WEEKEND EDITION - 3.13.10 March Madness Time

It's that time again... MARCH MADNESS! If you live on another planet, I'm referring to the NCAA Basketball Tournament...  Round 1 of the Tournament begins next Thursday (with a "play in" game being held the day before)... This Tournament (after the Super Bowl) is probably one of the most hyped sporting events in America each year... One of the favorite pastimes of Americans is to become involved in filling out the BRACKETS for the teams advancing through the rounds based on their Tournament seeds (much like tennis)... There are countless "office pools" and parlor games devoted to this...


Survivor Capital is no different... CV has set up, on YAHOO SPORTS, an NCAA Tournament Bracket selection group (which is free to play)... This is simply for "bragging rights"... Who, this year, will be top dog in picking the right teams to move towards to the National Championship... I'll be adding to this thread as the weekend goes by, but if you're interested in participating, follow the link to get yourself signed up... First, go to http://sports.yahoo.com/

Many already know these steps, but I'll walk you thru the pages.

At this point, you may have to set up a YAHOO MAIL ID (which is profile for all FANTASY games).

GROUP ID# 26140

PASSWORD: p3isamyth

"Selection Sunday" (where the final brackets and Tournament schedule will be determined, is tomorrow)... After that, you'll have until Wednesday to fill out your picks at the YAHOO FANTASY SPORTS site that I gave you...


If you're "new" to this, I'll provide you with a "starter kit" of ideas on how to go about selecting your teams... This also may be beneficial to those of you who are involved in your local office brackets, or those among friends...


CV's 10 rules (in selecting teams to advance):



1. Avoid the FROSH (Point Guards): Even a very talented player will run into trouble sooner or later at this level of play. Point Guards are squad commanders, go with EXPERIENCE.

2. Heroes mean ZEROES: Teams that battled through a tough Conference Tourney schedule are too exhausted to go deep in the NCAA's

3. Coaches that lack the MOJO: Some coaches always make a quick exit from the NCAA Tournament. They can't seem to handle the March Madness pressure & their teams never do better than their potential. Examples in recent years include: Jamie Dixon (Pittsburgh), Bob Huggins (West Virginia), Mark Few (Gonzaga) and Al Skinner (Boston College).

4. Road "Worriers": If you can't win on the road during the regular season, you have hardly a chance to make it through the NCAA Tournament.

5. Crop the Slop: Sloppy teams, those that have trouble scoring are always among the first to lose in the NCAA Tournament.

6. Beware the One Eyed Monster: Teams that have only one great player never go deep into the NCAA Tournament.

7. Dr. Chokenstein: Certain players choke every year. (same idea as "choking" coaches).

8. Automatic Outs for 16s and 15s: Don't even think about advancing a 16 or a 15 seed into the second round of your bracket. EVER!

9. Who let the Dogs IN?: Dog conferences lead to dog performances by the teams from that conference.

10. You've got the "Look": Seventeen of the past 18 teams that have won the NCAA Tournament have shared these traits:

- Had a head coach who was with the team the year before.
- Scored 76 points per game.
- Out-scored their opponents by an average of at least 10 points.
- Had been seeded 1-4.
- Participated in the NCAA Tournament the year before.

Morning Audibles 3.12.10 - Jumping the Shark

SPX is about to Jump the Shark (1150), Right? All I can say is "Heyyyyyyyyyy....that's cool"!

Moments like this send traders straight back to the drawing board... It's a time that you really must evaluate your fundamental strategy... Is your overall outlook basically BULLISH, or BEARISH? If you're on the "wrong side" of the shark, you're bound to look temporarily foolish, but the REAL question is, "Can you endure?", and "How much pain will enduring cost you in the process?"... People on the other side of the shark will start playing mind games with you... I'm sure by tomorrow, or next week, you're going to be hearing all about the Fed, liquidity, recovery, jobs, stocks GUF, DOW 36,000...

Oh that reminds me... The DOW... Even if the SPX crosses 1150, there's still a little matter of the DOW breaking to new highs... It seems to be lagging behind a little here... EW actually 'prefers' to use the DJIA as its metric... I thought I'd take a look at the DJIA over the past dozen or so years to get a 'feel' for this... Here's what I came up with...

The chart is not fully annotated (but sometimes pictures are better than words)... What I see is a trendline which goes all the way back to the 2000 highs... (Note that in 2000, the DOW made it's high in January, while the S&P made its high in March - The monthly "closing high" in the DOW was from December '99, as was the December closing high in '09 slightly higher than January)... There were other curious little things... Notice the pattern of the AVERAGE TRUE RANGE... Basically, in the 90's, the LEVEL line of when people started to 'get nervous' with stocks was during the LTCM crisis in 1998... There was a period of 34 months where this nervousness remained elevated extending all the way through the 2000, but then also through an almost successful backtest of those highs... Of course when the index failed to break through when REALITY final sunk in that the debacle WASN'T OVER, stocks plunged, and didn't recover until 5 months AFTER the eventual 2002 lows were reached, then re-tested in 2003... Once can see we are approaching the same types of timescales (and levels) as we speak...

I'm not making the case that stocks will plunge here... In fact, if you use the "months" indicator as a key, you may want to think of 34 months (which is a FIBO number)... If that's the case, where is your starting point? Is it October '07 (the market TOP)? Is it August '07 (the "Cramer Rant" - when the Fed started getting nervous and cutting rates)?... I don't know... Anyway, the point I'm making is that even if we break a little higher here, based on evidence, I don't feel that a lot of MASSIVE FOLLOW-THRU may ensue... In fact, we may just "churn" here... There are, in fact, some gaps to fill on the downside (SPX wise)... 1132, 1122, 1116, even 1076... The LONGER TERM trendlines (and candles), seem to suggest that this line in the sand isn't something that we just visit, dismiss, and go melting up or down from there... In fact, it's just the opposite... It seems MORE to suggest that we may stay exactly HERE  (I'll say within a 75 point SPX range) for a bit longer...

Meanwhile, I'll put up another chart that I harvested yesterday... If the US Government & the Fed think they have this problem licked by printing money, perhaps they can use this time to THINK AGAIN...

To me, that chart is a tell tale sign that the current rally (from the March '09 lows), will eventually go the way of this rally...

KABOOM!

Morning Audibles 3.11.10 - The Blue Horseshoe Loves...

It's getting truly ridiculous out there. No real volume out there to call the market up, so they've taken to buying the likes of the single digit midgets C, FRE, FNM, & AIG (which are all basically insolvent) to give the appearance of synthetic volume...


And then you run across stocks like this...

Maidenform effin' BRAS!... How did I NOT KNOW to get IN on that one. 21 straight days (and the bra strap isn't broken yet)... Maybe it has something to do with the KTZ... Or this one...

F***ing BON TON Stores!

"The BLUE HORSESHOE loves 'The Bon Ton', put all your BEST clients in it"

"I don't know where you get your information Bud but I don't like it"

Maybe something will change soon... Maybe, I'll just wake up one morning and there actually be some kind "Change I Can Believe In"... Until that time, well, I'm not ready to grow any "man boobs" just yet, so I doubt I'll be needing one of these... yet...

Morning Audibles 3.10.10 - What the hell is a FIB?

FIB? What's a FIB? Here... I'll let "Urban Dictionary" help me out...


FIB
- Fucking Illinois Bastards or occasionally, Fucking Illinois Bitches. Shortened to the acronym "FIB."


FIB
- Annoying individual from Metro Chicago who thinks they're the salt of the earth and everyone who lives in a city of less than 100,000 should bow down and thank them for their presence.


- Dumb individual from Metro Chicago who would pay fortune for something that is actually worth a quarter of what they actually paid.


FIB
- Fill In Boyfriend. When a bf isn't good enough or cannot satisfy his woman in one way or another (bad listener, worse lover) and another man finds himself in the bizarre position of fulfilling all her non-sexual needs.


FIB
- to tell a lie; to be false. To lie right through your fucking teeth.


FIB
- Famous Imaginary Boyfriend. A person of note or celebrity, easily identifiable by others, whom you claim to fancy. An indication of taste and type.


- The female version is FIG, Famous Imaginary Girlfriend.


FIB
Verb – to fib. To be harmonically proportionate in face or body features. Fib could also stand for rapid, exponential growth.




-Fib is short for Fibonacci Series, a series of numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34,....) that show constantly in nature and appear to underlie all processes of organic growth. 


FIB
acronym - Fun In Bed, specifically regarding hot chicks.


You people choose what you wish, but I'll take the RED definition (followed closely by the final definition)...


OK... Here's the MAN OF THE HOUR...

No wait... If I'm true to the last definition... Here's the MAN OF THE HOUR...

All I'm trying to say is this... The dude knows how to party and throw out some serious numbers... The following charts illustrate this...

FIB "Arc" & Gann Angle WEEKLY looks from 1576-666-now

(Note: Sorry, That's meant to say "233" TRADING HOURS since 1150.45 high... CV is, I guess, "high")

(These ranges illustrate the divides between todays move [that occurred PRECISELY at today's 14:30 top - the 233 time sequence number] to various OTHER levels which involve either FIB levels and/or TIMES)

I suppose it depends on where one goes, or who one seeks for synthesis on matters... To some, today might have appeared uninteresting or underwhelming as the case may be... But for now, CV, otoh, takes a look at the FIB of things and says "Hey Bud... Let's party!"

Morning Audibles 3.9.10

I was going to put up a "red carpet" foto of Demi Moore in her Versace Oscars dress (if the futures were pointing positive), but since ANOTHER Italian, (Fibonacci), has intervened, I think I'll go with him...


Today is:


- 1 year since the March 6/9 lows from last year
- "21" days since the 1040 low point that the market has rallied from
- "34" days since 1150 in January
- "233" trading hours since the same level was reached


I had to laugh, because CNBC came out with this comment: 

"The bull market turns one on Tuesday having surged almost 70 percent from its 12-year closing low on March 9, 2009.  History shows that by simply passing that 12-month threshold, it will make it that much more rare for the advance to suddenly end." - CNBC

So there you have it... "History shows it"... Remember, TO THEM, a month ago they applied the same rationale to the "Super Bowl Indicator" (which has a 83% correlation), and before that to the "January Effect" (both of which actually ended up pointing to a DOWN MARKET), but in their world, if something doesn't make a BULL case, then it's on to the next "Historical Index".

I'm going to add to this topic thread as the day progresses... Myself, and Amen Ra, if you remember, had been debating about the "time expiry" of what I've mentioned above last week... We eventually settled on the 14:30 (thereabouts) this afternoon timeframe (due to 30 min. candles getting credited for 60 min. candles at the end of days & two holidays)... In the end, if this day turns out to be just as uneventful as yesterday, well then I might just have to get to talking about OTHER THINGS... At this point "March Madness" couldn't come soon enough because "March Dullness" is too difficult to BEAR (pun intended). 


Oh what the hell too... Here's Demi Moore

 Get your minds off of trying to picture karen in Demi's dress and look at this chart...

SPX - I suppose this trajectory looks natural to some...

Morning Audibles 3.8.10 - If you see the flash...

I'm not going to waste a lot of words this morning. Everybody knows the story, SPXGUF. Asia, Europe, & futures all "green" (on Monday, what's this? 24 out of the last 27 weeks)?


So bears, if you see that flash, just "DUCK & COVER"... That ought to save you from all that radioactive "fallout"... Hey, while you're at it, you could probably buy some JC Penney stock... I saw their commercials run about a dozen times on the Oscars telecast last night...


No charts here, (at least yet), because everyone should know where we're at after Friday... The market will try and set it's sights squarely on the January 1150 high... There is another small "gap" between 1148 and 1150... But there are also MANY gaps below... Daneric had a good article over the weekend on the significance of ALGO trading and what those gaps mean...


Buckle up... This week Mr. Market (and the idea that all our problems can be saved by pretending that the little stock certificates we hold are the solution to every economic problem in the world)... Is going to meet Mr. 10 & 30 year bond auction, and the idea that the 44th President of the US can put our country (and your grandchildren 20 trillion in the hole by the end of the decade)...


But don't worry, even if he does, when it comes time to deal with the fallout (pun intended), you'll know what to do! "Duck & Cover"... 


Oscars are over, so now I return you to your regularly scheduled program of buying stocks...