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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Trader who wrote (15665)	4/23/1998 8:45:00 AM
From: Clint E.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 68330

Good morning, Tom. Yes, it has been a while since we've talked. You haven't changed your name, I see. Still a trader. I hope you have been able to prosper from this bull market. I cannot say that I have, in my trading account. I think my long-term 401K acct has been doing better ever since I transferred my money back into equities at the end of Oct. 97 Perhaps. I am getting older and stupider Tom, but I don't see any compelling reason to buy MSFT at these levels when they grew revenue by ~35% and EPS by 25% and are forecasting flat quarters ahead. Neither do I see why I should buy IBM as a technology company when the company is showing negative EPS growth y-o-y, if it wasn't for their aggressive share buyback program and lower tax-rate. I also don't see why INTC's outlook could change in a matter of one week after they reported earnings and jump to $85! Furthermore, I am bothered to see how INTC was manipulated up in the morning after they released earnings, sparking a rally in NAZ, and then was bad-mouthed by Kurlak in the afternoon to end up lower. I was asking myself as I was riding home that night, "what was the reason for today's rally again?" We can talk for hours and mention how earnings forecasts are raised to cause a pop in a stock(ex, MAST by GS) then followed by a downgrade........Dropping a stock ahead of IPO lockup period, buying shares back from insiders, then releasing buy recommendations and lots of PRs to push the stock higher(JDEC)... Or how earnings forecasts for this quarter were ridiculously lowered to make it easier for companies to beat....More and more I believe in Manipulation Analysis(MA) than TA! I see more manipulation by WS firms to keep deals going and fat paychecks coming and that bothers me. It used to not bother me and I was better off, trading-wise. On Monday, I read that $40B in junk bonds was issued by the US companies in the 1st quarter of this year, the highest ever. The previous high was last Oct when $32B was issued. Of course, you know what happened at the end of OCT. As far as my shorts, I covered BBY & AXNT as they were running away from me or not going anywhere, since I have zero tolerance for loss. So, now I got some cash to short MSFT this morning with a target of 91. The rest of my shorts, I am not looking for more than 5-10% on most of them and I will keep churning them. As I said earlier, I expect market to behave OK through end of this month, although we SHOULD get a dip ahead of window-dressing. We get it maybe 9 out of 10 times. This is a pattern that I believe in. You asked about cycles. I think more in terms of trading patterns. Cycles, to me, take longer in time to develop and are good for long-term forecasts. Patterns take place daily/weekly/monthly. Since I am very short-term oriented, I am more interested in patterns than cycles. As far as targets for NAZ, SPX, & DOW, I believe that we have already seen a short-term top in all indices. Any move from here will be limited and followed by profit taking. I am actually looking for a range-bound market in the coming weeks. I expect the 1st week of May to be choppy and down. I also expect the direction of the market to be set after all the economy-related reports are released during the first 10 days of May. So, I will be watching. Let's see how it goes today but you know that I like it on the short side. Take care; Clint