Tuesday, February 19, 2008

President's day precedent holds, and a fade of the opening gap helps our position

Before the Stock Trader's Almanac, Martin Zweig was one of the first "Wall Street Week" elves to publish research regarding holiday trading. Specifically, his old notes for President's Day was to purchase the index (such as the S&P) just before the close, and sell the following Tuesday morning. If I recall correctly, his research showed a 90% profitable trade although the data stops around 1987. For 2008, this trade would have generated about 1% on the Dow & S&P had you sold within the first 15 minutes of the opening bell.

Fortunately for me, the markets sold the opening gap higher throughout the day leaving my down about 1 point for the day, considering I was down 2 3/4 at the opening bell because of the double short position.

Noticing last Fri evening that gasoline at the retail level rose over the prior week for the first time this winter should have been a hint of where the action was today. Earlier this afternoon oil officially closed over $100/barrel for the day, which represents a $10/barrel increase in the past four days.

Thus the real winners who were long today were:

Metals - MTL (9.8%), SID (8.4%, new 52 week high), RIO (4.56%)

Oil - DRQ (6%), HES & OXY (4.66%), KWK (4.63%), BRY & VLO (4%), XOM (2.35%), and new Dow component member CVX (1.88%), FWLT (1.68%)

Coal - FCL (9.2%), PCX (6.15%), BUCY (5%), MEE (3.62%), JOYG (3.45%)

Copper - PCU (9%), FCX (5%)

Gold - NEM (5.45%), ABX (4.85%)

Agriculture - POT (3.2%), MON (2.56%), DBA (2%, new 52 wk high)

So the question is whether I want to play both sides and long certain oil service stocks while being ultrashort at least one index? Because of the holiday, the weekly petroleum report is pushed back to Thursday at 10:30a. Maybe I should hope for a down day in oil service stocks on Wednesday, which would give me a chance to have a starter 15k position.

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