Thursday, April 29, 2010

Cautiously pessimistic. Thu Apr 29

The sell off is accelerating and plenty of stocks are moving to a position of increasing certainty. Here's a Westpac bank chart as an example.
After a minor new high in mid April, there was a leg down to the bottom of the range, a failure to make a new high and now some acceleration down. Although the current sell off hasn't breached the swing low at 2663 in mid March, it's very close. There's decent momentum in this leg down and it's unlikely that it won't test the lows after a small consolidation.
To generalise from this, there's a strong chance that a top is in place; the pace of the sell off implies more to come; significant support levels will probably be broken shortly. Previously, the market looked toppy but was chopping around and making marginal new highs. Long positions looked like sucker bets and yet there were very few short signals.

1.56 pm There are no fresh trades today but I can mention Bsl where I've added to an existing short. I'd bought back some yesterday at 267 and have reshorted at 274. This is a position I initiated at around 277, punting that a small consolidation would break to the downside with the stop being the top of that range. It did break down and I've added some more short stock as it moved back towards that breakout level. It's close enough to the original stop level of 286 to make it worthwhile.

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