Happy Holidays

shortened trading week with a long weekend off. Friday was a chance to do last minute holiday-based chores and take the focus away from the year-end market activities. Big east coast storm cancels flights, postpones NFL game, and wreaks havoc on holiday travel plans.

Monday back at it for the final push of 2010. VIX has continued to slide into the mid teens as complacency overwhelms this market sentiment.

Best of everything to you and yours in 2011.

the final push

Poised to finish the year higher, the major indices are trading sideways gathering energy and buyers for the final push the last trading days of 2010. QE2 and the Fed's never-ending support of assets creates a fairly broad safety net for investors.

In other news, the tax code remains unchanged for 2011, oil still sits in the upper 80s and gold sits right at its 50 DMA.

DJIA 11,491.91 -7.34

NASDAQ 2,642.97 +5.66

SP500 1,243.91 +1.04

extended like a rap star's hair

extensions, the market is extended like a bad hair day...ready for a breather and maybe even....dare I say... a pullback???? The major indices are getting fairly elevated from the 50 DMA, whenever that happens, the market tend to trade sideways, thus coming closer to an ever rising MA line, or they retreat to get back to said line in a much quicker fashion. The INDU, COMPX and SPX are all fairly elevated away from their moving averages. Thus, positioning for a rise in volatility and a softening of the some of the weaker stocks that are currently in downtrends.

Meanwhile, the topics of tax cuts and healthcare rage on the hill and oil is making a tank of gas a pretty hefty outlay of cash. Gold keeps climbing as everyone sees a devaluation of the dollar and wants to own something instrinsic that actually is worth something.

mid-week update (again)

Most stocks sold off in the last hour, pushing the DJIA negative while the other indices barely remained in the positive.

The universe of tradeable stocks has been refined/defined. It boils down to approximately 30-35 stocks that have the following general characteristics:

1. daily minimum volume of 1M shares on an average day, most stocks in this universe trade in the 3M-20M share/day range
2. priced in the low $30's at a minimum to the multi hundred $/share price range (see goog and isrg and nflx for high $$ examples)
3. they move, they have high betas, they are more volatile than normal stocks and when they move they can move big, multi points moves in a trading session are not uncommon.
4. most are very popular names that are followed by traders/investors/the financial community & the media alike
5. they represent the best-of-breed in many different sectors, meaning they are well known outside of their stock symbols and are universally known for their products, companies, management teams, stories, etc.

Of course there are always exceptions to these general rules as some stocks not on this list will catch fire and move (either up or down) due to some event or catalyst. Those particular stocks are always up for consideration if there is an increase in volume and the stock is moving.

DJIA 11,359.16 -3.03

NASDAQ 2,598.49 +3.57

SP500 1,223.75 +0.63