The magazine and news site Trader Daily reports that Societe Generale, France’s second-largest bank by market capitalization, reported a trading loss today of $7.1 billion dollars, topping last year’s stunning $6 billion loss in the energy markets by Amaranth. SocGen’s loss stemmed from potentially deceptive exotic derivatives positions and over-exposure to the sub-prime market. Also,…
It is very difficult to remember a day as surprising as the intraday price movement on the major US Stock market as January 23, 2008. What’s surprising is that an almost identical pattern occurred… 24 hours earlier! Let’s take a quick look at the S&P 500 index on the 5-minute chart for yet another perfect…
I wanted to highlight an article by guest columnist Adam Hewison, president of INO.com, an educational service that has been catering to traders for over 14 years. As a member of INO.com, I have benefited greatly from their educational seminars and archives and wanted to share a column from the president highlighting some of the…
For two days in a row now, we have seen massive gaps to the downside which have been filled rapidly to the upside, and the trauma of the morning has been erased almost instantly. Savvy traders who employ “gap fade” tactics have potentially profited immensely from recent developments, but that does not mean these outcomes…
Today’s action was incredibly bullish from the perspective of short-term sector rotation. How so? Typically, defensive sectors rise when larger traders expect falling market prices as a whole. Such examples would be the Consumer Staples, Health Care, and Utilities sectors. When larger traders show confidence in the market, they will aggressive purchase shares of companies…
Investors breathed a temporary sigh of relief because the markets closed down 1%, rather than the 4% that they had originally reached at the beginning of today’s market action. The intraday chart tells the story: Traders woke up to a 400 point drop in the Dow Jones index, only to see the market recover a…
While I suspected we would get an early morning bounce following the epic 400 point opening gap, I didn’t suspect the gap to fade as rapidly or violently as it did. History was indeed made – in the form of one of the most amazing intraday gap fades ever! The Federal Reserve surprised the market…
A tremendously precipitous situation awakes US stock traders on Tuesday morning. World markets deeply fear a potential US Recession and what it may mean for them. Traders who spent the day away from the market, and who do not check in to see overnight markets, will be in for an absolute shock when they open…
As requested, I am providing a sector breakdown of market returns to date. It’s not all horrible out there in the stock market; on the contrary, the Health Care sector appreciated almost 8% to date! Indeed, Health Care, Consumer Staples, and Utilities are known as ‘defensive’ sectors where traders/investors go to seek shelter on the…
When you take a signal, do you consider why you are taking that signal? When you exit, do you know why you do so? On the surface, you might say “I enter when I perceive prices moving a certain direction, and I want to flow in that direction†and “I exit when I feel the…