Friday, August 12, 2011

Update

Stopped out at <1% loss. Really don't like this price action - reminds me of the last hour of Wednesday - a failed break out higher followed by aggressive selling and taking out lows.  FCX was underpreforming the market as it crept higher and would get whacked on any down tick.  Also it broke the trend line I mentioned before so I stayed disciplined and sold it.

SPX chart:
















FCX chart:
















Notice the relative underperformance.  As the market crept higher, FCX continued to make new lows.  Market remains range bound - no longer foresee break out.  This weakness towards the end of the day is most likely traders reducing exposure ahead of the weekend and locking in any gains they've seen in the past couple days.

One may ask why I play FCX if my idea is based on the underlying market. A legitimate question because I would have made money on the run up from 1-2 pm, whereas my long FCX position was relatively flat in the same period.  First, for the time being my boss has restricted me from trading levered ETFs, so I can no longer make basic market calls.  Second, FCX is probably my favorite stock to play because its high beta (1.5), its exposure to Chinese copper demand, and its gold component.  Recently gold has had a negative correlation to the market, making it a great hedge.  Today however, gold was weak (retracing its parabolic move to record highs) as the level of general uncertainty has diminished, which may have caused weakness in FCX.  

No comments:

Post a Comment