM to show signs of a turnaround so that it starts to participate in the Dow record-making fireworks. Playing a spinoff angle like THI has been well documented by Joel Greenblatt (see my recommendation of his "You Can Be a Stock Market Genius"). Today while poking around some links to pages about Greenblatt (such as this one: http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=807 ), I noticed that MMM is a "guru pick" among at least a couple of "deep value" fund managers.

As a final idea, I picked up some IMH last week in anticipation of its going ex-dividend tomorrow (10/4). I had gone through the imminent divvy list found at the Birinyi Assoc blog that I posted a few days ago. I looked at the charts and technicals for those with a 10+% annual-basis divvy and going ex this week and decided to pull the trigger on IMH. Since then it's been acting pretty good, so I'm getting some appreciation with my dividend. With only 3 months left in the CY, I'm thinking more of getting those little easy chip shots where I can find 'em to pad my YTD trading portfolio return.

[ParkTwain]

A few tasty setups from this week's action

From this "A" list, I think I will go for ESCH and SIMO first. ELRC is also intriguing:

ACAS, ALL
BAMM
CACC, CSE
DLLR, DTV
ELRC, ESCH
HRZ
KMB
MDV, MFB
OPSW
RNR, RYAAY
SIMO
TCHC

AND ... I have a "B" list as well:

BDX
CMP, CVP
DECK, DKS, DRI, DRIV
FDS, FISV
MEH
NHP
PG
SRE, SSS, SUAI
TPX, TWGP
UAG
WSC

There are actually a couple of AIRLINES on these lists!

[ParkTwain]

Uptrending stocks and ~20% retracement phenomenon

From looking at many, many 52-wk charts of strong to very strong uptrending stocks (esp. those making a new 52-wk high), I have noticed that a good number of them hit a point of having a significant retracement of around 20% at some point during the overall uptrend. I am now watching for this and making note of the behavior of the pps in the weeks or months just after this has happened. I want to see whether I can identify the technical characteristics of these charts for those stocks that continue to show a sustained pps increase after this kind of retracement. That is, is there a tell re: any volume pattern, the quickness of the rebound from the retracement, the time spent near the low point of the retracement, etc.

[ParkTwain]

70 puts and 10 short positions - Watch TraderTim's blog

This is the guy behind the Prophet.net web site:

http://tradertim.blogspot.com/

//
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
The bottom line for me is this - I've got over 80 positions, about 70 puts and 10 shorts, in all kinds of different industries. And my portfolio value went up today. That's why I'm looking this bull straight in the face and laughing at it. Savor the moment, pal. You're about to get wasted.
//

THEN he rode through a 3-digit-gain day in the Dow... OUCH!

//
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Well, look. Today hurt. It hurt bad. I got blasted out of a bunch of positions. And I notice the comments board has gone bananas. I don't even want to set foot into that place. It's probably like a bar fight by now.

But this is something to keep in mind - - I can deal with getting blown out of positions. But I don't hang on. That's why I say, over and over - always have a stop in place. Always! Take PNRA, for instance. I bought puts on it. Some people said I was wrong to do so. Turns out they were right. That's fine. I can deal with the loss. But if I had just hung on (past the circled point, where I got pushed out of the position), now that would be stupid.

As enamored as I've been with OIH shorts, I closed out my energy shorts today, including OIH. I think the selling in energy and gold is really overdone. There are hammer patterns all over the place today!

So I'm going to blow away my reputation as a permabear by offering what I think are interesting stocks to consider buying (yes, buying) or buying calls on (that's right - I said calls). I still have lots of put positions, and plenty of shorts. But there's no denying the force of buying at this point. ...
//

[Websman]

There are actually a couple of AIRLINES on these lists!

Hopefully oil prices will stay down and help airlines to recover...

[ParkTwain]

On Friday, I exchanged my pre-ex-dividend IMH position for one in THI, which Thursday began rebounding out of its climax bottom on the heels of the final distribution of THI spin-off shares to WEN shareholders.

I also picked up ESCH and SIMO as anticipated breakout followthroughs. Still holding my position in DDD. It got very frisky to the upside at end of session on Friday.

While looking at the dismal YTD performance of my trading portfolio, I noticed the tremendous YTD performance of the Broker/Dealer index. ( http://tinyurl.com/lbjpj ) Looking at the members of the index (see the "components" link on the left side of that Yahoo page linked above), notice that several are imminent all-time high breakout candidates. In particular, I'm interested in BSC's prospects. Since April 2006 it's made a broad sideways channel, after previously being a tremendous gainer year after year.

Speaking of which, anyone notice the perfect-looking all-time high breakout of MER last week? I would have bitten if the runup to the pivot had taken place with an RSI of under 70.

[peanuts]

On Friday, I exchanged my pre-ex-dividend IMH position for one in THI, which Thursday began rebounding out of its climax bottom on the heels of the final distribution of THI spin-off shares to WEN shareholders.

I also picked up ESCH and SIMO as anticipated breakout followthroughs. Still holding my position in DDD. It got very frisky to the upside at end of session on Friday.

While looking at the dismal YTD performance of my trading portfolio, I noticed the tremendous YTD performance of the Broker/Dealer index. ( http://tinyurl.com/lbjpj ) Looking at the members of the index (see the "components" link on the left side of that Yahoo page linked above), notice that several are imminent all-time high breakout candidates. In particular, I'm interested in BSC's prospects. Since April 2006 it's made a broad sideways channel, after previously being a tremendous gainer year after year.

SIMO is on my watchlist this week. Great stock! Thanks