I use my Collective2 portfolio has a "real world" example of using the stocks featured in my newsletter and blog in combination with a suggested money management strategy. I have marked on the hashed line - which represents the S&P - the degree of market exposure as recommended to my newsletter Subscribers. The solid line reflects the returns of my picks with a little extra fine tuning to my suggested stop prices (all trades carry a fixed stop price). I was looking for aggressive positions last summer when market internals were oversold, easing those recommendations towards a cash conservative stance in mid-November. The flattening of the equity curve and the small losses taken in December and February represented this 'cash-friendly' portfolio - which also meant I missed out on the Santa-rally and New Year follow up. The flip side was no impact from last weeks sell off. I'm watching currently watching internals for new oversold conditions and an opportunity

A busy week for market watchers - what had the Stockcharters got to say about it? Joe Reed leads off with a big picture look at the Dow. He points to the struggles of the Dow in creating a top in 2000 - will the next few months see some of this whipsaw return? If a whipsaw period was to develop then there is a potential long play for the SPX (holding November reaction lows is key): Mitchell Meana had some interesting targets for the markets. First up is the Nasdaq 100 - note his reversal count is 15 days into his 18 day count, so a bounce to close the breakdown gap could occur some time next week: He has highlighted the potential bounce zones in the Qs: His target for the DIA looks bleak: His Russell 2000 iShare call was a smart one: His NYSE call fell just 10 points short: I find Ted's new(ish) chart formats confusing (the solid grey charts). His lead chart for the Qs shows all of the overhead resistance levels and on the right are his list of support levels. $42.18 is next o

[I started this piece last Friday, before the meltdown - so there has been a little 'updating' since...] For the next step of my analysis I took a look at some of the technical signals and rated their performance to my earlier measures of 1%, 2%, 5%, and 8% risk - looking for a 3:1 reward to risk return. The first figure gives the overall return (based on average return per trade, for all trades combined) for my free and paid-for picks from my newsletter (I should add, this does not include the stocks from the Trade Ideas scan listed on my blog - that will be a seperate article). The post-meltdown figures look like this: The biggest change came from the performance drop in the use of 5% and 8% risk as those stops were most vulnerable to the weeks selling, whereas the lower risk sample either had reached their targets, or were stopped out prior to Tuesday. There was no change to the 1% risk, and minimal change to the 2% risk. When the figures are broken down to stocks which were

It really looks like the markets will be thrown down to their 200-day MAs at some point over the coming weeks. Bulls are having a hard time keeping traction and this will only force more would be buyers to the sidelines. The Trade Ideas scan was significantly slower today; 8 picks covered a time span of 55 minutes , while only 2 stocks broke the 20 appearance mark over the day: If you would like to try a full version of the Trade-Ideas software, follow this link for a free 7-day trial. Trade Ideas

The latest Kiva loan comes courtesy of N. Ross via my ChipIn widget. Shovle still requires another $300 to get going so I have provided a direct link to her project if you would like to contribute. The complete list of loans (and pending loans) now stands at 16 , with 4 paid-off loans. KIVA

Shorts grabbed some quick profits on the gap, bulls made a go at a recovery but overall - bears take the honors. The ending bullish "hammers"/"dojis" are over-ruled by the failure of some of the indices to close the gap. I would not be surprised to see bears walk this down to today's lows before starting another downleg. What did CNBC do with its "Dow at x above Record Close" ticker? The Trade Ideas scan did show pockets of action; 8 picks came in at 16 minutes - not an unreasonable performance considering (although anything above 10 minutes I consider to be a 'slow' day). The "Fab-20" list covered a time span of just over an hour : If you would like to try a full version of the Trade-Ideas software, follow this link for a free 7-day trial. Trade Ideas

Trader's toes get dipped back in the water and today was unlikely to have seen any great retracement to yesterday's selling. There were a number of positives - most notably the confirmation of support of November-January channel support in the NASDAQ and NASDAQ 100, not to mention the picture perfect test of support in the Russell 2000 rising channel. In the short term I would look for bounces to Fibonacci retracements; for the Dow this is around 12,525; the Nasdaq it is 2,481; the Russell 2000 it's 812; and for the S&P look to 1,433. Expect shorts to get dirty around these levels. Long term, I think it is time for a test of the 200-day MAs. Internals are still well inside overbought territory and it will take more convincing selling to bring these internals down. A reflection of the decent buying (considering) witnessed today was found in the Trade Ideas scan; the first 8 picks covered a time span of 10 minutes ; with the "Fab-20" of 8 picks making 20 appeara