The markets ended trading on Friday, 1/22, in a full-on panic in the last hour, as traders and investors alike ran for the exits in an attempt to preserve profits. Actually, the markets had topped out on the Monday preceding option expiration, i.e. on 01/11, as numerous stocks traded up making new highs on volume in excess of the mean, only to gap down on Tuesday, 1/12, in like volume. The writing now on the wall, the markets merely treaded water on Wednesday and Thursday, notwithstanding new intraday highs on Thursday. The innocuous trading of those days was the precursor to driving the market down 100 points and better intraday on Friday, 1/15, option expiration day (rather than the normal evening up of positions resulting in the standard insignificant closing move relative to the prior trading day), where market insiders and professional traders were on the buying end of in-the-money calls, taken from the investing public at the discount provided by the forced down day action.

Those options were then exercised; the stock delivered; and, that stock was fed right back into the market on Tuesday, the first day post-MLK holiday, when the INDU and SPX made their respective yearly closing highs of 10,725 and 1150 plus. Welcome to the world of market manipulation. So what else is new?

Where did we have these numbers pegged part and parcel to our bi-monthly stock indices (SPX, INDU, COMP, and RUT) forecast? On 12/19/09 we had forecast: INDU 10750-11000; SPX 1175-1250; COMP 2300-2400; and RUT 660. Are we ‘verklempt’ that the INDU and SPX didn’t exactly hit our targets? Not hardly; one holds out for the last dime, one enters the ‘pig’ category; and, is on the way to slaughter. Any sophisticated technical investor/trader would be using these numbers to move for the exits before the fact.

And where are these markets going from here? Subscribe now to our Technical Analysis & Mentoring, LLC bi-monthly market forecast where you will receive a detailed explanation of expected market direction and price levels for the INDU, SPX, COMP, and RUT indices.

WHAT ARE THE SERVICES WE PROVIDE:

We undertake “rigorous, comprehensive chart analysis…above and below the line.  We put in the work you don’t have the time to devote; or perhaps, the skill set to undertake.”

What does this mean? We look at all available historical technical data— all volume and price action for any particular NYSE or NASDAQ listed stock up through the present.  We funnel and distill that data in conjunction with the application various indicators below the price line that may be coincident to or divergent from a stock’s price action in order to make specific price projections, up or down.

What we don’t do is affirmatively promote or make any stock or option recommendations.  It is my experience that advice, freely given, is worth what you have paid for it—nothing.  And so you have people touting (selling) a stock on TV, disclosing they already have a position in it…which may be underwater…and ‘misery loves company;’ or alternatively, they want you to jump on board, which clearly benefits them, inasmuch as that collective, and aggregate buying pressure will move the stock price up.  You are not told when they are going to get out; and clearly weren’t told when they got in at the bottom, if in fact that was ever the case.  The whole process is fraught with a conflict of interest that is not remedied merely because the promoter, if you will, merely makes a mindless ‘disclosure.’

A.      SPECIFIC WRITTEN TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF YOUR STOCK POSITION OR DESIRED STOCK POSITION

On the other hand,  you may either have an existing position, long or short, in a particular stock; or, wish to take on a new position in a different stock. Technical Analysis & Mentoring, LLC (“TAM”) doesn’t want to know whether your existing position is long or short; or, whether you desire to go long or short in that ‘new’ different  company.   We propose to take a rigorous, cold, dispassionate review of all of the technical data and then articulate to you in a one page review what that data shows.  You then, on your own, now armed with our analysis, go forward, one way or the other.

And you may not have the time or even if you did, the skill set to undertake the kind of review TAM will do on your behalf.  Moreover, it has been our experience, once vested in a position, one tends to interpret the data, to the extent they are even looking at any,   most favorably to support the decision already previously made in the first instance.  That is the nature of the human condition—we, as investors or traders, don’t want to admit we are wrong; or, that we have made a mistake.  This is the beauty then of paying TAM, who has no vested interest, one way or the other, to undertake that exhaustive dispassionate review.  Our review will pay for itself in at least one of three ways: a) a better entry or exit point; b) preservation of profit; and/or c) a decision not to go into the stock in the first instance, thereby preserving your investing capital.

A word about fundamental analysis—we don’t do it, but, we don’t discount it either.  That type of analysis is reflected in the purchase decisions of the most savvy investors, who, one can assume, have the unlimited resources in the aggregate to employ the very best talent to crunch the numbers of any given publicly traded company, the raw data of which is now simultaneously made equally available to the investing public, before making their individual decisions to buy or sell a stock, and in unlimited amounts by definition as well, since smart money is big money.  Those investing decisions in the aggregate, leave ‘footprints in the sand’—it’s called volume.  So, all the more reason why the technical analysis approach, when undertaken properly, has validity; and, cannot be discounted.

B.  ONE ON ONE MENTORING

For those who wish to walk through the process, and learn to undertake this exhaustive technical approach on their own, TAM provides mentoring, one on one, through mutual pre-scheduled simultaneous computer and telephone conference calls.  While not inexpensive, ‘you will learn to fish, rather than just be fed a fish.’

C.  TAM’S BI-MONTHLY MARKET FORECAST

Subscribe to our Technical Analysis & Mentoring, LLC bi-monthly market forecast where you will receive a detailed explanation of expected market direction and price levels for the INDU, SPX, COMP, and RUT indices.