Bad Auction Bonds

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Apparently there was a bad bond auction yesterday ... in any event, there was a beautiful "impulse bar" (an old Linda Raschke term) at 1 PM after which price zig-zagged creating a perfect set-up on the five minute.  Below are the TLT and TBT (the short fund) charts which are worth close study:

TLT 5 minute

TBT 5 minute

Trading idea for Thu. May 8, 2014 | Microsoft (MSFT)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

See quite a few longs out there for Thursday (incl. INTC and KLAC) but I will go with Mister Softee here.  Not great risk/reward if you're stopping below the bottom of that hammer, but clever day traders always find better stops than those working off of daily charts.

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Quick Look at SPXU

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Five minute SPXU chart here ... SPXU is an ultrashort (-3x) SPX ETF ... block those acronyms! Good liquidity, should be a decent daytrading vehicle. Anyway, when the market is going up, I like to look short the short funds. SPXU gave two spots yesterday, but working off the five minute is tricky because the stops are so tight.  If you shorted the 12:55 bar (spot 1) and put your stop above at 55.60, you would have been picked off. But if you put your initial stop above the 11:20 swing at, say, 56.05, you'd be risking more than you'd be expecting to make (at target 1), and that's a recipe for disaster. Never risk 50 cents to make 50 cents.

Jimmy DiResta Makes Bookends

Added on by C. Maoxian.

I love watching Jimmy DiResta make stuff. Here he is free-handing the bandsaw again.  Take note of the shape of the pinkie finger on his left hand.  It met the bandsaw up close one time.  

See the full post at Make: http://makezine.com/video/diresta-bookends/ Bookends are often too light to hold up a stack of heavy tomes. In this episode, Jimmy DiResta makes a simple yet elegantly crafted set of steel bookends, TIG welded in a whimsical shape yet heavy enough to securely store your library.

I first learned about Jimmy DiResta from his TV show "Dirty Money," which is still the best trash-to-cash show I've ever seen.  It ran only one season which proves that the TV gods are not just.

Twitter Trend Down Day

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Here's the three minute chart for Twitter ... I see one "obvious" spot to get short just after noon ... interested to know how day traders who were short this played it.  It was liquid enough to draw a very clean chart even down on the one minute, where a short spot appeared a bit earlier (at 11:35 or so).  Drop me a line if you made money shorting this one intraday.