San Diego Housing Market News and Analysis

You may become my new contrary indictor. And if you start to correlate with Cramer, it's a done deal. ElliottWave is saying a big "Boooo yaaaa" no way, to your prediction.

I view the best market play today to be OIL!

Please educate me. What western oil stocks do you all consider to be strongest?

I already bought foreign oil, PBR and PTR

I'm also buying Japan and Chinese stocks, to the tune of 8% of portfolio each. Bought Wells Fargo also.

Bought CVX again today (58ish)...Hoping it rallies to $70ish again.

CVX has been in my porfolio in and out since i was in college, namely nice dividends.

Is VIX for sale? I think that's going up.
Oil is hurting. PBR may be your best play if you insist on going long here.This is real deflation in action. Gold getting hit. Deleveraging starting gain real momentum.

This last rally crash indicates to me that there's very little appetite in the market for purchasing stocks. Talk about downward pressure! If today stays flat to down. It's a done deal.

GOLD IS ON SALE TODAY!

Increasing my position in gold to 27% of portfolio, bought at $790, $800.

UPDATE - CORRECTION: Since the Fool's Rally (US stock indexes) got legs and drove the DOW up 800 pts intraday (Looks like i was right about big fool's rally underway), I dumped HALF my gold (because generally gold falls with increasing financial market stability, and falls with a rapidly rising stock market)

I'm now looking for $750 on gold for next buy point.

Oil stocks? BP sitting at a P/E of 5! Waddyah want from me! You want me to put stacks of c-notes in your hand? You want the money THAT easy? How can you go wrong buying oil stocks at a P/E of 5? Buy and HOLD oil stocks my friends!

Regarding stock indexes, I bought SSO at 27.9 and sold at 28.50. I was happy to take that and run! So the only long position I'm holding on the indexes now is my S&P500 calls (1.5% of portfolio).

While I'm predicting a short-term fool's rally for the indexes, I'm too chicken to bet significant money on that prediction.

I hope todays rally has some legs to it. This way I can buy back into my puts with some real meat behind them. But it will probably be a weak-ass rally and fade fast. Such is the stuff that dreams are made of......

I waz watching at 11 AM NYC time, and saw markets down 4% and then stall, and I KNEW, just felt it in my bones that was the start of the rally.

I thought about going 2X long the S&P500 with six figure bet, but I got cold feet.

Instead I bought calls on the S&P500 with significantly less amount of money AND I also did go 2X long the S&P500 with 10% of portfolio into SSO.

Then I got nervous and dumped my SSO position when it was only up 2%

In the end the market did EXACTLY what I expected and trade UP over 7% off the -4% bottom i spotted in the morning.

So I missed most of that rally by selling my SSO early. And I would have been UP over 15% on that position at end of day.

Pathetic!!!

Oh well. I can't be too greedy.

I did make lots of money today because I bought all of these early in the morning with markets down about 3%:

PTR: PetroChina
PBR: Petrobras
BP: Brit Petro
WFC: Wells Fargo
FXI: ISHARES TR FTSE XINHUA HK CHINA 25 INDEX FD

All those positions are up 7% to 10% off what I bought 'em at this morning, except for Wells Fargo which I'm only up about 2% on.

I made a killing already on the S&P500 calls, but I only bought 1.5% of portfolio on that one.

I think tomorrow will be a strong up day...just guessing now.

ANOTHER PREDICTION:

Just going on instinct here, but predicting this fool's rally will have STAYING POWER running the markets up over the next weeks probably into Nov....and at least OVER 1,100 on the S&P500.

Staying power will come from increasing signs of stability in financial markets ->Fed / Paulson's actions starting to work

stocktrader,

I like your instincts, similar to mine, except I cant watch the market during day. I should just hire you to be my broker! Last Friday morning I was ready to panic and go double short to hedge my 401K which I cant rebalance cause it may be +/- 10% next day. Instead I put limit order on Travelers Ins, got in at 30 and sold at 37 at end of close on Monday, happy with 20%+ in one day. Was thinking of putting buy order last night but didnt do it. Had I seen VIX go to 80 I would have bought probably AAPL or MSFT. Since the VIX reached record but the SP500 didn't go below low from Fri, I think we have a short term rally here.
Check out AAPL April 09 45 puts at $3. Sell the put, worst case buy AAPL at 45?

I like BP's 8% yield too, but read that they have big pension shortfall.

Oil should be bottoming out if not rising soon. Some tar sands in Canada become uneconomical below 65ish along with some deep well projects. Plus, this is seriously screwing with oil producing countries and they will demand a production cut no matter what Saudi Arabia says.

[deleted double-post]

I'm still an amateur, try to learn more each day.

I'll give you an example, where I've got lessons to learn.

I believe the pro's trading this market are using aggressive bets to profit on the incredible volatility. They are essentially making educated guesses on the tops/bottoms of the extreme market swings, but here is the key point: they are protecting capital with comprehensive use of Stop Loss/Stop Limit/Limit orders.

Look at this morning. I sensed the bottom at -4%, but I was handicapped by my fears about betting a six figure amount of money long.

Here's what I should have done.

When the markets stalled at -4% I did sense the bottom. My wife was standing next to me and I said to her, “We gotta go long. Look, here is another nice fool's rally forming. I'm going to get another hundred grand bet on this one.” I started walking to the PC to place that trade and I got nervous about the risk, so I only placed a 1.5% (of portfolio) bet with option calls on the S&P500. I should have immediately bought $100K of SSO (or QLD) to go 2X leveraged long the S&P500 (or NASDAQ).

Then I should have put a STOP LOSS just 1% under my buy price, and let the markets roam UP and UP (or stop me out if they fell)

That strategy would have SAFELY earned me over $18,000 in less than eight hours! (Indexes closed UP a full 9% off that morning low, and SSO is 2X leveraged)

I need to get smarter!

Now I did make some smart plays today. I bought oil stocks in the morning (that paid off by 7% to 10% by end-of-day). I also made a couple percent trading gold from 790 to 805, intraday. And I made money on buying the China fund early in the morning. And later in the day I did finally buy (just $10K) of SSO , but I got nervous again (didn't use a stop) and so I sold it for only a 2% gain in a day when I should have made much more on that play. Oh well.

The good news is that I have recovered ALL my losses (suffered in that horrible first week of October), and now I've even added to previous gains. That puts my portfolio up over 40% net for the last 12 months, and my wife's ROTH is now up about 45%. She's thrilled.

Check out AAPL April 09 45 puts at $3. Sell the put, worst case buy AAPL at 45?

Short-term, if I'm right about the rally, then a RISKY bet is that AAPL goes higher. Personally, I bought it at $91.5 on 10/08/2008 then dumped it at $100.

Apple's TRAILING P/E is about 20. Did you notice the world "trailing"! I wanna know AAPL's FORWARD P/E for the case of trying to sell NON-essential products like iPods IN A DEPRESSION, plus lets factor in Steve Jobs could die any day (which would be a horrible day for the World to lose such a visionary man.)

I say let AAPL stock shoot itself up to whatever it reaches when the S&P500 tops out this fool's rally at about 1100 or 1200 (optimistically). Then short AAPL.

I think you ARE correct that we'll see AAPL under $50 before the end of 2009.

My favorite play of the week?

I bought Goldman Sachs at $81.5 and sold it two days later for $123. I don't get the chance very often to outsmart Warren Buffet, who recently paid a much higher price for his GS!

It is fascinating to read about this stuff, do you guys have some suggestions for someone looking to get into investing? So far I'm just trying to work around the limitations of my 401(k) to try to keep some of the value, but I'm itching to get into trading stocks myself.

What's a good starter book, and what brokerage should I start with (heard some bad vibes about Etrade around the net but people seem to like TD Ameritrade)?

Six figure investments? I can only dream about getting to that point!

Opec is acutely aware that we are at peak oil and the will be damned if they sell their precious commodity for less than $100 a barrel, regardless of what Saudi Arabia says. Plus, some tar sands and deep well projects become uneconomical around 60ish. We could be at bottom, or close.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/na...

Oil prices dropped below $70 a barrel for the first time in 14 months Thursday, prompting the OPEC cartel to call for an emergency meeting...

Well, here we are on OPEX day and it's a total brawl in the market. Tight range, lots o volume. Still, it's up over 10% from the absolute mid day low it hit the other day. I'm still hoping for a rally to 10,200 or 1060 on the S&P.

OPEC always cheats. Russia is huring like crazy for cash. Chavez needs to keep volume up as well. Oil in the $70's could last a while. Especially since the US$ is gaining power.

Gold falling. Right on schedule. Markets cannot always be predicted, but often we can accurately predict their movement, just based on analysis of economic fundamentals.

Yesterday, saw this coming and sold 60% of my gold. I should have sold ALL my gold yesterday. Now today, I'm buying gold back....but not everything I sold yesterday...not yet.

And today, I'm seeing more evidence that stocks are building momentum for continued upward move in this new Fool's Rally I spotted yesterday.

Like I wrote yesterday, I believe THIS IS the strong, weeks-to-month long Fool's Rally we've all been looking for. This one's got staying power!

the will be damned if they sell their precious commodity for less than $100 a barrel

That's why I've been LOADING UP on oil stocks now for last couple days.

Also HOLDING those oil stocks. Buy on the rumor (cut in oil production), sell on (or ahead of) the fact.

Cracktrader on 10/16

"Today I'm buying more gold (increase position to 20%)"

on 10/17 Cracktrader:

"Yesterday, saw this coming and sold 60% of my gold. I should have sold ALL my gold yesterday. Now today, I'm buying gold back....but not everything I sold yesterday...not yet"

If you are giving advice for others by posting, I would stop. If you are just venting, keep it up, it keeps me in CD's.

LOL - cracktrader.....

I see typical signs of gambler's mentality, where there is a greater and greater desire to make the bigger score coupled with overconfidence. I hope you have rules in place such that a cap is set on the percentage of your worth that is put at risk. Good luck.

I've traded in/out of gold three times during the last ten days, and I made at least 2% each time, sometimes over 5% net on trades.

Yesterday, I made another 1.5% and dumped at the session highs.

Then no surprise (to me), gold drops like a rock today.

And you're giving me a hard time for not owning any! Ha!

Today, first time in weeks gold drops to 775, so I buy.

Get a clue. My trades on gold may look random, but they are not. They are making me $2K to $5K on each trade, because I typically make six-figure trades on GLD.

I do make mistakes but you people can't seem to spot the mistakes!

Example: I should have dumped ALL gold yesterday, not just 60%!

At Thursday Noon (NYC time) I tell you how to make money. I point out the start of the Fool's Rally AND I point it out to you only 2% up off its very bottom that morning.

Today we are up 9% from my time-stamped post telling you all to go long. All yah had to do is buy "SSO" or "QLD" and you're up 18% in two days!

Oh, except i told you to buy OIL STOCKS. Those are up waaaay more than 9% since yesterday morning.

Whaddya want? Haven't I made it easy enough for you to make money? You want me to drop gold bullion bars into your open hands! Give me a break!

Good news

:-)

You won't have to put up with my posts for ten whole days.

Tonight flying to HK, the later to Beijing, then later Stockholm.

Talk to you all in ten days.

Cracktradr. While I applaud your zealous activity in the market, trading 6 figures to make a couple grand is extremely risky in a market that's jumping around like this one. But I have to admit, it makes for great reading.

I enjoy reading both yours and FLUs post. Having the guts to post what you are trading for better or worse is cool. Your call on gold has been spot on compared to all of the other calls. I was tempted to go long yesterday in the morning and wimped out and am regretting it.

I enjoy reading both yours and FLUs post. Having the guts to post what you are trading for better or worse is cool

Guts, Ctrader is losing it, what kind of guts does it take if you have to ask your wife to go long!

Funny, I might run into you soon :) Taking care of business...

Fvck. I got called into a meeting, during which cvx went to 67. Now it's down back to 63. Damnit, damn expensive meeting...Oh well.

I don't try to predict the markets, I just try to play and come out right more times than wrong.

It's even dumber if someone like FLU goes into an options contract expiring January 2009.
Buy to Open 50.0000 GEWAT CALL GENERAL ELECTRIC CO$20 ADJ EXP 01/17/09 [Details] $2.21000

What's the likelihood of seeing a GE stock price above 22.21 by january?...Only time will tell. Warren B. better be right on this one :)

stockstradr:

If you don't humble yourself, the market will do it for you...

Making quick profits (or losses) in an extremely volatile markets is easy by definition. You appear to be euphoric and emotional in your trading which is something you definitely want to avoid.

You really need to define your risk, especially if your holding positions overnight. Trading 2x ETF's exposes you to even greater risk. I commend you for considering stop loss orders to define your risk, but if the rallies/fades becomes less directional, or you pick the wrong entry point, the extreme volatility will cause you to get stopped out for continual 1% losses, sometimes within minutes. Using options to define risk with the VXO & VIX at record levels may not be the best choice as the premiums as well as spreads are huge.

As for other posters reading these threads, ALWAYS use your own judgment before making a trade and weigh the risks thoroughly.

I'm out this morning. $66.9. We're back about 9000 (for now)

"I'm out this morning. $66.9. We're back about 9000 (for now)"

I am much more interested on how you lost over $400k in your wife's account.