Muchas gracias, Master Bum. Your considerate and courteous response to my sincere appeal for more extensive discussion of the energy sector -- especially the NG and Crude segments -- is well appreciated. Your T/A input is very important towards fleshing out all the factors affecting the OSX stocks in particular, especially ol' PTEN.
stockcharts.com[h,a]dacayyay[pb30!b20!f][vc60][iut!La12,26,9!Lc20]&pref=G
Not sure the above PTEN chart is going to printout as a hot link when I send this post--if not, I wish someone would give me the pathway to accomplish this--it's been too long since I did this on another board years ago.
Anyway, Dabum--herewith some commentary in reply to your well taken advisories as it applies to my strategy with PTEN:
<PTEN is pulling back.>
Yes, just as it has done twice before in the past two months--I had already set their bottoms as a support level for this one as a line in the sand which I thought should be a point below which I would want to bail on this last long trade that I had made a couple of weeks ago at $19.88. My intention with that purchase was to keep it for an IT hold while I was on the cruise, but alas, the crude price dropped out of bed on that bearish inventory report right after I sailed. (Thankfully, I had sold nearly half of my PTEN the day before for a nice little gain, since I figured I wouldn't be able to monitor it properly aboard ship).
So today, on return to my trusty PC, I'm looking at a ptice approximately halfway to my mental stop at about $18.00 feeling uncertain about which direction it would take today. My review of this board's messages, and those of the CWEI board, convinced me that the weather was going to be the main determining factor on the prices of NG/CL and the OSX. So at about 11:30 CST, I bailed on the remainder of my PTEN stock at $18.38, since the rest of the drillers in my watch list were all showing a decidedly DOWNWARD bias. Am now 100% cash in my driller portfolio.
Your susequent post revealed the wisdom of my sell action, even though I sold it considerably above my mental stop level of $18.00. I would just say that I, for one, must rely on a concensus of several factors--not just relying on one facet such as T/A to make a decision. In this instance, my analysis consisted of taking into account weather reports, message board opinions, news items relating to current world events, price chart analysis,and supply and demand relations to come to what I refer to as my Git-a-long consensus to make an actionable decision on any one stock. This is why I go against the grain when my portfolio consists of only a couple of stocks most of the time--I'm simply not able to properly do this kind of research on several stocks, especially if they reside in different sectors. After several years of investing on my own, I have found that, for me, this seems to be the most successful tactic that I have tried.
<The fundamentals aren't going to save anyone when a stock is pulling back. It will take buyers, lots of buyers.>
My observation here is that, yes it takes lots of buyers, which I personally put into 3 categories:
1)those who rely mainly on fundamentals, especially those that pertain to the sector, so fundamentals DO function as at least one factor to rely on to try to guess what these buyers are going to do, wouldn't you agree?
2)those who rely almost entirely on T/A for their decisions--I would respectfully place you in this category, and am frequently astounded at the many successful calls that you have made--you have my utmost respect in this field--I only wish that I could master just 1/4 of what you have apparently amassed in this art! I have benefitted immeasurably from your generous contributions to this board. Still, it behooves me to strive to guess what action you and the rest of the T/A buyers are going to take.
3)those who, through their positions of control of tremendous investing funds, or of market making status, exert forces which in effect manipulate the prices to their own advantage, to the individual investor's disadvantage, like me and Frank, for example <ggg>. And try as we may, it seems Frank and I aren't able to guess which way these rascals are going to go with any degree of consistent accuracy.
There may be other classifications, but it seems to me that these three are the main ones to monitor in an effort to guess which way they will take the market, don't you agree?
As the day closes out, I find that this ol' blind hog found a few acorns in savings on price losses on PTEN--so much for my Git-a-long strategy of making "educated" guesses as to what the market is going to do. Now, to apply this vast wisdom to what tomorrow will bring to us all <g>. All IMHO.
Again, thanks Dabum,
Buck |
