Monday, June 02, 2008

Bloodbath on the Streets! 4500 Visible

It was a bad day for the markets today. The Nifty opened flat today and tried on three occasions to go above 4900 but could not sustain itself at those high levels. And by 11:40, it was clear that the Nifty would come down. But what ensued was not what had been anticipated by day traders. The Nifty dropped almost 180 points from the highs of the day. By the end of it all, everything was looking red, the screen was red, the charts showed all red and there was ‘blood on the street’, again red.

However, it wasn’t such a bad day for technical analysts. The swing traders had already anticipated a fall when the Nifty went below 4990. All stop losses for long positions were hit and they were, and still are, merrily sitting on cash, anticipating further downfall. While they do have a target in mind (in my case, it is between 4500 and 4550, and some are even anticipating 3800), they will buy only when the Nifty gives a signal to buy. It may mean missing out on a small portion of the decline/rally but it captures most of the move. There are different theories in technical analysis – one which tells analysts to execute their trades when the target is achieved and another which tells us to buy or sell only when a buy/sell signal is received. I like to follow both theories. For example, in this case, I would look to invest 50% of my money when the target is achieved i.e. when the Nifty goes below 4550 and I would invest the remaining 50% when a buy signal is received, even if it comes at 4800. Both methods have their own pros and cons and I will, probably, talk about them in one of my weekend posts which come under the ‘Lessons on Investing’ category. You can click on “Lessons on Investing” anytime in the label cloud on the right to read such posts.

Nifty Daily Chart

We have the daily chart of the Nifty with us today. I’ve not included many things on the charts today, so as to keep it very simple for the readers. I am now going to explain what I have included, what my reading is about the chart and why I feel so. I always like to give reasons for my analysis and it is there for everybody to see. As you can see from the chart, there are two trendlines – a downward sloping dashed trendline and an upward sloping solid trendline. The solid trendline shows where the Nifty broke through the support line and showed that a downtrend could start. And the dashed trendline shows the level above which the Nifty should come back in an uptrend. As one can see, and as has been mentioned, a downtrend was signaled when the Nifty came below 4990 and an uptrend would be signaled when the Nifty crosses the dashed trendline which today stands at 5020. Since this line is sloping downwards, this level would keep changing everyday.

The next thing that can be seen from the chart are the two vertical dashed lines marked ‘A’ and ‘B’. Line A measures the distance from the top of the recent uptrend to the trendline on that day. This line A has then been superimposed at the point where the Nifty broke through the trendline and this superimposed line is marked as B. The logic is that the downtrend should be as brief (or as severe) as the uptrend was, though, in some cases there is a possibility of it getting extended too. This superimposed line, thus, gives us a target of 4530 on the Nifty. Since this target is usually not exact, I’m taking it as between 4500 and 4550. You will notice that the same principle is used when calculating the targets for head and shoulders patterns, double/triple tops/bottoms. If you look at the pattern formed from where the solid line starts to where it ends, it does look like a head and shoulders pattern, though, with a very slanted neckline. You will also notice that the Relative Strength Index (RSI) has made a much easier to imagine bearish head and shoulders pattern. Also, one should notice the RSI within the small circle. Since the last week, the RSI was repeatedly finding support at 40, which in itself is not a bullish sign, but is definitely a positive sign which suggests that the market was showing some strength because of which the RSI was finding difficulty going below 40. This strength has been negated today with the RSI advancing to levels lower than 40.

Again, we are not looking at charts of any stocks these days because it is not the time to buy as we are still in an intermediate term downtrend. When the market again shows signs of improvement and there are some buying opportunities available, some of them worth a mention would find their way through on this page.

Happy Investing!!!

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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Retirement Planning

I feel childhood is the best period which you can go through during your life. You are just born and everybody comes and meets you, play with you, entertain you (or probably you entertain them), give you toffees, candies, cookies, toys and everything that you love. The only problem with childhood is that you don’t remember that period of your life when you grow up. By the time you are big enough to know what’s happening around you, you start going to school and just when you were beginning to enjoy that period you get increasingly heavier doses of homework that it leaves you little time to play. But that is still better as compared to your adult life since you can play an hour or two a day whereas in adulthood you don’t even get time to that.

The second best period of life comes when you go to college. That is the age when you have friends with you, you are big enough to venture out alone with your friends and are not under the constant watch of your parents’ eyes. Once you finish college and start working, life is all downhill. Sure, there are milestones which you enjoy like your first salary, your first music system, your first …. oops, I mean, your marriage and your first child, your dream vacation, your dream house, your 60th birthday and then your retirement. That is the time when you think that you are free from all responsibilities and that you will live life king size. But how often does it happen? Did you know that 60% of the people endure retirement rather than enjoy it? And that is because they don’t plan their retirement well.

One has to plan for one’s retirement early in life and the more you delay the planning, the more you will suffer in your old age. Things are becoming costly. Inflation, which was just between 3-4% a few of months back, is now well over 8%. You can see the price of petrol. I remember the cheapest petrol that I have purchased was Rs.21/- per litre. Now it is touching Rs.46/- (in Delhi. In Mumbai it is past Rs.48/-). Let us just do a simple calculation. You want to buy a LCD TV which costs between Rs.30000 to well over a lakh. Let us assume you plan to buy a Rs.35000/- LCD TV but then you think it is better to buy it when you retire rather than now. And you save Rs.25000/- now thinking that the LCD would probably cost Rs.80000/- by the time you retire and during the same time, your investment of Rs.20000 would also probably fetch you Rs.80000/- and you would be able to buy it. Let us say your retirement is 30 years away. But can you guess what would be the cost of the LCD 30 years from now assuming an inflation of 5%? It will be almost Rs.152,000/- and Rs.246,400/- 40 years from now.

You spend Rs.40000/- a month now and you think after retirement you would reduce your monthly expenditure to Rs.20000/- and for 20 years after retirement you would probably need Rs.50,00,000/- at today’s prices and probably Rs.80,00,000/- assuming inflation. If your retirement is 40 years away, you would need Rs.65000/- a month to buy what costs Rs.20000 today, assuming only 3% inflation. And to sustain through the 20 years after retirement you would need a corpus of Rs.2.1 crores. Do you ever do the calculations and plan how to meet the shortfall.

It is better to start saving early. I would say, as early as today. Every day of delay costs you. I read a very
nice article by Mr. Gaurav Mashruwala, a Certified Financial Planner, who says that Vikram started investing Rs.10000/- every month in an instrument giving 8% guaranteed returns per annum in Jan 1991 while his friend Rohit started investing the same amount in the same instrument in Jan 1992, exactly one year later. In Jan 2001 when they saw their corpus, Vikram had built a corpus of Rs.18,29,460/- while Rohit had only Rs.15,74,295/-. His one year delay cost him Rs.2,55,165/- whereas his investment was only Rs.1,20,000/- less than that of Vikram.

That does not sound too grave a mistake. Let us take another example. Let’s say there is a girl who is 21 years old who started investing in a retirement plan that gives her 10% return per annum. She invests Rs.10000/- every month till the age of 36. At 36, she stops investing and lets her money lie in the retirement fund till the age of 60. Her friend, who is a boy, started working at the same age as her but then he first bought a music system, then a bike and then a car. He started investing at the age of 35, which means 14 years later. To make up for the delay he starts investing Rs.25000/- every month and he continues his investment till the age of 55. At 55, he stops investing and leaves the money in the retirement fund till the age of 60. By this time the girl has invested Rs.19.2 lakhs while the boy has invested Rs.63 lakhs. Who do you retires with more money? Well, the girl retires with Rs.4.67 crores while the boy gets only Rs.3.4 crores.

That’s what an early start can do for you and that’s how grave a mistake you can make by delaying your investments. So, start investing now. It is not advisable to waste even a day to invest.

Happy Investing!!!
As mentioned, I am currently out of town and there will be no newsletter for Monday. I'll try and post a newsletter for Tuesday on Monday night. Else it will be Tuesday night for Wednesday.
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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Nifty Reverses From Resistance

The Nifty was expected to go up today too and a target of 4990 was expected but it was mentioned that there is a fair bit of resistance between the 4935 and 4950 zone. That was exactly what happened today. It kept moving between 4920 and 4950 in the first half of the day before the bears took control and pushed the markets downwards. The crash was sudden and sharp but was expected. We also saw the end of the F&O (Futures and Options) month today.

Nifty ChartSeen above is the 30 minutes chart of the Nifty. This chart has got 2 colours of trendlines – light green and dark green. The light green trendlines show why the Nifty found resistance near 4950 today. On the other hand, the dark green trendline shows where the support is – near 4830. You can notice how the last candle went all the way down to 4804 and then closed above our support at 4830. This small breakdown of prices below the trendline and then bouncing back above it does not signify a break of the trendline. A breakout or breakdown is significant if the prices penetrate the trendline decisively and with high volumes. It will usually be a large blue/red candle depending on which side it breaks out on. We still have support at 4830 and resistance at 4950. Tomorrow being the first day of the new F&O month, the market may, I repeat – may, stay within this range for sometime before moving below the 4830 trendline.

Looking at the bottom half of the chart, which happens to be the Relative Strength Index (RSI) of the Nifty, we can see that within the green rectangle the RSI found resistance at 60 and turned down from there and that does not give a very bullish sign. As of now the RSI has not broken the upward sloping trendline below it and that is the only thing which shall decide whether the Nifty will find support at 4830 or not. If the RSI holds on then the Nifty should also hold on to 4830 but if the RSI breaks through the trendline, I’m afraid, so will the Nifty.

More on Monday/Tuesday. Happy Investing!!!
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Small Uptrend Could Continue Upto 4990

We were expecting the Nifty to bounce back a little today as it had reached its short term support and also there were other short term positive signals available. It opened about 20 points higher, came down, went up again then lost about 40 points from there before it went in a small 20 point range for about 3 hours and it was only after 1:30 in the afternoon that the Nifty started obliging us by moving in the direction we predicted. The move up was sharp, rapid and almost correction free.

I had a meeting with a client today evening, which then got converted into a dinner meeting and came back late and am not in a position to write too many things right now. Am already dozing off. Please excuse me if this newsletter is a little incoherent today.

Seen above is the daily chart of Nifty. As expected in yesterday’s edition, the Nifty did give us a blue candle today. This rally was expected to last upto 5000 levels with some resistance between 4935 and 4950. As mentioned earlier too, one should not be tempted to take any long positions there as we would expect the markets to come down again. I’ve mentioned earlier too that a trend is our friend and we should follow it till it ends. When it ends, it will tell us so. As of now, we are in a short term and intermediate term downtrend and we shall follow it till we get a signal that it has ended. That signal will come if the Nifty were to cross its previous pivot high which is at 5168 in the intermediate term and it is surprisingly close at 4932 in the short term, though, I would take the high before the last one which is at 5058.

Have got lots of other ideas to talk about as well, specially about the RSI finding support at 40, but will probably do so in tomorrow’s newsletter. And I’m not expected to be in town over the weekend so tomorrow is the last day that I’ll be writing for the next 3-4 days. I shall be back Monday evening so expect the next newsletter (after tomorrow’s) on Monday night or maybe Tuesday night. Of course, I’ll try and keep something ready which I can shoot on Saturday or Sunday to keep my readers occupied, but, at best, it will be another lesson on investing and no charts. Hope that should be okay with you.

Happy Investing!!!
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Short Term Technical Rally/Bounce Back Possible

The Nifty, boosted by strong Asian cues, opened in the positive today and stayed so for the first half of the day. It was probably the weak European markets, though they have also recovered by now, on opening that triggered the fall in our markets. And the fall was strong enough to bring the Nifty down by 80-85 points from its highs, thus giving us the fourth consecutive day in the red.


Seen above is the 60 minutes chart of the Nifty. While, the downtrend is clearly visible with lower highs and lower lows in place, yet there are some short-term positives visible on this short term chart. First of all, the price has now reached the downward sloping trendline which has provided support to the prices 3-4 times since the last one month. Not only that, it also reversed from the line and has shown one blue candle at the end. If we concentrate on the price movements in the last two days, 26th and 27th, we can see that the price has been making lower lows while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) during the same period has been making higher lows, thus creating a positive divergence between the price and the RSI. The same has been emphasized with the downward and upward sloping arrows. Another positive which is not visible on this chart, but is there on the daily charts, is that the RSI has found support at 40 and has flattened at that level.

An upward move could find resistance near 4900 and above that it could go on upwards to 4935 which will confirm a short term uptrend. This uptrend could take the Nifty between 4990 and 5010. A move to these levels could be used as a shorting opportunity. I think taking naked short positions is a risky game which risk averse traders should not enter into, but low risk shorting opportunities like buying puts (one could go for 4800, 4700 or 4600 June puts) or bear call spreads (e.g. buying 5000 call and selling 4600 or 4500 June call) is definitely a good opportunity. For reference sake, the 4800, 4700 and 4600 puts were available for Rs.156, Rs.118 and Rs.88 respectively at the end of the day while the 5000, 4600 and 4500 calls were available for Rs.93, Rs.320 and Rs.395 respectively.

Once again, do not be tempted to take long positions if the market does go up tomorrow. It makes sense to create long positions only if 5070-5080 levels are broken on the upside.

Uma, a small time trader herself, writes about her trading experiences in the form of a personal stock diary on her blog and it happens to be a good read. Incidentally, she also left a link to my blog on her blog. Thank you, Uma.

Well, that’s all for today. Happy Investing!!!

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Monday, May 26, 2008

Another Day in the Red, Technical Bounce Back May Come

It was another red day for the Nifty and the last three candles have been pretty large which suggests that the prices are coming down without finding any support inbetween. The trendline that was in place since the low formed on 18th Mar 2008 was easily broken through yesterday. Till a support is found at some level, it may continue to fall at the current rate of 70-80 points in a day.

Seen above is the daily chart of Nifty. Besides the upward sloping trendline, also seen are the Fibonacci Retracements of the rise from 18th Mar 2008 to 2nd May 2008. We have seen that the 23.6% and 38.2% retracement levels were crossed without any hassles and the same seems to be the case of the 50% retracement, though, that still needs to be crossed decisively. The next support comes in at the 61.8% retracement level near 4785. Let’s hope that support is found there or else there may be further downside involved.

In
this post I had mentioned that I am trying to develop a trading call system which gives me small profits but gives me profits 85-90% of the times. Let us name it as ‘System A’, for convenience sake. This system had given me a long entry for Nifty Futures at 4998 with an exit at 5100 and a short entry at 5036. Thus, I made a profit of 102 points on the long position and am gaining 150 points on the short position. Before that I was given a short signal in the beginning of the month at 5178 which was eventually covered at 5010, a profit of 68 points, which means a total profit of 320 points in a month which is not yet over. A profit of 320 points on even one lot of Nifty works out to a profit of Rs.16000/- by paying a margin of only Rs.35000/- which means more than a 50% return on investment in less than a month. Of course, this has been a good month for ‘System A’ and future months may or may not better the current performance.

Update: There is a calculation mistake above. Shorting at 5178 and covering at 5010 gives a profit of 168 points, not 68, which takes the net profit to 420 points which works out to a total of Rs.21000/- in profits and gives a return of 60% on investment.

By going below the previos low of 4913, it has been confirmed that Nifty is now in an intermediate term downtrend according to the Dow Theory because a lower high and lower low are already in place. The target, as mentioned in the previous edition, could be as low as 4500 but there are supports available at 4800, 4630 and 4470. While the Nifty remains in a downtrend we can just wait and watch where the decline will end. No buying is recommended for now. After five days of lower lows and lower highs, there may be a small bounce back which could go upto 5020. This should not be mistaken for an end of the downtrend but should instead be used to exit from long positions or to go short. There is more downside possible.

Happy Investing!!!

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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Nifty Breaks Important Support

Before I start this edition, I must apologize for not being able to post my views on this blog on Thursday night for Friday due to some personal problems. Rest assured, I’ll try to be as regular as I’ve been in the past. I’ll continue with my plan to post a newsletter for every market day and an extra on a weekend. The Nifty, on Friday, did open slightly in the green but soon started losing ground. It managed to hold on to the support between 5000 and 5050 for a couple of hours but soon after noon it started slipping quite heavily and from there it was a unidirectional decline for the Nifty.

The chart of the Nifty has suddenly changed in the last two days. If we ignore the last two candles in the chart, we can see that we were pushing against the resistance line and the blue candle had a long lower shadow which showed that the price did go down but buying came in at lower levels and that actually took the price past the day before’s close. Suddenly, that day was followed by two red candles which changed the chart completely. Now we have broken through the support line near 5000, as signified by the solid green line, which is highly negative. A lower high is now already in place and below 4913 we will have a lower low too, thus signifying the start of a new downtrend according to the Dow Theory. According to the trendline theory, we have now entered an intermediate term downtrend. The target for this downtrend may be somewhere between 4500 and 4550. However, support also comes in at previous lows of 4913, 4630 and 4470. There is a reasonable good support at current levels near 4950. It is important that the previous low of 4913 is not broken if we are want some stability in the markets.

A lot of the current fall in the markets has been attributed to inflation which has been on the rise due to the jump in prices of crude oil. Crude Oil has almost doubled in the last 10 months and the jump has been exponential in the last two months. What actually has been happening in crude oil? Is it likely to come down? Well, some people say it is likely to
come down now and there are others who say a price of $150 per barrel is likely in the next few days. Who do we believe? The best thing, I would believe, is to look at its chart and decide for ourselves.

Given above is the daily chart of crude oil futures as traded on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX). The price is in Rupees but the chart, whether in Rupees or in Dollars will remain the same. As seen in the chart, the thick red line is the line chart (close) of crude oil and we can see that it has now found some resistance near 5650 near the blue line. We can see that the support trendline is too far down near 4800 (which will reach 4900-5000 by the time the price comes down). A fall to 5000, though, may not be possible but a fall to 5100-5150 is likely. 5150 also happens to be the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level of the rise seen from the February lows. That would correspond to roughly $120 per barrel. Also embedded on the chart in the gray line is the chart of Gold futures on MCX (the scale for Gold has not been shown). As seen by the chart, the price of both Gold and Crude is moving in tandem and a fall in crude could also make the yellow metal cheaper.

Buying should be avoided for now since the short term trend is now down and it is likely that the intermediate trend may also turn to down, if it already hasn’t. Keep strict stops on all open long positions.

Happy Investing!!!

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Friday, May 23, 2008

The Probability of Profitability

Let us understand technical analysis in a different way today. We always knew that technical analysis is the study of charts and trying to predict the future. But does it work? Is it accurate? How often does it work? What is the probability of making a profit every time? What is the probability of being profitable after a year? Well, we have all the answers here. Come, let us understand probability in very simple terms.

We all have been studying since grade 6 that probability means the likelihood or chance of an event happening or not happening. We all know the example of the flipping of a coin and throwing a dice or drawing a card. For those who don’t know, here it is. When we flip a coin, only two possible things can happen. Either we get a heads or a tail. Since there is one chance of getting a heads out of 2 outcomes, the probability is ½ or 0.5. Similarly the probability of getting a six on the throw of a dice is 1/6 or 0.1667, the probability of drawing a card of hearts from a pack of cards is 13/52 or 0.25 and the probability of drawing an ace is 4/52 or 0.0769.

But, have we ever thought what is the probability of making a profit if we pick up a stock at random? Let us see what the possible outcomes are when we buy a stock. It can either go up or come down. Which means the probability of making a profit is ½ or 0.5 or 50%, which is a very high probability. Then why do we do so much of research and ask people to give us tips or spend hours looking at charts? Just for a simple reason that we want to increase our probability of making a profit to 0.7-0.8 or 70-80%. But, does it help us? Are we able to increase our profits? Actually speaking, no. Believe me, we are still better off picking up stocks at random and let the probability remain at 50%. I will give you a very simple formula. You pick up any stock at random, have a well-defined exit strategy and an equally well defined profit booking strategy. Let us say that our rules are that we will pick up a stock at random and book a profit if the price goes up by 10% and keep a stop loss 5% below our purchase price. Believe me, with such a strategy, you will never never make a loss.

Is the above system acceptable? It is not very difficult to follow. All we have to do is to book our profits and losses as defined by our rules. I am sure, we can all follow these simple set of rules to make profits. But, before you go ahead and implement it, let us talk about the drawbacks also. Over the years that I have been involved in the stock markets, I have not only studied technical analysis, I have studied human psychology too (as it works in the stock markets). I have learnt that the drawbacks lie in your mind. Firstly, you will never be able to come to terms with the fact that you have made money. You will always be thinking that it was this system that made money. The thrill of investing in the stock markets will be missing because the decisions are automatic and not your own. Secondly, you will be tempted to book profits at 9% (or lower) instead of 10% while when it comes to executing your stop losses, you will be reluctant to do so even at 8%. Thirdly, the returns are too low – only 2.5% on your total investment. You get more in a savings account. And last, the system will work well in bull markets and will be terrible in bear markets. God save you from the bear markets if you follow this system.

So, is fundamental option the best option? Well, it does help. But it has its own drawbacks. Fundamental analysis tells you whether to buy or not to buy a stock. But it has no clearly defined entry and exit strategies. So, you may never know when to book profits and when to cut your losses. The human psychology is such that it forces you to take your profits quickly before your profits turn into losses. And if you are in a loss, you will keep riding your losses because you are thinking that you had done proper research and that sooner or later the price should follow the fundamentals, so you keep holding on to your losing positions. No doubt, on some stocks you can get profits many times your investment but in some you could lose a lot too.

That leaves us with technical analysis. Technical analysis has well defined entry and exit levels and with proper discipline you can continue to ride your profits and cut your losses early and you can make a lot of money. But like any other method, this has its own set of drawbacks. The hit rate is not very good. If you choose 10 stocks, it is likely that only 3 or 4 calls out of those 10 will come out to be correct. But the advantage is that those 3 or 4 calls give you enough profits to cover not only all your losses from the remaining 6-7 calls but also gives you enough profits to give you a good return. Many technical analysts keep trying to develop methods which will give maximum profits. I am currently developing a system which will give me small profits but the hit rate would be between 85-90%. The details of the system are ready and I am currently testing it with my own money to fine tune it a little and it can then be given to a few selected subscribers who are disciplined enough to follow it and once they have also tested it for sometime and some more fine tuning is done, it can be shared with all others. This system, for convenience sake, shall be referred to as 'System A' from now on.

We should consider our trading to be a business. The objective of any business is to make money and that’s what will be the objective of our business. Like in any other business you will have some centers which will be your profit centers (which give you lots of profits) and some as your cost centers (which earn no profits but only cost you money). The objective is to maximize the profits from your profit centers and minimize the costs in your cost centres. Similarly, in this trading business there will be some stocks which will give you a lot of profits and some which will only give you losses. So, as long as you maximize the profits and minimize the losses, you will end up in a profit. And that is what technical analysis helps us achieve. Helps us to ride our profits and minimize our losses.

We have learnt today that there are many methods which help us to make profits. But all of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. Within Technical Analysis (which I consider to be the best, though this is a debatable topic) too, there are many methods but the
Dow Theory is the oldest and the easiest method of technical analysis. According to Martin Pring, as mentioned on buddycom, if an investor had invested $44 in the Dow in 1897 and liquidated his position after 93 years in Jan 1990 (pure buy and hold strategy, as happens in fundamental analysis), he would have got $2,500 after 93 years i.e. 56.82 times his investment, while another investor who invested and liquidated at the same times and who sold on every sell signal and bought on every buy signal would have got $51,268, a whopping 1165.18 times of his initial investment. That is the power of technical analysis and that shows how our probability of profitability increases with technical analysis. And technical analysis requires only one skill. Discipline.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Bulls At An Advantage

This article on moneycontrol gives the view of their Technical Analysis expert, Ashwani Gujral, who recommended Tata Steel with a target of 950 and Sterlite Industries with a target of 1070. These stocks were already recommended on this page with a target of 1050 and 1040 in the newsletters for 15th May 2008 and 30th April 2008 respectively.

The Nifty today opened with because of weak global cues but kept rising through the day to close the day slightly in the green. The Asian markets ended on a mixed note today with the Hang Seng closing green while Nikkei was in the red. European markets are now (at the time of writing the newsletter) more or less flat while the Dow is still losing 70 points after a loss of about 200 points yesterday.

Looking at the chart of the Nifty today, I find no difference in the chart since yesterday except that the support near today’s low at 5050 becomes a little stronger. So, I might as well copy and paste what I wrote here yesterday. In fact I’ll do better than that, I’ll just add a link to yesterday’s newsletter and you can click here to read what I wrote about the Nifty yesterday. We still have resistance near trendline 3 and trendline 2 and support near 5050 and then trendline 1. RSI has yet to cross 60 to give us bullish signs.

It is all becoming a little confusing now. We made a low of 1292.20 in the now infamous decline of May 2004 (when the BJP government fell) and a high on 8th Jan this year at 6357.10. The decline in mid Jan and then through February and March made is correct 38.2% of the move from May 2004 to Jan 2008. I think a 38.2% retracement in a secular bull market (what most market participants have been claiming to be in since the last 4-5 years and which is expected to last another 8-10 years) is quite enough. A decline deeper than this should not come about. We should probably just do some base building here (which, I personally think, is in progress now) and move on. But the signals from the western world and the investment gurus are not very positive. According to
Eric Roseman, George Soros, the hedge fund manager of the Quantum Fund and one of the best investors, has gone on to say that investors are now participating in a bear market rally. Warren Buffett, nicknamed ‘The Sage of Omaha’, in this article, says that the end to the credit crunch is still not in sight and that the stocks could be heading still lower. I tend to agree with Haresh Soneji, CNBC TV 18’s Research Analyst, who says in this article, that investors the world over may be hoping that both Soros and Buffett are terribly wrong this time around but given their history, it seems unlikely. They may turn out to be right but one of the advantages of blogging is that I could disagree with them if I want to and I am disagreeing. I feel that we have already seen an intermediate term low and that we should not be going below that for a long time to come.

Hmm…., disagreeing with George Soros and Warren Buffett, what am I doing? In fact, it is a win win situation for me. If I go wrong, I’ll be expected to, because where do I stand as compared to Soros and Buffett, but the technical signals now do not show that the markets have anymore downside and I have
Ashwani Gujral agreeing with me. And if I do turn out to be right, I can always turn around and say that I could foresee what George Soros and Warren Buffett could not. This is why I love blogging. I can never lose. I would appreciate your comments too on how you expect the markets to behave now because as I said, it is becoming a little confusing now and I would like to know what all of you are thinking.

Alstom Projects, with its Relative Strength Index (RSI) crossing 60 during its last peak and now finding support near 40 before turning back, seems to have given a good sign of turning around from the current levels. The stock may go up to its trendline near 720 from the current levels (which itself is a return of about 12-14%) and if it is able to cross the trendline then could continue to go up to a target of 950-1000. Buy now with a stop loss of 580 for a target of 720 and then between 950 and 1000.

Siemens seems to be getting support near 550 and 560 since a month now and with the downward sloping trendline coming so close, it is left with no option but to break out of the pattern. It now has to go above the trendline or may choose to come below the support. This is a perfect opportunity to buy it. If it goes up, it is in our favour and in case it comes down below the support, the stop loss is so close that we’ll hardly lose anything. Consider buying above 600 with a stop loss of 560 for a target of about 770.

Happy Investing!!!


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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Resistance Found! Where Do We Go Now?

The Nifty opened on a weak note today because the Asian markets were down and even the American markets despite good gains last evening, lost strength in the later half of the day. This was not taken kindly by the Indian markets and after three blue candles, it decided to show a red one before deciding upon its next direction. But as per our analysis, the markets were in a strong uptrend and were likely to find resistance near 5300. So, what went wrong, why did the market come down today? What is the possible direction of the market now?

Attached above is the daily chart of Nifty. I know there are too many things drawn on the charts and the idea is not to confuse you. The idea is to do a little bit of analysis. And not too much of analysis too because we don’t want a situation of analysis paralysis. But just enough analysis to weigh the strengths against the weaknesses in this chart of Nifty. You can click on the chart to open it in a new window so that you can see a larger image. Let us take each point one by one. We were within a clear well-defined range between the two trendlines marked as 1 and 2. What did us in was this third dashed trendline marked as 3! Were we expecting it to happen? If yes, why wasn’t it discussed here? The answer is no, we were not expecting resistance here. We were expecting a little bit of profit booking soon but not exactly here. Why? Firstly, we were in a well defined range between the two trendlines and we weren’t expecting a third one to interfere in between. Secondly, have a look at the Relative Strength Index (RSI). The RSI has been respecting the trendline since 21st Jan 2008 and had gone well over 60 in the end of April and was clearly showing signs of bullishness. We were not expecting it to find resistance at 60, like it did this time around (as marked by the circle). One reason why the price found resistance here is because it reached the 38.2% retracement level from the 8th Jan 2008 high to 22nd Jan 2008 low. This level too was not expected to be too much of a resistance because this too has been breached a number of times since 22nd Jan 2008 without any real support/resistance. It was probably the combined effect of trendline 3, the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level and the RSI at 60, all at the same levels, that did us in.

We now have two possibilities. The Nifty may ignore this small resistance soon and continue to go up to trendline 2, in which case the RSI may also cross the resistance at 60 and we could then expect the Nifty to cross 5300 soon too. Another possibility that may happen is that the Nifty continues to respect this trendline and starts coming down in which case it would find support near trendline 1 near 4950. In that case the RSI would also fall. And if it falls too much so as to cross the trendline, we can probably expect the Nifty too to break 4950. Another remote possibility is that this may be a small consolidation and could find support near 5000. Let us wait and see what the market decides to do.

No stocks discussed today.

Happy Investing!!!

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