coolhand's Account Talk

Sort by newest Sort by date
Two bullets make it difficult for sure. I've already used on IFT this month. Don't want to use it now and be firing blanks for the rest of the month.

Everyone seems to be on the cautious side. My gut tells me we are for a reversal very soon to the downside. Until I see more light at the end of the tunnel, I think I'm going to sit this one out for a bit.
 
Diesel said:
Two bullets make it difficult for sure. I've already used on IFT this month. Don't want to use it now and be firing blanks for the rest of the month.

Everyone seems to be on the cautious side. My gut tells me we are for a reversal very soon to the downside. Until I see more light at the end of the tunnel, I think I'm going to sit this one out for a bit.
Click to expand...

It can be very easy to get frustrated in a market like this. The fact is we are all playing a big poker game. The big money is looking for ways to exploit the herd. We need to keep in mind that the herd is not always dumb and/or smart money. There are a lot of players out there and they're all looking to do the same thing we're doing; maximize returns. This is why the market can turn on a dime. No one can always be right when trading. That's an impossible mindset. It will never happen. What's not impossible, is simply beating an average like the S&P. That is a reasonable goal.

You are correct Diesel. We cannot play this game as easily as da boyz. They can move in and out of the market intraday all month long. Right now disbelief is setting in and folks are feeling left out. That's when emotion takes over.
 
Okay, IYB has followed up with some thoughts regarding the Seven Sentinels. Here's his thoughts:

"Having thought about this all evening and having carefully considered this whole concept now for years, I conclude the following.....

It is my strong and considered opinion that the key to this whole "problem" is quite simple, and has to do simply with the definition of the proper set-up for a signal. That is to say that signals (such as the "buy" in October which was ignored) which do not have the proper set-up are to be disregarded, while signals that have the proper set up (like the November 26 bottom and the March 10 bottom signal and the Jan 9 sell signal) are to be taken. Some may recall that I had been saying in early January that we were in the final stages of that advance, and then that in late February and early March that the set-up (divergences et al) were then in place for an advance, and I awaited a SSBS to tell me that a change to IT up trend was in play. Then on March 10, I reported that the signal had occured, confirming the set-up and the start of the IT trend. You didn't hear me talking about a set up for a sell signal in late March--and this is no coincidence. There was none.

I believe that the March 30 "sell signal" did not have the proper set-up and should have been disregarded, keeping me continually on a buy signal since March 10. That buy signal would/will stay in effect until a proper set-up followed by a sell signal reverses it at some point in the future. Now obviously: That's very easy to say now, Hindsight is always 20/20.

The trick, or perhaps I should say, my challenge, is to define that set up in such a way that I would have disregarded the March 30 sell signal in real time. I happen to believe that that is very do-able-- just as the real time recognition of the lack of proper set up caused me to disregard the Oct "buy" signal and a number of others in the past-when conditions were not right for a trend change, as evidenced by internal factors which I like to call "momentum". I believe that I can and will write that definition for myself in a way that will work- because I believe that valid signals come from valid set-ups....set ups that evidence internal market preperation for a trend change. I believe that we did not have such a set up going into March 30. In fact that's why it surprised me as it did at the time. I should have seen that the proper set up was not in place. I believe I can and will make this distinction in the future. Not perfectly, of course. But I believe that the principals of what I call "market momentum" will produce a very high percentage of correct signals.

Just my thoughts, fwiw. I am throwing out the March 30 sell and regarding the IT up trend that began on March 10 as still solidly intact. Luckily the market trend for VST is down, so that I just might have a chance to get back from short to long a little more gracefully than if the VST were up as of today's close."
 
Even with today's bad jobs data the market starts negative but recovers. It seems that this market WANTS to go higher even with bad news. Am I looking at this incorrectly? Anyone see something in the near future that would make it drop significantly?

I went all in today with the intent of staying put through the dips in anticipation of the month ending higher than todays close. Comments?
 
akpackfan said:
Even with today's bad jobs data the market starts negative but recovers. It seems that this market WANTS to go higher even with bad news. Am I looking at this incorrectly? Anyone see something in the near future that would make it drop significantly?...Comments?
Click to expand...
It could be true that the market wants to go up, but I just checked and except for January, the market was actually up on every jobs report Friday since Nov. So, 5 of the last 6, and January was one they moved a week later because of the holiday - if that made any difference. Just an FYI.
 
I was 50% in till Tuesday when I did an IFT to all G based on the Seven Sentinels signal which has since been recinded. So I used one IFT for April to get out and now another already to get back in. Oh well.....

Based on a few articles and videos I saw today I'm pretty confident of a continued upside...
 
akpackfan said:
I was 50% in till Tuesday when I did an IFT to all G based on the Seven Sentinels signal which has since been recinded. So I used one IFT for April to get out and now another already to get back in. Oh well.....

Based on a few articles and videos I saw today I'm pretty confident of a continued upside...
Click to expand...

It's a shame we're limited as much as we are. Too often I miss moves in both direction simply because I don't have any trades.

I suspect we do have more upside left. I'm more neutral now than anything else. GL!
 
Cool - Ditto. I don't want to chase this rally when a turnaround may be coming in the short term, who knows when. So frustrating watching this from the sidelines, those restricted IFTs are killing me, missing half the rally. Here is my question, with mark to market accounting rule change going into effect, do you think that the banks (BAC, C, etc - report earnings 4/12 & 4/13) will be taking advantage of this rule with this earnings season in the short time they have? From what I understand, if they use the rule, they have to use it again when reporting next quarter earnings. I am trying to get my hands around how financials may do during earnings. If better than expected, we could extend the rally, so I may want to go in next week...This may be a stupid question, but the answer may be in the financial news out there...or maybe Lady knows.:cool:
 
4Runner said:
...Here is my question, with mark to market accounting rule change going into effect, do you think that the banks (BAC, C, etc - report earnings 4/12 & 4/13) will be taking advantage of this rule with this earnings season in the short time they have? From what I understand, if they use the rule, they have to use it again when reporting next quarter earnings. I am trying to get my hands around how financials may do during earnings. If better than expected, we could extend the rally, so I may want to go in next week...This may be a stupid question, but the answer may be in the financial news out there...or maybe Lady knows.:cool:
Click to expand...
Hi 4Runner, first of all, let me say right up front that my crystal ball is in the shop for repairs. So take all this for what it's worth, and that may be very little indeed.

That being said, I have to say that loosening mark-to-market was, IMHO, a huge step in getting this mess resolved. For those of you who haven't been following the story, mark-to-market is an accounting rule that was implemented just a few years ago. It means that an asset has to be valued on the books at the amount of money it would sell for in the market today.

Now you would think that was a good thing, and in a lot of situations it is. But it is actually adding to the financial mess. As banks started to go under and had to dump their assets, that caused all the surrounding assets to be worth firesale prices in today's market and that caused otherwise healthy banks to have to reprice their collateral assets at far less than they should be worth. That caused more banks to fail, and the spiral just continued. So banks quit lending any more money so that they had fewer collateral assets on their books and that made the mess even worse.

Long story short, my personal opinion of whether I think the easing of mark-to-market will help the banking situation is that I bought XLF, the Financials SPDR, on April 2. So I think financials are going up. For whatever that's worth.

Coolhand, thanks for hosting this discussion in your very comfortable home! :)

Lady
 
Last edited:
Lady,

As quoted " For those of you who haven't been following the story, mark-to-market is an accounting rule that was implemented just a few years ago. It means that an asset has to be valued on the books at the amount of money it would sell for in the market today."

Does this mean that banks and builders have to re-appraise the homes they have already built or mortgaged at a lower price than the appraisal/assessment made before the bubble burst? Tia.
 
airlift said:
Lady,

As quoted " For those of you who haven't been following the story, mark-to-market is an accounting rule that was implemented just a few years ago. It means that an asset has to be valued on the books at the amount of money it would sell for in the market today."

Does this mean that banks and builders have to re-appraise the homes they have already built or mortgaged at a lower price than the appraisal/assessment made before the bubble burst? Tia.
Click to expand...
Mark-to-market did mean that banks had to reappraise the homes they had already built or mortgaged, and reappraise them at a lower price than before the bubble burst. But it would not have made any difference to individual existing loans. No existing loans were affected in any way by mark-to-market. What it did affect was that the amount of cash that a bank has to have on hand is controlled by how strong its balance sheet is. If a banks assets are worth less than the mortgaged amount, then a bank has to be more liquid (have a greater percentage of cash on hand). If the worth of their mortgaged property kept going down, then the bank had to keep more cash and more cash on hand. So then an otherwise healthy bank would have to start selling assets. It was becoming a death-spiral.

Mark-to-market easing does not mean that there will be any reappraisals like most bank customers think of reappraisals, for example, someone coming out to individual homes and taking measurements and doing visual inspections. There are sophisticated computer programs out there that evaluate both commercial and residential neighborhoods using existing data and come up with the asset valuations. Mark-to-market won't make any difference to you for your existing loans. It will make a difference to people who are trying to get new loans, as credit begins to ease as a result of the change.

Did I just confuse everyone totally? Please let me know if I need to explain this better. :)

Lady
 
I'm waiting for the time when these toxic banks start writing up their assets - the stocks should fly. Look at BCS (Barclays) has already gone from $2.75 to $10.80 and more good times to go.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

tsptalk
  • Article Article
Are stocks ready to pause / pullback?
Replies
0
Views
144
tsptalk
tsptalk
tsptalk
  • Article Article
Stocks were mixed but worse than it looked
Replies
0
Views
125
tsptalk
tsptalk
tsptalk
  • Article Article
The top 10 stocks are doing all the work
Replies
1
Views
116
nasa1974
nasa1974
tsptalk
  • Article Article
TSP Talk - Late Friday rally hinting at reversal
Replies
0
Views
310
tsptalk
tsptalk
tsptalk
  • Article Article
Follow through for stocks as oil plummets
Replies
1
Views
167
TommyIV
TommyIV
Back
Top