Finance Trends Letter

Came across this "lost" interview excerpt with an unnamed trader from Jack Schwager's New Market Wizards and I'd like to share it with you here.  As Schwager explains in the intro to his "Zen and the Art of Trading" chapter, this wide-ranging, and rather philosophical, interview with a top trader had to be scrapped on fears it would alter the trader's image with his firm's corporate clients.  Schwager asked this trader for permission to anonymously publish one interview excerpt, which he found particularly insightful. Here's a sample:   ".. .I still don't understand your trading method. How could you make these huge sums of money by just watching the screen? There was no system to it. It was nothing more than, "I think the market is going up, so I'm going to buy." "It's gone up enough, so I'm going to sell." It was completely impulsive. I didn't sit down and formulate any trading plan. I don...

  Netflix chart update (see: "Netflix melt-up and Google breakdown" ). This earnings period was kinder to $NFLX and the market reacted positively. The gap-fill play to $115 is now complete.

Great educational (and free) TraderInterviews.com video webinar with Joe Fahmy on trading high relative strength stocks in healthy markets.  Joe is one of my favorite trading follows on Twitter and we've also highlighted some of his blog posts and interviews here in the past.  So with that introduction, you should know that I'm posting this video because I've learned a lot about the stock market and trading from Joe in recent months. You'll probably walk away from this webinar with some knowledge that you can use in your trading as well. Fahmy offers a quick summary of his general trading philosophy at the start of the webinar, then quickly launches into a discussion of his relative strength concept. You'll hear Joe explain why he looks for growth stocks that are emerging as leaders when the overall indexes are bottoming or consolidating. He also offers a few keys to successful trading and ends with a solid Q+A session with the webinar group.  Check it o...

Chart update on Google ($GOOG). After breaking out nicely above longer-term resistance near $645, $GOOG has spent the last few days giving back those gains and more.  Today we saw $GOOG open with a gap down at $646.50 and it quickly slid downhill from there, ending the day at $622.46 (-4.2%).  As Reuters reports, Google took a slide after Motorola Mobility ($MMI) warned of lower-than-expected earnings, which prompted worries over Google's entrance into the hardware side of the smartphone market via their Motorola acquisition. So we've gone from breakout to correction mode in just a few short days. Meanwhile, Netflix ($NFLX) continued its recent melt-up, surging 13.8% higher today.  The market seemed excited about Netflix streaming services crossing the Atlantic to Britain and Ireland. Not to mention the short-covering rally that ensued. As the article above points out, $NFLX is up 40% in the first five trading days of the year - so much for dour 2012 predicti...

Google broke out above some long-term resistance today. See the daily chart below. Here's an updated weekly chart to show the longer-term view. The stock had been trading in a rather wide sideways range between $450 (support) and its prior highs (resistance) near $645 since January 2010.  Today, $GOOG cleared that resistance level with ease, soaring to $665.41 by the day's close. Not a bad trick for the first trading day of the year.