Credit Card ’s Talk

We place consider buys on stocks for several reasons. If the chip sector is moving higher and we see a chip maker approaching a near term resistance, that gets our blood moving! Why? Because if it gets through that resistance, it can squeeze a bit and really break out. But when the market is nervous, and whippy, too many times a stock crosses above the resistance, they get cold feet and down it comes. At that point you have to make a decision. do you hold it under where you paid or do you bail out? It’s not an easy choice.

Many are the times you will bail out and the darned thing will reverse back up and blast higher. Then again there are the times it will simply keep falling. Is there any way to truly know the difference? No, unfortunately, we don’t care what you have read about systems, volumes, technical indicators, voodoo, or aliens, the fact is no one knows the future. So, naturally the best plan is to sell out when a breakout comes back to where you bought it. Jump out with little or no loss and live to fight again.

Over the past few weeks we have entered and then had to bail out of so many stocks we have lost count. But this is the important part and you have to remember it: We are up big on the win/lose column. Yes it takes work, yes it’s a royal pain in the butt, but the fact is that active management saves the day. Look at DISH back in late October of 2001. Pull up the chart. See that messy line right around the $28 level? Well if you draw a line across 28 from the high of the day on October 28th (at 27.99) you see 28 is like a fairly staunch resistance. So, we had a consider buy on it if it got back over 28, give or take a few cents.

Sure enough it opened at 28.01, stumbled a bit and pushed up to 28.53. Great right? It sure was, we were in it at 28.10. but then sure enough it reversed and down it came. When it got to 28.12, we had to make a decision. Do we hold it under where we pain or do we sell it flat? We held for about 10 cents and dumped it. Swell right? A 10 cent loss, after being up 40 cents. But, here is the really important part folks, it closed the day at 27.53. Now, if it came back up, then we looked stupid. If it fell more we were heroes.

Well let me tell you something. We will generally take the flat or a 10 cent loss rather than holding under where we bought it hoping’ it comes back. Sure we could have sold it at 28.50, or 28.40 or 28.30, but we didn’t. Maybe we should have, the thing is quite often we have to settle for the dimes, but it’s not what we are after.

Unless the day is totally in the toilet, we try and buy into the stocks we put on the consider buy list. More times than not they work out for us, but not without a bit of work. Yes we have often had to do the DISH thing, watching a small gain disappear and then bail out flat. But then we catch the right one. That’s what we are after! Unfortunately, when the market is whippy, unless you can seriously daytrade, you have to be prepared to be nimble enough to bail out when the stock you bought is falling back to where you bought it.

There are times when we do hang onto the stock even though it has violated our entry price intra day. Why do we do it? Well maybe we still had really high hopes and thought it would rebound. Maybe we felt the only reason it pulled back was because the overall market got scared over a news item or such. Well, we went back through hundreds of trades over the years and did the math. On the ones we held onto even though they failed our original entry price, 61% went on to become winning plays. That isn’t bad at all. Would we encourage it? Not at all, we encourage you to bail. But that said, we only put out plays we feel have a real shot at moving higher, and the numbers back that up. Even though they failed the initial buy in price, 61% still became winners down the road.

Why didn’t we hold onto DISH? The day was poor at best, there were big earnings after hours that could have put the market in a bad mood if they were poor and we saw them picking away at GE, IBM etc. When the leaders are getting plucked, there is always the chance of a big sell off. We bailed flat and moved on. When you are looking at a stock that has pulled back to where you entered it, please take all things into consideration.

How is the overall market acting? Is there a bad headline floating around? Is the mid East erupting? Has gold or oil shot higher? Did someone just warn? When you have the answers to these questions, then you can make a better judgment about whether you want to hold onto a falling stock, or bail out. More times than not its still best to bail, but occasionally you may decide the stock is falling and its not the stocks fault.

Suppose you see a high volume breakout and everything looks great. The resistance line was 50 and you get in at 50.15 and soon its at 50.60. Then it starts fading. You notice the DOW was up 80 and now its up 40, 30 20. Something happened. Maybe a program trade, maybe a profits warning, maybe a fight in the mid East. In a situation like that, especially if the breakout came with volume, we’d tend to hang onto it even if it failed 50.15, but we wouldn’t let it fail 50, the original breakout line. Why? Because the stock didn’t do anything wrong, some outside influence drove the market lower and took our stock with it. We would hold it under our buy in price, but not the breakout price. If the short sellers see it couldn’t hold the breakout, they might step up their shorting and drive it lower.

No, we’d probably bail at 49.95 or so if we could. So, as you see, there is no cut and dry answer, and the situation will determine your best course of events. We hope that helps you make good decisions in the future!

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Fading the gap. Earnings runs. Moving average cross over’s. Support and resistance. I could go on an on about all the ?tools? a good ?trader? uses to make a trade. In one form or another we have employed each and every one of them, and for the most part, if done right, they work. But, there is one issue that will always make you shake your head in wonder. What?s that? ?Why didn?t I hold??

One time we watched EBAY get to 104 dollars a share. Well, we went long EBAY on 8/11/04 at 76.30. We held it for a pretty long time, and sold a portion on 9/2/04, at 89.53. We had picked up $13 a share, and yes indeed we were proud of ourselves. Yet, it went over 104. Suddenly selling it at 89.53, looked pretty silly didn?t it? Indeed.

One could easily ask ?why on earth did you sell it?? One could easily answer, ?did you ?know? it was going to go to 100?? Do you see the point? There are indeed investments that you are going to make from time to time, when you will take your profit, feel like a king, and then feel like a fool because the stock keeps going higher. But, we have a short memory in this country. This is the same type of thinking that saw tens of thousands of investors get crushed in 200 ? 2003. They all ?knew? their stocks were going higher. They held onto them. They are still licking their wounds.

There is NO answer to this problem folks. Cocky talking head fund managers wrote all sorts of catchy books about ?let your runners run, and cut your losers?. Peter Lynch had the good fortune of buying stocks during the biggest bull market in the history of the US, so he gets to act pompous and wave his hand in the air and say ?I just buy good companies and let them ride?. Well, lots of ?good companies? he bought in 99/2000 spent the next three years underwater.

How do you know when a runner is running? How often do you buy something, it gains 3, 4, 5, even 10 dollars a share, only to roll over and give it all back? Should one hold onto it as it loses another 7% from your entry as the ?gurus? tell you that the proper play is to cut losses at 7%, and let winners win?

My theory is that you really need two if not three separate piles of investment money. First off if you are lucky enough to have a company sponsored 401K, well then, good for you! But if you don?t you should have an IRA set up. Then, for your personal investing you really need to approach this with two mindsets. One is the day to day, week to week trades we make, but secondly, what about some ?buy and hold? type stuff?

I?m not a buy and hold sort of guy naturally, but the fact is we do put out story stocks that go on to make tremendous gains. Quite often we?ve suggested ?Buying a few shares and putting them away for a year to see what happens?. Many of those very suggestions, have gone on to be three or four ?baggers?. (tripled or quadrupled in price)

For short term swing trades, the thing that keeps us in the game is taking profits, setting some form of stops and moving in and out when the reasons line up. But that said, taking a longer view approach with a small pile of cash, on specific story stocks, can really reward you. No one knows the future, and hindsight is always 20/20. It?s easy to ask ?why didn?t I hold that?? But you really didn?t ?know? it was going to continue going higher. For that type of trade, find a story that?s compelling and take a SMALL position and put it away. If we?ve done our homework, we should see good results.

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Some time ago I commented on the ETF’s, stating that in the future they would carry a lot more weight than most would have thought. I think that’s come true enough. Back in 00 and 01, not a lot of people were playing with the ETF’s, but since then, several major institutions have begun using them for their hedging practices. Volumes, once anemic across the board, has recently exploded.

The reason is really pretty simple. althought he ETF doesn’t mirror the underlying basket perfectly because of carry costs, interest rates, etc, it’s darned close enough, so if you have a macro view of something, the ETF’s are often much easier to gauge than say a basket of four or five individual stocks. This is what leads me to this topic, the macro view. How many times have you been right about the direction of the market, yet the stocks you are holding fell in the day? Often I’d bet, it happens to all of us. But, with the ETF’s, if your macro view is correct, 99% of the time the ETF will trade in the similar direction.

Let’s suppose you feel that the chip sector is overdue for a pull back. A quick scan shows there are almost 50 stocks that could be considered chips. Are you to believe that you will be so adept that you will pick the ones that go down? Probably not. But, if you shorted the SMH, and the chip sector was weak overall, you’d be rewarded.

For short term moves, there isn’t a ton of profits to be gained from most ETF’s. An exception for example would be the BBH basket of biotechs. that thing often gains or loses 3 dollars in a day, making it a really fun trader. But that’s the exception really, as the DIA, or QQQ’s which track the DOW and NASDAQ respectively will often move just 50 cents to a buck, even on a big market day. For some, that’s more than adequate returns and I agree they shouldn’t be scoffed at. But I find the ETF’s to be much more useful as swing trading vehicles or even semi long term holds.

Please use the ETF’s for your macro views folks. It’s easier to spot the trend than it is to spot the individual winners every time. I plan on using the ETF’s for a lot of the shorting we will do when the wheels come off the market. The charges aren’t much different than individual stock selection, and it’s easier to trade them. That’s not to mention the fact that options are available on them, AND you can buy or sell intra day, something you cannot do in any form of typical fund.

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