Wednesday 6 June 2012

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Brent Crude in US$
After that massive drop and then a long weekend, for those of us in London, the market turned round rather sharply. I could have closed my US shorts yesterday but I didn't. I couldn't even kick myself because the market could have gone either way. Further falls are likely but safest to bank the profit and worry about further falls tomorrow. So I closed off the positions at the open and walked away. I expect tthe next step down will come soon. I suspect the sharp rise was partly short covering.

In the mean time my gold is moving on up. I shall have to start worrying about whether to take profits as it hits the resistance level.

I bought some oil this morning (in ETF form) and that is doing well. Today's main chart shows the reasoning behind that trade very clearly.

Monday 4 June 2012

Didn't we do well

Last Friday's call on the market was beautifully timed. I am not one for patting myself on the back, I could so easily have got it wrong but not on Friday. The fireworks I had been looking for shot up into the sky. Dreadful metaphore because what happened was that the markets broke their support levels made a dive. I had shorts in place and bought more as the markets in London and New York opened, even though a large part of the move had already taken place overnight. I made half my profit for the year so far on Friday so those predictive volume spikes are doing their stuff for me.

My portfolio is now 64% short ETFs 10% gold and 26% cash. My profit for the year so far (from April) is 6% while the market has fallen by 8.1% (my benchmark is the FTSE and I measure in £s). A modestly good start to the year and just what I need after my disasterous performance last year. I am going to have my work cut out if I am going make up for last year's catastrophe and earn my salary for this year. The main thing is that I did not lose my courage and was ready to move on.

Friday's performance was not just shorts, it was also that gold I bought a few weeks ago. That shot up on Friday too. To my mind this is a worrying sign, for gold normally weakens when the $ strengthens which it did on Friday (at least it did when you factor out the effect of terrible jobless numbers in the US that were published before the US markets opened). And it shot up as markets tumbled, a return to the old relationship which has been absent since last Autumn. To me this suggests that fear has really returned to the market. We must see how this develops over the next few weeks.

FTSE closed for a couple of days now to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee. Could cause a problem if I need to sell UK holdings.


Friday 1 June 2012

Big day today?

Those new support lines (I should say old support lines because they go back to February and April last year) have been working their socks off to hold the DOW up for 9 days now.  Then yesterday there was a spike in volume and an interesting candlestick shape. (I'm not too hot on candlestick shape analysis but it looked interesting with its long wicks and short body.) Main thing is that it was associated with a modest volume spike.

Result is I'm looking for fireworks today, could be up, could be down. I'm guessing down. At the moment the futures markets are showing a fall for the DOW but rises for the FTSE and the DAX. Only time will tell if I'm right. Luckily I'm not a nail biter.

In the mean time my gold is going well but mainly because of the rise in the value of the dollar