[2007.12.13 09:12:29] MauiTrader: OMG you know why you cut your losses?
[2007.12.13 09:12:33] MauiTrader: ASYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[2007.12.13 09:12:36] MauiTrader: the mistake i made
[2007.12.13 09:12:40] MauiTrader: had i NOT fixed it immediately
[2007.12.13 09:12:44] MauiTrader: would have cost me everything
[2007.12.13 09:12:51] MauiTrader: i would be on 4 to 1 margin broke!!!!
[2007.12.13 09:13:01] MauiTrader: or even 21 to 1 would have been badly hurt
[2007.12.13 09:13:06] MauiTrader: wow
[2007.12.13 09:13:08] MauiTrader: amazing
[2007.12.13 09:13:18] MauiTrader: i ams till long ASYS from
[2007.12.13 09:13:41] MauiTrader: August
[2007.12.13 09:13:45] MauiTrader: i think or July
[2007.12.13 09:13:46] MauiTrader: not sure
[2007.12.13 09:14:01] Mahket: so much for this little rally lasting
[2007.12.13 09:14:04] Mahket: poof
[2007.12.13 09:14:06] MauiTrader: August
[2007.12.13 09:14:11] MauiTrader: i went long in August
[2007.12.13 09:14:19] MauiTrader: the next day i sold 75% due to gap down
[2007.12.13 09:14:27] MauiTrader: but held 25% due to it holding 50 dma
[2007.12.13 09:14:35] MauiTrader: i bought more in early Dec
[2007.12.13 09:14:42] MauiTrader: then again when i made my mistake
[2007.12.13 09:14:48] MauiTrader: then i sold all of the last buy
[2007.12.13 09:15:01] MauiTrader: and over half of the early Dec buy on that nasty 12/11 day
[2007.12.13 09:15:04] MauiTrader: but had I not
[2007.12.13 09:15:16] MauiTrader: and i seen it on 12/12 and noticed it held 50 dma
[2007.12.13 09:15:19] MauiTrader: and would have hoped
[2007.12.13 09:15:26] MauiTrader: since it held and bop went green again
[2007.12.13 09:15:30] MauiTrader: maybe i dont sell any
[2007.12.13 09:15:32] MauiTrader: then today
[2007.12.13 09:15:41] MauiTrader: i would have had one of the worst days of my life
[2007.12.13 09:15:45] MauiTrader: had i stuck with my mistake
[2007.12.13 09:15:49] MauiTrader: instead i fixed it
[2007.12.13 09:15:51] MauiTrader: and walla
[2007.12.13 09:15:54] MauiTrader: i saved my ass
[2007.12.13 09:15:59] MauiTrader: THIS IS WHY YOU CUT LOSSES ALL THE TIME
[2007.12.13 09:16:04] Troy: I tried to print a posting in the forum and some of the word on the printed version run off the page. Is there a way to get a printer friendly version of the postings?
[2007.12.13 09:16:07] MauiTrader: ESPECIALLY IN ACCIDENTLE BIG POSITIONS
[2007.12.13 09:16:20] MauiTrader: ask nictech in a PM
[2007.12.13 09:16:26] MauiTrader: send nictech a message
[2007.12.13 09:16:29] MauiTrader: he is the tech guy
[2007.12.13 09:16:36] MauiTrader: doesn’t anyone find that amazing
[2007.12.13 09:16:44] MauiTrader: you guys should be learning something major here
[2007.12.13 09:16:46] MauiTrader: BY CUTTING LOSSES
[2007.12.13 09:16:52] MauiTrader: AND FIXING A HUGE ERROR
[2007.12.13 09:16:52] MauiTrader: IMMEDIATELY
[2007.12.13 09:17:01] MauiTrader: AND NOT STICKING WITH THE WRONG MOVE AND INCORRECT GAME PLAN
[2007.12.13 09:17:05] MauiTrader: I JUST SAVED MY ASS
[2007.12.13 09:17:11] MauiTrader: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[2007.12.13 09:18:15] Aloha! You are in the MauiTrader’s Lounge
[2007.12.13 09:18:15] MauiTrader has entered the room “MauiTrader’s Lounge”
[2007.12.13 09:18:18] MauiTrader: WTF!!!!!!
[2007.12.13 09:18:21] MauiTrader: ANYWAYS
[2007.12.13 09:18:29] MauiTrader: I JSUT SAVEDD MY ASS A LOT OF HEARTACKE
[2007.12.13 09:18:33] MauiTrader: AMAZING
[2007.12.13 09:18:37] MauiTrader: ASYS IS DOWN 30%
[2007.12.13 09:18:43] MauiTrader: WHICH IS 60% ON MARGIN
[2007.12.13 09:18:51] MauiTrader: AND 120% ON IB MARGIN
[2007.12.13 09:19:07] MauiTrader: WHICH WOULD HAVE KILLED OVER 30% OF MY ACCOUNTS
[2007.12.13 09:19:32] MauiTrader: SO BY CUTTING MY LOSSES AND GETTING THE HELL OU TOF DODGE
[2007.12.13 09:19:42] MauiTrader: INSTEAD I HAD NO CLUE THIS NOW POS STOCK HAD ANY DAMAGE
[2007.12.13 09:19:49] MauiTrader: BECAUSE MY SHORTS ARE ROCKING
[2007.12.13 09:20:17] MauiTrader: IMAGINE IF I WOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THOSE SHORTS AFTER THAT BAD DAY; IMAGINE IF I AM SO DEPRESSED I DONT TAKE THESE SHORTS OR SELL MY ASYS
[2007.12.13 09:20:22] MauiTrader: NOT ONLY DO I LOSE MONEY ON ASYS
[2007.12.13 09:20:29] MauiTrader: I LOSE MONEY BY NOT MAKING MONEY IN THE SHORTS
[2007.12.13 09:20:36] MauiTrader: THIS IS REALLY AN AMAZING LESSON TO BE LEARNED
[2007.12.13 09:20:55] MauiTrader: AND THAT NO ONE IS AROUND (9 PEOPLE ARE HERE BUT NO ONE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THIS) IS BAD
[2007.12.13 09:21:00] MauiTrader: I HOPE YOU ALL READ THIS LATER
[2007.12.13 09:21:08] MauiTrader: ACTUALLY I AM GOING TO POST THIS ON THE BLOG
[2007.12.13 09:21:10] MauiTrader:

Since I focus on individual charts more than I do to any of the talking heads on the web or TV, I can manage to fight through all the confusion. However, this has been a market that has definitely not helped me out at all. My charts are basically worthless to me, right now. Sadly, this year has seen nothing but disappointments left and right by HOT HOT HOT stocks with great charts. Even when those chart patterns had powerful fundamentals driving the price higher it seemed after the perfect buy signal was given that it would fail.

Recently, despite the low volume, the market has produced some nice charts, making some (including myself) believe that this rally could last longer than expected. However, today put an end to all of that thought. Most hot stocks also felt the wrath of the market today as everything I owned seemed to pullback.

The biggest problem on top of all the selling and my recent longs was a mistake trade I made yesterday. I added an extra 0 to ASYS and ended up with a HUGE loss by the time I realized my mistake. By the end of the day, I saw the rest of the damage to my recent long and can honestly admit that I have made my biggest blunder since IWOV in 2000 when I added to it as it fell. Thankfully IWOV rallied BIG in the April to August rally saving my ass. However, my luck has turned the other way and not only are all my green volume/BOP-filled charts failing but now I am making severe trading mistakes.

As you all know what is more upsetting is that the stock I make a mistake on ends up nailing me with a 12% loss. If some of you do not know my personal story, you have to know that I have been through a lot and even wanted to commit suicide at the age of 11 because my mother was completely insane and abusive. So when you are long 120 stocks (only 8 have any real size to them so don’t freak out just yet) and short 40 stocks and somehow the ONE TIME IN YEARS you mess up happens to be in the stock that produces my biggest loss what can you say? I mean seriously what can I say but the F word 20000 times? Even professionals make mistakes and even after a life filled with NOTHING but bad luck I continue to suffer at the wicked hand of Mr. Market.

The point of that last paragraph is to help you recognize that even when everything seems against you, it is totally stupid to just give up because that is when everything can turn. And that leads into this very important incident that happened today. If what I write turns out to work out I will be very happy. If what I write doesn’t happen and the market does the opposite…then what can I say but the F word 200000 times? LOL.

When I got back from my doctor appointment (for those of you who do not know I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis this year) the first thing I did was check up on the portfolio to see the damage as I had already learned the outcome of today. What I found was indeed very upsetting and that only compounded on the fact that I made such a HUGE mistake on margin with ASYS. The portfolio lost enough to put me in the red for December when combined with November would be my first back-to-back months of losses since 2001. I have many down months but I have been blessed with this market to avoid a back-to-back for a long time. I had many win-loss-win-loss-win-loss months but that was something I was proud of. While I have plenty of time to make it back, I am beginning to feel like I am off my game and not worthy of trading. This at the time of realizing this was starting to make me very depressed.

That is then when I began telling everyone in the chat room to forget about longs or shorts and to go basically to cash as the market is borderline insane and you simply should not have that kind of a move based on such a moronic decision by one of the biggest fools at the Fed in a long time-Ben Bernanke. His boneheaded decision to lower the rate and discount only 25 basis points not only solidified his short legacy as an idiot but caused the market to crash intraday. This crash should have generated a lot of fear but when I checked the put/call ratio I saw that it only moved up to 1.01 which is high but on the crash we had intraday today in such a short time frame that put/call should have flown to 1.2 or 1.3. So the fact we had such a low jump, combined with the VIX only at 25 indicates we have not seen fear. But we have seen stupidity.

With that in mind I began my routine of looking at longs and shorts. After first looking at my longs it became apparent that the market was not good for longs as there are absolutely no charts out there with any good looks at all besides the ones I am long. There are some setting up like ARL but it is still has too much resistance ahead of it to be a good long. Besides that I really couldn’t find anything spectacular. So now I was for sure I don’t want to be long. But remember I still had the fact I did not want to be short either because the market is acting so insane.

But then I started scanning my shorts and I noticed something very quickly. A lot of the stocks in the scan are breaking down right at key resistance levels after low volume rallies. It was like a light went off. I quickly remembered that I have been warning everyone of this scenario that happened today. Many times I mentioned the past week that our low volume rally might be setting us up for a sell the Fed day on Dec. 11. Sure enough being prepared for that did help keep the pain low today but my error in adding an extra zero to ASYS caused my well prepared strategy to fail. All it takes is one mistake. But by at least being ready for it after watching the low volume rally, I was able to stay short a lot of my stocks in clear downtrends thanks to careful analysis of the major market indexes.

As I went through the scans it became apparent that we are probably at a very excellent area to short stocks. I still don’t believe this it is the moment the market tanks, as AMZN GRMN BIDU GOOG AAPL and RIMM are still trending up even though negative divergences in technical indicators are everywhere and most could be making a double top. But it still could be an excellent spot.

We are very oversold and if you look at the oscillators Helene Meisler use you can see that we are very overbought and that overbought condition from a low volume rally is never good. So now the market is very overbought and we have now had a clear distribution day in the indexes right at key resistance with a LOT of stocks breaking down also at key moving averages and resistance.

Some of these stocks are old leaders in REIT, railroads, and steel sectors and a lot are banks. GS and PRU are two of the great risk/reward plays. When these powerful companies are failing/breaking down with all the former leaders and you see the high flying tech stocks start to look like they are topping, it is time to start thinking about shorting stocks. With the setups I see right now it would be foolish to skip on them.

So after believing I was going to be 100% cash and get out of all my longs and shorts, after going through my scans I have realized that while it is not a good time to buy longs it sure is a great time to short stocks here. Why? Because, we are right at key resistance with stocks breaking down on huge volume compared to their previous low volume rallies. That along with a very weak market that could be headed to a recession has everything in the right trend to be short.

If they all fail, you lose very little. Anywhere from 2% to 5%. If these stocks work and fall I expect almost every single one of my shorts tonight to be able to produce at least a 20% gain. If the stocks don’t work this time, they will soon enough. Almost everything you see tonight, on a weekly chart, is just loaded with distribution. There is virtually no accumulation to the distribution.

I am still going to keep my shorts a reasonable size and am not going to get crazy until those big cap tech stocks you just saw me name top out. When the 50 and 200 day moving averages converge with price then I will start to really look at these hard and that is probably when I will start shorting the market heavy. For now, I enjoy shorting all the great short setups and riding those winners down while cutting my losses of the failures. I have come to a point that in a bear market my main concern is not about hitting home runs but is rather about building a great team that hits a lot of doubles and triples and can steal bases. If I can hit a home run great but look at today for example. The one time I mess up and it is in the stock that loses 10% plus. I mean out of 160 stocks I own, I make a mistake on that one????? Do you folks really think that is just bad luck? No. My life has been nothing but a battle and God has decided he wants to continue to see me struggle. At least that is how it feels. It is really depressing, even for someone who trades as much as me.

Thank God I have skill at this because I have absolutely NO luck. If I was forced to take only one long a day and one short a day out of all my selections, I would more-than-likely go 1 for 5 during a normal Monday through Friday market week. I just have real bad luck and that is why waiting and waiting for the stocks like the ones you will see in the ‘Past Big Winners’ section is what I must do to make a lot of money. Until those chart patterns show up, I have to buy a lot of the top stocks, put decent money in all, cut my losses in the worst, and keep the winners. I will always miss loading up on MA, DECK, and FSLR. But I will always get the RICK and APPY charts. That is good enough for me. That combined with a little DECK, MA, and FSLR can really add up after a while.

The most important thing is to make sure you are flexible right now. Don’t marry the long side or the short side and before I go I must make it very clear that if you want to short the market NOW IS THE TIME TO DO IT. I am not joking around here. This might not be the top, but I can bet that if it doesn’t work out that our loss will be very small. If you wait for the stocks to selloff a few more days before “you are sure that the stock has failed,” you will be in a lot of pain.

Those of you not making money in shorts, yet now your potential short is down a lot further from where you covered, have probably shorted the stock too late in the downtrend. In bear markets, like the one we very well might be in, you need to short the low volume rallies immediately as they fail resistance. Look at my shorts tonight and look at the Nasdaq and NYSE. You will notice the majority of the shorts are failing RIGHT AT key resistance while the Nasdaq is also. The NYSE is rolling over below the 50 day moving average.

I will say it one more time: if you do not short here, do not short these stocks a few days from now if they are down over 5%. The ONLY right time to short is right after the low volume rally; never the breakdown. Aloha and I will see you in the chat room where I continue to have meltdowns but thankfully could possibly be over. My doctor has taken me off my Interferon injections. Thank God!!! ALOHA!!!!!!

new Featured long position: HRBN

HRBN is breaking out of a base on base pattern, bouncing off the 50 day moving average, and putting in a very bullish intraday reversal closing at its HOD, on above average volume. This chart is very pretty with all of its previous max green BOP and recent green BOP, along with all that accumulation that this stock has had. The stock’s RS line is also hitting new highs well ahead of price, along with the moneystream. Even with all of this positive TA developments, the chart still is a little too choppy to get too excited about. If BOP was max green from the September move to now, it might be a different story. The fundamentals are great, with EPS growing between 24% and 100% the past seven quarters, sales growing between 39% and 135% the past eight quarters, an extremely strong ROE of 51%, 63% debt, an EPS growth rate of 45%, a timeliness rating of A, a composite rating of 98, an Acc/Dis rating of A+, an SMR rating of A, a group RS rating of 84, an EPS rating of 96, and earnings estimates for 2008 are for a 49% gain. Fund ownership has grown from 2 funds to 5 funds the past four quarters, showing that institutional money is finding great interest in this tiny gem. Management still owns 66% of the stock, indicating that they would like to have a vested interest in the potential gains they see in the stock. I have a feeling that if this stock can ever get moving it will end up being one of our better longs–there is just great growth there. I recommend using limit orders on this stock as it only averages 59,000 shares a day. Be careful. Cut your loss with a close below the 50 day moving average, if the stock does not move higher immediately.

new speculative Featured long position: GXDX

GXDX is breaking out of a cup pattern, on slightly below average volume. This stock is very new but if you look at the daily price bars you will see that every day has been very bullish as every single trading session has seen the stock put in a bullish late day rally. There were only two days in November where the rally was weak. The rest of the intraday rallies show the stock coming well off the lows with most of the closes coming with prices higher than the open. These bullish candlestick bars combined with the light volume in the pullback that led to this higher volume rally is very nice to see in a young stock. The RS line hitting new highs well ahead of price is the final nice technical attribute on the chart. And as everyone should know by now, obviously, I would love this stock if the BOP was max green all the way. The fundamentals are growing at an exponentially rapid pace, with EPS growing 200% and 388% the past two quarters, sales growing between 165% and 999% the past eight quarters, 31% debt, a timeliness rating of B, a composite rating of 87, an SMR rating of D, a group RS rating of 90, and an EPS rating of 75. Management owns 62% of the shares outstanding, indicating that they want to have a vested stake in the potential gains of the stock. It is hard to think that this stock will not be higher in the future, with EPS and sales growth rapidly expanding at the pace that they are. Cut your loss with a close below the 26.29 level, if the stock does not move higher immediately.

adding to existing speculative long position: ASYS

ASYS is breaking back above the 50 day moving average, on strong volume. This stock is very beautiful with all the max green BOP all over this chart from last November to today. With all the great price action and constant accumulation, the max green BOP all over this chart makes this a great long for a speculative stock. With the stock also trading over $10, its chances of moving higher is made much better. However, as a rule, any time you see a stock with this much green on it over $10 it is always going to be OK to go long. If this stock, of course, would have had max green BOP all over it going back to the July move to now, I would be loading up. The fundamentals are nothing to get excited about but are improving, with EPS growing 40% the most recent quarter, sales growing 24% this quarter after losing 3% (before that sales growth was between 10% and 88% the past six quarters), a ROE of 9%, 4% debt, a cash flow of $0.56, a timeliness rating of C, a composite rating of 76, an Acc/Dis rating of B, an SMR rating of C, a group RS rating of 59, an EPS rating of 45, and YOY earnings estimates for 2007 and 2008 for a loss of 7% and gain of 97% respectively. Fund ownership has grown from 8 to 11 to 12 funds the past four quarters, showing that institutional quality funds are growing an interest in this story. The beautiful green chart confirms that. New investors should be careful as the reward/risk ratio is strong but the initial risk is a minimum 9% before the cut loss area. Cut your first loss with a close below the 14.12 level and your final loss below the 13.50 level, if the stock does not move higher immediately.