Here is an email exchange I had with my step father. Note: my mother works as a Bed Bath and Beyond store manager.
Original email back in November:
BBBY is down to 29.5 your thoughts?
-Kevin (11/26/2007)
And then my response:
Question: are we in a bull market or bear market? What if there was a third option? In Active Value Investing, Vitaliy Katsenelson makes a case that the current market is actual a "range-bound market" and then gives you the tools to take full advantage of the fact.
What is a Range Bound Market?
Range-bound markets are characterized by their roller-coaster-like volatility and the fact that despite this volatility, money invested in the beginning of the cycle will have close to 0% gains by the end of the cycle. In fact, range-bound markets are more common than bear markets. Katsenelson says:
"…if you look at the U.S. stock market during the entire twentieth century, most of the prolonged (greater than five years) markets were actually bull or range-bound markets. Prolonged bear (declining) markets happened in the past only when high market valuation was coupled with significant economic deterioration, similar to what was going on in Japan from the late 1980s through 2003 or so."
This chart from the book shows the past 107 years bull, bear, and range-bound markets as labeled by Kevin A. Turtle.
Hey everyone,
We are seeing a nice bounce in the markets this morning. The S&P500 is at 1485 as I write this(!!!). If you look at the 5 day chart, you will see this could take us back to part way through the crash we saw last week. The market is saved!
To me, this feels like a dead cat bounce - one formed by a pump in liquidity and a jump in premarket futures.
Maybe it’s all the green on the screen so far… but already after looking through things a bit more, I a am less bleak than I was earlier. I had commented on Philip John’s last post that after yesterday’s sell-off, I was ready to sell into today’s bounce to move to about 75% cash from 10% cash.
I’ve decided to make no move today. Today is likely to be a nice up-recovery day. I need some time to think things through before selling long-term mutual fund and index positions. And I’m likely to do more damage selling early today than holding too long. Tomorrow would be a different story. We’ll see.
Part of my motivation to sell off so much is that I’m on vacation right now and would like to not have to worry about the market during this volatile time. (Day-traders are on to something with their owning no positions after hours.)
I’m also being very loss averse as after selling my GRMN at $81 (which it has bounced back above after a few shaking trading sessions) I’ve gone ahead an lost about $150 so far on two investments in Amgen (AMGN) and Bed Bath and Beyond (BBBY). I had had those stocks on my list as good value-TA plays that were counter-cyclical to GRMN.
Some New Positions - What am I getting Into To?
AMGN still looks good…
Just a quick note to say I think the market has had its major top.
I am going to wait for a pullback tomorrow (Wednesday 25th July) and have an open order to go short SDS at $51. Hopefully this will get filled in the next day or two.
I’m writing this one directly into the blog, and with any hope it will go up before market open today. Let’s what we have on dee plate.
AMGN
Notes from late last week: “Stoch sell. MACD still strong. I think this guy is recharging.”
I’ve since changed my theory from “recharging” to “dropping”. It’s looking bleak for this guy short term. 30DMA is providing resistance and Stoch and MACD are signaling sell. Lots and lots of support at $52. And although it’s well below my MOS of $65, I sold my 60 share stake last Friday at $55.62. There’s a lesson there on trusting your instincts while selling, as I could have sold it at $60 and kept $22 more, but that’s another story.
I have a bit of sellers remorse though. This really was a value play. I sold it in my trading acount, which means full tax on the $5 I made, not to mention E*Trade’s high fees. And I’m reminded of a bad sell I made on YHOO last summer where I avoided a $1 loss that was coming, but then missed the $6 run up. That could be happening here.
In any case, I thought it would be good to have some cash on hand going into this little bear run so I dropped this one too. Though my gut tells me I should possibly be selling this next stock to lock in some real profit.
GRMN (I own 75 shares)
Notes from late last week: “Can anything stop these guys? My higher sticker price was around $75, so I’m looking for any reason to sell. I want to let it run, but I’ve “made my year” on this one stock already. I’d like to ensure that I don’t give it all back. Need to figure out a good stop placement: $69.90?”
I’m glad I didn’t set that stop because I would have been stopped out and the stock has gone up since. But I haven’t made nothing until I sell right? But then what am I going to do after I sell? Put it back into GRMN? I need a better alternative, and I’m just going to watch this carefully for a more pessimistic sign. The thing is flying high right now.
AMD
Looking strong here. MACD and Stoch have thrown buys. The price is above the 30DMA, but I’d like to see a full bar there. I have some cash on hand, maybe this is where it should go. Seems like the news about AMD outsourcing fabrication went over well. Was it enough to turn the stock around? I’d be looking for the stock to reclaim the 200DMA at around $17.50, but there’s a lot of resistance on the way up. Plenty of support at $13.
ERTS
I second guessed myself, when ERTS went above my selling price of $49 last week. But it seems that was on the back of a stronger market, and the price is south again. This is a troubled stock (at least short term) that I don’t need the headache for. The 30DMA seems to be giving a lot of resistance. This one is going on the back burner until I gain my confidence back in EA. Technically, I’d like to see a full bar above the 30DMA and the 10DMA cross above the 50DMA before jumping back in.
EBAY
30DMA is showing resistance, but this stock is also in a nice little up channel. A break of the 30DMA could be very bullish. Look for more resistance at $34, support at $31.40. I think could see a large run here like we had with Amazon earlier. eBay is another tech business that Wall Street (and Main Street) doesn’t understand. Why did they buy Skype? Why did they buy this or that? What are they doing? Is the toning down of Google advertising going to hurt them or a good sign of their strength? I might buy some of this now and hope they can break $35 this time. Going to do some MOS calculations to check my risk here. Read here for Phil Town’s eBay analysis from last year (when the stock was at about the same price). My numbers are a bit more conservative, but they are still saying buy buy buy.
Current Earnings: $1.05
EPS Growth: 22%
Average PE: 44
EPS in 10 Years: $7.67
Future Value: $337.47
Sticker Price: $84.37
MOS 50%: $42.18
I’m going to be looking to buy this fella today. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.
QQQQ (I own 90 shares)
Staying the course. One of the major indexes above its 30DMA. I think we see a bounce here or after one more bad day. Holding this to keep pace with market.
ACN
My notes from late last week: “3 Buys. Looking good. $40.45 entry o short-term pullback. Need to do a MOS calculation.” And the stock is doing great. Still need to do that MOS, so here it is:
Current Earnings: $1.61
EPS Growth: 17%
Average PE: 20
EPS in 10 Years: $7.74
Future Value: $154.78
Sticker Price: $38.69
MOS 50%: $19.35
ACN is a great company and great stock, but it’s trading at around or just a little above sticker price (according to my off-the-cuff here). So I can’t invest now. My Average PE is a little low, so I might look into it more to double check. A PE of 34 (twice my EPS growth estimate, but higher than the historical average) gives us a sticker price of $65.78… which would be more room to grow.
Tuesday, Jun. 26, 2007
by Jason
I was reading a blog entry on CPPTrader that was referencing an article from Bloomberg. I am a newbie with respect to trading, but with respect to AI I have been a few times around the block. It was something that I studied in University and have had an attraction to for a long time. I guess I am lazy and would love to write a program that “thinks” for me. As a sidenote I am using AI in my algorithmic trading software, but in a different context.
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Wednesday, May. 16, 2007
by Christian
Colin brought up the following point:
Christian, it is extremely interesting to read your thoughts on neural nets. I’ve been looking at Neural Nets in a piece of software called Merchant of Venice - http://mov.sourceforge.net/ . Beyond that, what’s interesting is that as humans, we can look at current day situations and have an innate sense that history is repeating itself, yet there are these outlying situations that break those rules - like Amazon’s recent performance.
How to put that “sense” into code and avoid getting burned by the outliers is the real rub
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Tuesday, May. 8, 2007
by Christian
Tom gave a reply that I think deserves more attention. Tom made the following comment to one of my blog entries.
One more thing, if the market is random per the stochastic process and you can’t find patterns in a market where patterns don’t exist, then why do we have trends? A trend is a pattern in my opinion.
If you look at the definition of stochastic process at wikipedia it does not say random as in completely random walk. What the definition is saying is that at each and every point multiple realities can occur.
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Tuesday, May. 8, 2007
by Christian
