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Free After-Hours Analysis:
The following is a brief excerpt from the Premium Analysis email I delivered to subscribers today during trading hours and builds on Friday’s free post. Since this covers exactly what I wanted to write about this evening, why recreate the wheel? If you like what you see, have this and more delivered to your inbox every day during trading hours while there is still time to act on these insights.
The S&P 500 popped this morning and is inched toward 2% gains. What was the source of this strength? Well, if we go strictly by the biggest headlines, it is the ever-expanding Coronavirus epidemic and the voting mishap in Iowa. Those seem like strange headlines to rally on but that is exactly what we got.
Obviously the market isn’t rallying because of those headlines. But more importantly, we can say the market is rallying despite those headlines. Traders are shrugging off news that very easily could have sent us tumbling under the lows again. Instead, most people are choosing to ignore the noise and are buying stocks anyway. The encouraging sign is there are few things more bullish than a market that refuses to go down on bad news.
Granted, this is only the second day of this rebound attempt and it is definitely premature to claim the selloff is dead, but this is definitely a good start. If this market was fragile and vulnerable, today’s headlines were definitely bearish enough to send us lower. Instead, prices bounced and that tells us this market wants to go higher, not lower.
The market looks great, unfortunately, anyone who waited for the clouds to clear missed a lot of this week’s discounts. And more than just paying higher prices, these gains expose late buyers to the increased risk of an intermediate dip. The best buys always come when uncertainty is at its highest. Throwing some money at the market Friday afternoon and yesterday morning was tough, but those smart buys gave us 1) good entry points, 2) the safety of nearby stop-losses, and 3) a fair amount of profit cushion to ride out any near-term undulations.
As always, the best plan is to start small and add to a position only after it starts working. A small buy on Friday afternoon was followed up by another position Monday morning. Do that and we are in good shape to add a little more today. The challenge with today’s purchase is the sensible stop-loss is all the way back at yesterday’s close. Not ideal, but we have to take what the market gives us. At least the prior profits give us some padding to cushion against any near-term gyrations.
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Tags: S&P 500 Nasdaq $SPY $SPX $QQQ $IWM
Jani Ziedins (pronounced Ya-nee) is a full-time investor and financial analyst that has successfully traded stocks and options for nearly three decades. He has an undergraduate engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines and two graduate business degrees from the University of Colorado Denver. His prior professional experience includes engineering at Fortune 500 companies, small business consulting, and managing investment real estate. He is now fortunate enough to trade full-time from home, affording him the luxury of spending extra time with his wife and two children.
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