The Market is clearly moving against me. My stop-loss orders have been triggered for SKF, SDS and Xact Bear yesterday or today. I lost some, but not too much. I still think this is a premature rally and that the fundamentals just isn’t there yet, but there’s no arguing with the Market, since only price pays. I’m mostly in cash right now, trying to figure out the direction of the markets for the rest of the week. The OMX Exchange closes midday tomorrow and is closed on Thursday, so I probably will not enter anymore positions at the OMX. The American markets are open as regular and I am tempted to ride this upwards push for the week, perhaps with Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X (FAS) because of the huge leverage (of course this is risky). But I will for sure get out before the weekend in that case.
On a note of some trades that actually gone my way yesterday and today is PA Resources. I have, for quite some months, had a huge exposure in their convertible KV1 (which I sold of 75% of last week only to buy back at a lower price yesterday). Yesterday the company was mentioned very favorably in the Swedish stock-picking magazine Börsveckan. The stock jumped some 8% yesterday and is up 8% today also. The Convertible is not far behind, but still the favorable lag in its price is a bankable reality. For traders the stock is preferred because of the larger movements in price, but the convertible is far better for long-time investments (the last date to convert is september 2013).
So, last week was negative (positive for us who where short…) on basically all exchanges over the world, with the American markets in the lead. The US financial sector is severely overbought, and I was anticipating a correction to take place. The downturn last week was only a fraction of the needed adjustment thou, and I am expecting the financial sector to lead the way downwards this week as well. I am therefore keeping my SKF and SDS positions and will probably take up some FAZ sometime over the week also.
In the Swedish market I now almost solemnly hold XACT Bear ( a 1.5X inverse ETF based on the OMXS30), lets hope the OMX follows the general trend down…
The USD has strengthened a little against the SEK, according to my predictions, and I think it will keep this trend (as long as the markets fall investors will inadvertently buy more dollars).
Tyler Durden has written an interesting piece on the future valuation of the greenback over the weekend. It is sufficient to say that this dollar squeeze has been a reality for quite some years, and It will be in effect again when the markets stabilize after the next low (I don’t believe that the low in march was the end of the crisis, there will be no V-shaped recovery, but more likely a W-shaped).
http://seekingalpha.com/article/138085-dollar-euro-short-squeeze-race
Personally I’ve gotten more interested in the FOREX market over the weekend after a friend gave me a link to some very interesting automated trading possibilities. After spending several hours reading about the market and trade in general and trading platforms and technical aspects in specific I am very excited about these possibilities. Expect me to start writing about these investment opportunities as soon as I’ve taken some of the first steps. Just to clarify I don’t think that the FOREX market is the holy grail to investments, I see it as a way to further diversify a portfolio, and probably will allocate no more that 5% of my portfolio to this market.
Read up on the basics of the FOREX market at: http://www.babypips.com/school/
Since I’m in short positions all over the board today’s markets is a bit worrisome. The OMXS30 closed up 1.21% after trending around opening price most of the day. The move upwards came when the NYSE/NASDAQ opened and started trading with small movement (now they’re both up at about 1%). I took a large position in XACT Bear early in the morning that I decided to have over night. I’ve put quite tight stop-loss orders in place at 4% down.
The US Financial sector is recovering today, I am sorry to say. My position in SKF is taking some damages, but I will stick with it for the time being. The Short term trend is still down. SDS is doing better for now and I am definitely staying for the week. I’m putting a stop-loss at 10% on both SKF and SDS. Early in the trading today I sold of the FAZ I bought yesterday at a small loss of 1%. The 3X is just to agressive to have when the markets are going the other way (even if it’s just for the day).
Since I’m travelling from Bremen, Germany to my home in Skövde, Sweden tomorrow I am a little bit worried about my positions, but I am trying to convince myself that the stop-loss’es will save me some of it if the upwards movement continues.
