Friday, October 29, 2010

10/29/10 Holy General Moly!/ Full Retreat

WTF am I doing trading losers like AA/BAC/CSCO/INTC/V? Way to go, CP!

As for me, I was in full retreat after my trash-talk assault on bears.

48 hours ago I was fairly confident (overly confident, as is turns out) the bears would be napalmed out of their shorts (literally, in some cases). Instead, sellers staged an impressive assault on prices, which had me in a holding pattern last night, and in full retreat by this morning. Once it becomes clear you're wrong, the only sensible strategy is to exit and retreat. If you're fast enough, you may get away with no casualties- flat on the AA/BAC/CSCO/INTC/V. For some reason it reminds me of place bets across the board.

The pass line bet, which wasn't looking good this morning, ended up paying off. OAKBX in the buy-and-hold half returned +0.53% over two days.

(An alternative position I had considered on Wednesday for the buy-and-hold was a 50/50 split on FIDSX [Fidelity Select Banking] + FSELX [Fidelity Select Technology], which closed up a combined +1.4% (FIDSX closed down -0.9%, FSELX closed up +3.7%). This might appear to have been the better strategy, but once you factor in Fidelity's 0.75% short-term trading fee, the difference would have been much smaller.)

Damn- those numbers aren't even in the same decimal place as CP's one-day gain in GMO.

48 comments:

  1. How many drinks have you had, CP?

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  2. Maybe it's just me, but the '[insert name] here' format is getting old. What's wrong with a simple display of the name at the beginning of the comment/post...

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  3. Mark.
    Only 3 soccer games tomorrow. All in town! Maybe i will get to see a football game.

    CP. Watch Bollinger bands on daily. A candle print on the outside on low volume or extremely high volume would be a sign to sell in my opinion. Ideally, the best case would be a slight pullback on low volume. (bull flag) would be a signal for this thing to rocket higher. No serious resistance until 6.50. If this was Poker you would have the nuts. Sorry i didn't have a buy stop above 4.50. Another train missed. But if it flags down to say 4.80-4.75 I might ride the GMO express.
    Congratulations Bob

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  4. I have to give big time props to CP/TOF for their ability to trade such large %'s of their port in a couple of issues. I never could do that. I've worked so Fing hard to get where I am, I just couldn't take the risk. Way to go men.

    RB- Only 1 here. Sate cup starts next weekend and the madness will end when Kendra's team is eliminated :) If you think it's cool, email me a few pic's of your son playing.

    Had a real good day today. Port + 2.33%. My 3 full positions carried the day. PXP/XCO/V.

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  5. 2nd here. +2.33? Good enough for the silver medal, my friend! That's STILL a decimal point above my +0.26%, and that's over 2 days...

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  6. 2nd here. SF merchants are actually hoping the Giants win it in Texas. The area around the ballpark got trashed after last night's win. Add a little alcohol, and people just can't keep their emotions in check.

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  7. Remember grade school?

    Mark. Here.
    Patrick. Here.
    2nd. Here.
    CP. CP? CP!

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  8. OK, man. 2nd here...I don't get it...but I'm laughing for some reason.

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  9. Man, I'm slow...I understand now.

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  10. You must not be reading CC. The post-closes + Catch all start with 'Good morning. Patrick here,' 'Good evening. Geoff here,' or 'Good morning. Vad here.'

    I know we're all competing with black boxes, but man do we all need to sound like one too?

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  11. 2nd- But I still have a lot of risk on the line. A LOT.

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  12. Not a bad bet. I just see a lot of stomach-churning on the way there.

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  13. Took me a sec, but I got it. No, I don't check in @ CC to often. Clouds my judgment. That blog will be negative no matter what. There is some new cat there about to get banned though I see.

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  14. And that would be with a small position. Having a large percentage of my port in GMO? CP is out of my league in terms of emotional control.

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  15. Get rid of the CP handle and call yourself Iceman.

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  16. 1125...Not easily. That's why I closed my SSO today in the IRA. I'll take my chances on the run down natty sector and V/BAC/BTIM. Way to many high fliers that need to have profit taken out of them to play the index's. I'm betting on rotation/churn.

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  17. Good move, closing the SSO. Holding a leveraged ETF going into the elections/Fed is like vinod walking through South Boston at night with a cellphone saying to his wife 'I've got the cash! I've got it with me!'

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  18. Alright, time to hit the sack. Didn't sleep well last night- with the N225 down almost -2%, I had visions of waking up to DJIA -250.

    Good night, Mark.

    Good night, CP!

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  19. Okay, I'm still on my 1st cognac balloon and have been savoring it b/c I really don't want to drink a second pot of coffee in one day; I've never drunk two pots of coffee in one day and that's what would happen if I were to make another.

    So you see, I'm practicing self control.

    And yea, feelin' pretty good about today, while running plenty of what-if scenarios through what remains of my brain. ;)

    What the hell, I might just have the best reason ever to make a second pot of coffee so I can justify polishing off another balloon of cognac. It's simply a question of maintaining balance, just go a little rich on the catalyst, heavy on the 30 weight, and things should work out just fine. ;)

    You guys make sure to get yourselves into CADC when the opportunity returns....

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  20. Meanwhile, you'd you believe I've been attempting to hack my way through the USGS site to learn more about water tables in Nevada?

    What have I learned so far? Well' it kind of reminds me of Texas and or probably more like New Mexico, but I have a feeling the Nevadan aquifers aren't quite as large.

    There's an entire watershed that runs basically down from Colorado through Texas and almost to the Gulf, parts of which are unbelievably huge, but I've forgotten much of what I almost knew about it.... Now I'm curious to learn if this same watershed actually extends all the way up through Montana and into Canada.

    Might take a few days to research this one...

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  21. I did discover though, that Enviroscientists company, GMO's contractor hired to model the water use requirements for the Hope mine, have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.

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  22. If this can't be called forward-looking vision, then I don't know what might qualify:

    "GENERAL MOLY PROVIDES MT. HOPE PROJECT UPDATE
    LAKEWOOD, COLORADO – November 4, 2008, General Moly Inc. (AMEX and TSX: GMO) provided an update to the Mt. Hope project’s financing, project development and permitting progress. Bruce D. Hansen, Chief Executive Officer, said, “Despite the current difficult credit environment, we continue to be confident that the Mt. Hope project will be able to be financed. Given the project’s overall quality including high grades and low operating costs in addition to the project’s wide support from the steel industry, Mt. Hope continues to be on track to be fully permitted and financed in time for late-2010 startup.”"

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  23. When a stock price falls, does it make a noise?

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  24. Mark,
    Here is some pics from my facebook.
    http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=34507&id=100000453669689
    My youngest is a goalie. Do you know hard it is to get action pics of a goalie? I will try tomorrow.

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  25. Yea, the good 'ol days:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF3_tLbs06s&feature=player_embedded

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  26. Yea i will have to have Preston do that. LOL. That goalie is bad ass. He is basically saying stop trying. your not going to score

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  27. Cool pics! Thanks. Patricia has some good pics of Chase. I'll see if she can figure out how to post them like you did.

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  28. Welcome to the NLCS in SF....

    http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/sports/Dallas-Newy-is-the-Citys-Newest-Star-106154253.html?dr

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  29. What a difference a day makes. Technically RBY looks interesting now.

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  30. Mark:

    RBY/RMX.to: I have to agree with you. On my watch/BUY list.

    Previously bought it on CheapyBob's mention. July 27th at $3.36 and sold once again too early on Aug 10th/Aug11th at $3.97(avg) for a short term buy and hold gain of 18%. I have an 80% confidence that it is now a buy.

    CP: Congrats on your portfolio gains. Don't let them take it away from you.

    I have sold a lot of positions this week and have a 'ton' of cash waiting for opportunities. Like CP I am once again at an all-time new high. I am now more in favour of the oil and gas stocks than the gold/silver sector (short-term).

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  31. TOF here. 2nd - Regarding a pullback/selloff...I don't know man...EVERYONE and I mean EVERYONE is looking for at least a temporary pullback. I went onto CNBC.com and watched some of their archived videos from the past few days on analysts/traders giving their viewpoints on how the market will trade over the next week or so and they all said that the market is overbought and that it should pull back. And they said they would be using that weakness to buy in. So only 2 scenarios could possibly happen:
    1.) A crash, where people buy the dip then get stopped out.
    2.) No pullback and people chase

    My guess is #1 definitely ain't happening. Not when the 70% of companies are beating earnings estimates, when the 2010 S&P 500 earnings estimate is being revised UP, when the market is trading at 13 times 2010 earnings, when GDP is gradually improving, and when jobless claims are beginning to drop sharply (down from 500k to 435k in 2 months).

    So I moved more money into the market at the close and I'm now 90% long.

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  32. CP here, I think TOF's got the right idea. I'm looking for something beaten up and contemplating either RBY or REDF, if only one of these could show me some capitulation.

    Although you could make a bull or bear case for either, I'm gonna study these charts a bit closer and see if there are any clues.

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  33. RBY: MarkW said...

    Every night before I go to bed, I scan news on stocks we all follow...No charge. This one stood out for RBY...

    CI summary from Sept 16:

    entities owned or controlled by Robert R. McEwen, offered 45,714,357 common shares of Rubicon owned by the Selling Shareholders to secondary market with no $ benefit to RBY. Looking at the chart this was at about $4.20 (maybe at a discount?) cdn and the stock is now at $3.77 cdn. Can the buyers be so wrong on this stock? Maybe that is the capitulation you are looking for CP? Look at the charts for MAI.to and UXG.to from the McE stable.

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  34. I'm long RBY from a week ago at 2.40's and Friday from 2.58 to 2.62.

    When they didn't give me ANY shares, but traded at my bid for an hour, I got pissed and put the fear of God into them, taking out every scary ask they put up till they panicked and ran, just like I did a week ago.

    Its heavily shorted, for what it is, I think, because it goes up on days gold goes down when they try to cover. Draw a line from .70 to 3.18 lows and not where it ends up.

    Hopefully they will get the terrible news out soon, so it can go back to going up on the panic ands panic covering.

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  35. and to be completely honest, I sold the 2.40's ones too early already at about 2.70, but it shows that the bottom is in unless the news we don't know about is really, really terrible. Otherwise the MM would have been happy to dump shares on me.

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  36. RBY - Oh, so you're the one propping it up! Thanks, I was wondering what was going on there.

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  37. I just started the meelee, I didn't chase. I suspect shorts covering ran it up after that.

    The MM has been SITTING on it with big scary asks and keeps taking all the retail shares being dumped under them, and doesn't give any to anyone else that might bid at that price, therefore I conclude its a big accumulation at this point. If they actually wanted to sell shares, they would have dumped them on me.

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  38. So, what is it really worth if its 3 to 5 mm oz at $300 cash cost and $120 mm to build? I'm not one of those who would put any faith in a 10 mm oz number, but I won't be surprised to see if it comes in 3 mm or higher.

    Their estimate for cash costs was $200's, so I built a fudge factor in there.

    I would say its getting low enough now that if it looks mineable to one of the bigger producers that have oodles of cash and cash flow, someone could make a $5.00 to $6.00 offer, which would be a decent premium, and take it home while its beaten down. The big producers will be getting desperate looking for low cost oz, I think, pretty soon, because they aren't making any huge discoveries, and the few that are, have simply astronomical costs to build, like Nova Gold's Donlin Creek, where it needed a multi BILLION dollar power line and would only run 4 months/yr, and most everything was being flown in by chopper, all for a LOT of low grade ore _ copper (my NG info is very dated and foggy in memory, so DYODD, as it may have changed). Barrick offered $15 or $16 a share for it and it was refused, but damn, that would have been a good time to sell your NG for a huge profit if you'd had any.

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  39. Cheapy- Hey, buddy...What makes you worried about "news" on RBY?

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  40. RB- Here are some shots of Chase...

    http://picasaweb.google.com/104513436728479614263/Chase?authkey=Gv1sRgCO3GmOKB0deDygE&feat=email#

    I'd bet you kids would appreciate his athleticism.

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  41. Good news is always taken either badly, or has no effect because of all the pumpers preannouncing their high expectations for next week's news all the time.

    The saddest thing about it is that the people doing it likely hurt their own positions because I think its them that scared the funds into taking their profits and getting out as a result.

    Its always much better to have low or reasonable expectations and have things turn out better than what people were banking on, rather than have the highest expectations and they never seem to turn out. Same with expectations/rumors/discussions of buyouts.

    Anyway, I think that's whats gotten the stock so beaten down. I imagine its possible that if its not bought out in the meantime, that over a period of say 3 yrs, that like what happened to GSS, it can recover its share price as things actually turn out ok. Shorter term, I can tell its heavily shorted from all the bashers. stock action, and comments here and there from people like gforce on CC. My expectations are low, though. I think its worth about $4 or $4.50 without any suitors with $1300 gold, and if it were to get back in that range, it would be a nice gain. In addition, based on how its been trading, I would think downside to be very limited unless they put out what the street sees as very bad news, and if that were to occur, and the news wasn't that the gold isn't there or isn't mineable, then I think it will be the buying opportunity of the year. My guess is they will need financing to build, but isn't that baked into the cake, aready?

    I am no expert, just me guessing based on past mining stock experience.

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