Throttle Linkage

I stayed up too late working last night and watching the Oscars so I am a bit tired. A recap and then some links from today's reads are on tap.

Market Operations
Using the PPT and the screening tools provided there, I came across some good looking items last night and I figure why not take them for a run? I usually do not like to have more than 3 open positions at a time, but I liked all these stocks for various reasons.

In the trading account I have:
HSY
DAN
And last night I added:
COCO
BUD
MFB (yes the bra maker!)
AIXG
Full disclosure: I may be responsible for 10% of BUD sales!

I still hold a little OMEX from years ago as well.

It is the first day of the month tomorrow so that usually means a huge up day for stocks.

Throttle Linkage
Some reading material.

Got Nickels?
It was a double blast of nickel mania today!

Kid Dynamite explains some of the logistics behind an arbitrage play on the US nickel, which has monetary value of 5 cents, but a metal content value of 7 cents!:
If I Had a Nickel...

Over at Credit Bubble Stocks we are hit again with a bag of nickels:
Silverbugs, Why Don't You Buy Nickels Instead? (SLV)

Now any serious metal watcher has known about this relationship for a long time. Instead of looking at it through the lens of grabbing a ton of nickels, why not talk about how the debasement of money and the vast credit/debt bubble results is such a silly thing as a nickel being worth 7 cents. I will stick with pre-1965 dimes and quarters myself:

90% silver.

Hot New Venture Fund
Josh Brown was working all weekend so don't miss this great post:
Top 10 Names for JPMorgan’s Venture Fund
JP Morgan is starting a new venture fund aimed at hot new social media names. Perfect timing. Josh suggests some names for the new fund. Click over for the list but an instant classic was born:
Chasebook
That's funny I don't care who you are.

Advertising I May Actually Look At
One of my biggest issues with Facebook/Twitter/whatever is that I do not even see ads online because I block them out. I bet you do too. Here is a new way of advertising that may catch my interest though (via Geekologie):

Sure to get "eyeballs" but will it translate to sales? Sorry, could not help it!

Have a good night.

Overloaded

Just one of those days with too much going on. Quick hits.

Overloaded
My wife had a second interview for the kind of job she has been wanting for a long time. It went very well and I am so hopeful she gets this position. I know it's goofy, but if anyone wants to throw a little hope for my wife's prospects for the job this way, I would welcome them. It is a perfect fit and a real leg up.

It was super busy at real work today, so that added to it all.

Where to start?

Earnings Lotto
I held AMRC for earnings lotto today for two reasons. One, it is a very small position. Two, I wanted to play! I can say it was wild waiting for the wires to show the numbers then see market reaction. Well, both sucked. How a company has interest rate issues in a ZIRP world (anyone explain that one??) I have no idea but that thing gapped down 12% plus at the open. I had no stops set so I was like "well, it's not 20%!" and stopped looking at it. By days end, AMRC was down a whopping 4% and I am down 6% on the position. What a ride. I will hold for a dead cat bounce but I am done with AMRC. I missed this call (strange pattern I had seen that would either be very good or very bad) so I made a lotto bet. I lost. It happens.

Stellar Solars
I exited my two solar stock positions before lunch today:
JASO +9.2%
YGE +7.3%
These two were large positions and I am not playing earnings lotto with things in size. Thanks go to chessNwine for the scalped picks, nice call!

I am still holding COCO and PRSP, both up around 3.5% and watching.

What Else?
Did you all see that the Stardust program caught amazing pictures of another comet? So wild.

Ok, I am done.

Have a good night.

Quotable Wednesday

I am running way late tonight so just a few items I found today.

In Communist China, Data Not Needed to be Seen by You
I wrote the other night about China changing their basket of weightings for the CPI as food prices are making it run too hot. I read around and saw that many felt lowering the food component made sense, as China is a maturing as a society and thus food becomes a lower part of the basket. I get the logic, but seems to me like this could have been done 3 years ago, or three years from now. Why right this very minute when prices are rolling higher? Exactly.

Not one to learn from my own mistakes, I saw today that China will now scrap a national housing price index that is closely watched because, well they did not say but I think you can guess. As a society matures they use less housing and all after or something. In any case, here is Trader Mark's take:

As the world leaders, other countries look up to us. We have taught them well... the Chinese are getting very inconvenienced by the data coming out of their property index reports. Now let's be honest, just about anything coming out of China has to be taken with a dump truck worth of salt, unless you are a CNBC commentator. Or HFT computer which must react to data in 1/4000th of a second. So in no way am I implying this report was very accurate.... even with the best of intentions trying to measure a country so vast, with such variances in development would be difficult. But it was watched by both the masses of people (who apparently were getting frustrated with what they saw) and outside observers, considering the genesis of the Chinese economy is "property building".

Solution to a report where you don't like the answers?

No more report. That will teach the statisticians to put out data the central command does not like.

Epic.

Limited Attention Spans
Monopoly Live gets a special treatment by Kid Dynamite today. The new game uses, what else, automated game runner so you don't have to be too involved in the game. Nice. Here is Dynamite letting it rip:

Oy vey – indeed – because American ingenuity, financial awareness and reinforcing capitalism would be terrible things to teach our children these days. (Sarcasm alert again!) Monopoly Live is indeed perfect for our times – press a button and watch as things are done for you. You don’t even need to strain yourself rolling the dice. What will the kids do when they Mighty Tower runs out of batteries or malfunctions? Complain about it on Facebook I guess…

-KD (Angry Old Man – all of 34 years old)

I have been saying this sort of thing for a long time.

Be the Burger, not the Bun
Over at iBankCoin, The Fly has the leading "quote of the year" candidate going in my book. Here he is:

The only logical thing to do, when faced with such egregious forms of “non-inflation,” is to milk the farmer, ahead of the planting season. Farmers will be spending money like rappers this spring. Count on that. Just going off the back of a napkin here, I reckon the shares of AGU, MOS, DE, CF, TEX, CAT, BG, MON, ANDE, LNN, VMI, just to name a few, are going a lot higher. Ya’ll fuckers need to recognize this shit right here and stop thinking you are outside the bun. You stupid motherfuckers: you are the bun and Bernanke is hungry for some burger. All of you are simply afterthoughts in the big scheme of things.

WINNER!

Market News
I played some names on Monday, here is where I sit:
JASO +8%
YGE +7%
COCO +3.7%
PRSP +4%
I am looking to unload JASO and YGE ahead of earnings lotto on Friday. COCO is doing just ok. PRSP looks like it may run a bit.

I have decided to play earnings lotto with AMRC tomorrow! Wish me luck, but you know these things tend to end badly.

Have a good night.

Just a Bunch of Stuff

Happy Valentine's Day! My cunning plan for surprise flowers and chocolates delivered to the wife's work was foiled due to heavy order traffic! It will be delivered tomorrow but it's not the same thing. Oh well.

ETF's - Save the Drama for Your Mama
Who knew ETF's can be so exciting? A couple of stories from today.

Kid Dynamite notes that the Egyptian fund, EGPT, is going to have some problems squaring the fund when Egypt's market re-open (whenever that is):
EGPT – The Problem With Cash Creations: An ETF Lesson Part IV
very interesting and thus you should be aware how any ETF you are buying is structured so you know the risks.

Last week news was out that the leveraged 3X bearish inverse types of funds were closing up because nothing goes down anymore anyway. That makes sense as the product has no value in this market of forever ascending channels. What is strange is the double long agricultural fund as that one has been on fire (via Zero Hedge):
Deutsche Bank Suspends New Issuance Of Double Long Agricultural ETF DAG
Anyone want to take a stab on why this is going on? I have a conspiracy idea that food commodity speculation is about to become the next "end the shorts against the banks" target! Call me crazy, try it!

Bubbles Are Everywhere and No Where
Maybe Alan Greenspan was right, a bubble can only be identified after it has burst. Before then people will bend themselves into intellectual knots justifying price and valuation. It never changes.

As a metal lover (long physical gold and silver) I am always amazed at the fury of screams that the metals are a bubble. The stock market is always correctly priced, but metals are off the reservation. Ok.

The Golden truth pens a nice missive on metal hysteria and compares it to a new era favorite, NFLX. Below is the graph comparing gold and NFLX since the summer of 2009. I suggest you click on over for the commentary:

NFLX: up 450%
Gold: up 40%
I know, soon everyone in China and India will be streaming 50 videos a day through Netflix and they will make a quadrillion dollars. When? Not now, and not in 5 years. NFLX and social media are the next bubble, IMO. I know it's different this time and all that. I think I will call it the Easy Service bubble or the Time Waster App bubble.

More metals? Click on over to Jesse's site for some great commentary on my beloved Silver:
James Turk On Silver, and A Possible Twist of My Own
I keep meaning to stake out some trades in silver, but then I already am carrying heavy in that area.

Market Operations
Last night I left my list or review stocks but I never updated it! I was running late and I was trying to narrow down some buys. I came across plenty of good chart set ups and I was really working them. I ended up going with 4 buys, and I do not like to have that many positions open at once. The mix is conducive to making easy decisions so I am ok with it. My buys from last night (click for larger view):


Look what Ben Bernanke has done! EconomicDisconnect is buying solar stocks for crying out loud! It's the end of the world for sure!

I recently switched my entire trading account over to TD Ameritrade and I love the service. My orders got filled in the early am (pre-market?) and so I was able to catch most of the run today in the two solar stocks! My old Bank of America/Merrill brokerage would have put me in at the high of the day no doubt.

The solar stocks were not my idea but the great work by chessNwine in the 12631. Chess is maybe the most sound and patient trader I have ever come across and I totally followed his play in this space. I am targeting a nice move up in both stocks, maybe even 10% or more. As always we shall see and no one should take anything written here as advice in any way.

New buy recap:
Solars
JASO
YGE

I found a couple of other quick hit type of trades on my screens and these two are either going to rip or fall flat so trading them will be easy:
COCO
PRSP

I am leaning towards holding my AMRC stock into earnings and playing lotto! It's only money (and a small position) so I think I will let it gap down 30%, I mean see what happens on Thursday.

I am Sure it is a China Only Thing
Make fun of Zero Hedge all you want but the site calls things better than most.

Two posts show how funny the world has become:
China Lowers Weighting Of Surging Food Prices In CPI
Not like the US CPI is from fantasy land, we call it like it is, hee hee. The Zero offered this:

As a result of this pre-emptive manipulative action, expect to see a CPI lower than the 5.4% consensus when the number prints later tonight.

Well, it is later tonight:
China CPI Comes At 4.9%, Below Consensus Of 5.4%, In Line With Zero Hedge "Pervasive Data Manipulation" Expectations
Wow. Inflation erased by the magic of decision. Love it.

Have a good night.