Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Probably Not The Start Of An Uptrend, But Who Knows?

All this time I thought it was computers doing most of the buying and selling, but it turns out that animal spirits are the true origins of many of these moves.

I can see Mufasa's ghost (of The Lion King fame) talking to young Simba, the trader, "You have forgotten how to be bullish and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You must buy. You must take your place in the Circle of Money Flow and Profits."

Unfortunately, Mufasa and all the other animal spirits called it a day with 30 minutes left until the close and headed back to that great game reserve in the sky. The consequence of their departure was a late-day sell-off that took some of the steam from this rally. And that late-day drop may have been just enough to give tomorrow's bulls a little hesitation.

After the bell, ADI came out with strong earnings and even stronger guidance. Reaction has been tepid, but at least it's a slight positive vs. other semiconductor companies. I still see this one challenging $30 this week, especially on the heels of today's strong earnings report.

There were certainly some outsized moves today and CSTR has clearly caught my attention. This one may be a sympathy play with NFLX. As the Netflix run ends, a new run in Coinstar may begin. I could envision a rotation from Netflix to Coinstar. Both were hammered after earnings and both bounced, but Netflix is well into its bounce (having cleared the pre-earnings price by over 10%) while Coinstar has just returned to the pre-earnings level.

Today was an overall a win for the bulls, but not as pretty as it could have been.

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