Merry Xmas out there E.T. Does anybody have strong feelings one way or another on whether or not there will be a significant amount of tax related selling, short covering, or even window dressing, and what sectors se this the worst ? I'm placing stops in certain stocks in my portflolio that are tighter than others. I guess I'm wondering if certain tech stocks like Apple or Google and Oil / Oil Service stocks will be treated. I've never studied this but it seems like there are reasons (conflicting) to both keep gainers so you don't pay the gains and in the opposite direction, sell to lock in profits for positions that may be held in an IRA or where tax is not a big deal.
Don't ask me why, but my gut feeling is the market is going to drop big time...and right into January as well.
there appears to be a decent sized gap in the Nasdaq chart in early Sep. (11/03/05 to be exact). Any thoughts on whether or not this gets closed soon? i read a report that said that gaps of 2% or more get filled almost 95% of the time within 60 days. not sure of those are trading days or general days. Closing the Nov gap would bring us down quite a bit.
I'm still getting familiar with the style of this forum, and the case for the retracement back to November seems technically valid. I am trying to factor in some non technical issues. The runups in tech seem like they are technically exposed to retracement, and maybe the same could be said for oil. If the tide of the general market rises or sinks all ships, then I may be looking at some short and possibly medium term losses. If this is true, a retracement suggests tight stops on stocks that saw rapid runups. Absent any real catalyst or big news, it seems like potentially a low volume volatile week with plenty of artificial price moves. I was hoping for short covering rallys but I try to avoid trading on hope. I have small positions in highly run-up techs, and moderate positions in energy. My gut sez the tech will correct, and then energy will behave like the weather. Ideally, with tight stops in certain areas, I can avoid a few points worth of losses, and re-invest after I've seen a few points go by. Those points will most likely be the result of some unwarranted doom and gloom so shares can be be picked back up cheaply. Really want to see what the xmas season did to the consumer electronics. The iTunes music store card authentication was beyond overload this AM. That's sort of an indicator as well as lots of people wheeling out plasma TVs at the last minute yestarday. Some of these stocks will probably correct until the market fugures out how well certain things have actually gone. Buy on the dips ? That would make it the after xmas sale ! As far as energy goes, for anyone interested, I saw satellite photos of the earth at night 10, 5 and 1 year ago. The increase in bright lights all over the world was very obvious. I believe this will continue as we shift work to other countries, and their economies improve to the point where they can buy cars and wear their gold jewelry proudly. Merry Xmas (a day late)