Archives of “dow jones industrial average” tag

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S&P closes higher. That means it is another record close.

  
Analysis, US Market
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Major indices rise modestly on the day in up and down session

The S&P is closing higher. Since yesterday was a record high, that means today is a record as well (that analysis is pretty simple).
The Nasdaq remains below it’s record close at 8163.99.  The high today reached 8109.36 – near the closing level for the day.

The final numbers are showing:

  • The S&P index rose 8.68 points or 0.29% at $1413.56
  • The Nasdaq index rose 17.931 points or 0.22% at 8109.09
  • The Dow rose by 69.25 points or 0.26% at 26786.68
Looking at the % changes and % high/low levels, the major US stock are all closing at/near the highs for the day.   European shares (apart from the Portugal PSI20) closed higher as well.
Some winners today:
  • Verizon, +2.61%
  • Cisco, +1.95%
  • McDonald’s, +1.53%
  • Gilead, +1.49%
  • MasterCard, +1.41%
  • Delta Airlines, +1.33%
  • alphabetic, +1.15%
  • Facebook, +1.04%
  • Pfizer, +1.03%
  • Intuit,, 0.81%
  • visa, +0.78%
  • Microsoft, +0.66%
  • Walt Disney, +0.64%
  • Amazon, +0.63%
  • Apple, +0.59%
Some losers on the day include:
  • Nvidia, -2.37%
  • Beyond Meat, -1.88%
  • Chewy, -1.87%
  • Broadcom, -1.67%
  • Chevron, -1.52%
  • Charles Schwab, -1.42%
  • Dow DuPont, -1.31%
  • micron, -1.27%
  • Tesla, -1.15%
  • Exxon Mobil, -1.06%
  • Wells Fargo, -0.96%
  • Bank of America, -0.95%
  • Box, -0.91%
  • QUALCOMM, -0.66%
  • Boeing, -0.62%

 

Technically Speaking

  
Analysis, Education
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A great reminder from technical analyst John Murphy:

“The statement ‘market action discounts everything’ forms what is probably the cornerstone of technical analysis. […] The technician believes that anything that can possibly affect the price–fundamentally, politically, psychologically, or otherwise–is actually reflected in the price of that market.”

Alfred Cowles adds:

“This evidence of structure in stock prices suggests alluring possibilities in the way of forecasting. In fact, many professional speculators, including in particular exponents of the so-called Dow Theory widely publicized by popular financial journals, have adopted systems based in the main on the principle that it is advantageous to swim with the tide.”

William Dunnigan adds:

“We think that forecasting should be thought of in the light of measuring the direction of todays trend and then turning to the Law of Inertia (momentum) for assurance that probabilities favor the continuation of that trend for an unknown period of time into the future. This is trend following, and it does not require us to don the garment of the mystic and look into the crystal balls of the future.”

Richard Donchian adds:

“When I first got into commodities, no one was interested in a diversified approach. There were cocoa men, cotton men, grain men they were worlds apart. I was almost the first one who decided to look at all commodities together. Nobody before had looked at the whole picture and had taken a diversified position with the idea of cutting losses short and going with a trend.” (more…)

Jesse Livermore with Edwin Lefevre, dated circa 1922

  
  Education
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JL-ASRWhat follows is a never before published “interview” with Jesse Livermore.

Conducted by Edwin Lefevre, dated circa 1922, this “interview” reveals great insights into the mind of the famous trader. As we will see, the wisdom imparted here could change our entire perspective on the speculative game we love and enjoy.  It might even change our lives.  I took the liberty of editing it due to its length.

Lefevre:  Hello Mr Livermore.  Thank you for taking the time to conduct this series of interviews with me.  It is my understanding that you do not grant many interviews, so I am honored.

Livermore: You are very welcome.  I appreciate the respect but you do not have to address me as Mr.  Jesse, or my nickname, the boy plunger, will suffice.

Lefevre: And where did you get the name boy plunger?

Livermore: It was during the early days when I was trading small lots in the bucket shops, where the man who traded in twenty shares at a clip was suspected of being J.P. Morgan traveling incognito.  I didn’t have a following.  I kept my business to myself.  As it was, it did not take long for the bucket shops to get sore on me for beating them.  I’d walk in and plank down my margin, but they’d look at it without making a move to grab it.  They’d say nothing doing. That is when they started calling me the boy plunger.  I had to move from shop to shop, even to the point of changing my name.  I couldn’t put trades on without getting cheated on the quotes.  This was in Boston, so I then moved to where the real action was, to New York.  I was 21 at the time.

Lefevre:  Were you making money? (more…)

Paul Tudor Jones: 13 Insights

  
Analysis, Education
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13 Insights From Paul Tudor Jones

1. Markets have consistently experienced “100-year events” every five years. While I spend a significant amount of my time on analytics and collecting fundamental information, at the end of the day, I am a slave to the tape (and proud of it).

2. Younger generation are hampered by the need to understand (and rationalize) why something should go up or down. By the time that it becomes self-evident, the move is over.

3. When I got into the business, there was so little information on fundamentals, and what little information one could get was largely imperfect. We learned just to go with the chart. (Why work when Mr. Market can do it for you?)

4. There are many more deep intellectuals in the business today. That, plus the explosion of information on the Internet, creates an illusion that there is an explanation for everything. Hence, the thinking goes, your primary task is to find that explanation.

As a result of this poor approach, technical analysis is at the bottom of the study list for many of the younger generation, particularly since the skill often requires them to close their eyes and trust price action. The pain of gain is just too overwhelming to bear.

5. There is no training — classroom or otherwise — that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it’s the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market. There’s typically no logic to it; irrationality reigns supreme, and no class can teach what to do during that brief, volatile reign. The only way to learn how to trade during that last, exquisite third of a move is to do it, or, more precisely, live it. (more…)

Key Quotes From Paul Tudor Jones in TRADER: The Documentary

  
  Education
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Paul Tudor Jones is famous for correctly predicting Black Monday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 22 percent in one day. I recently re-watched TRADER: The Documentary, one of the classics in investor education. Wikipedia describes it as:

In the 1987, PBS film “TRADER: The Documentary”. The film shows Mr. Jones as a young man predicting the 1987 crash, using methods similar to market forecaster Robert Prechter.

Although the video was shown on public television in November 1987, very few copies exist. Those that do are hoarded by traders who watch the hourlong movie in the hope of gleaning possible trading tips from Jones. On the Internet, bids for the video start at $295. According to Michael Glyn, the video’s director, Jones requested in the 1990s that the documentary be removed from circulation. The video surfaced briefly on YouTube at the end of July 2009, before being taken down due to alleged copyright violation.

For the past two years, the video has been available here at Tudou, but recently has only been limited to viewers in Asia due to copyright violation. I watched a copy that I had saved to my local hard drive recently with the purpose of transcribing certain portions that I found particularly enlightening.

One theme throughout the documentary is that Paul Tudor Jones and other individuals profiled thoroughly enjoy the act of analyzing financial markets and they are not primarily driven by greed. This is a defining characteristic of investment managers who have reached the top of their profession:

Well I originally decided to come here to be on vacation, getting away from everything. Then as it turned out, a number of the clients are here in Europe, so I’ve been doing an enormous amount of business. I’ve been in Paris, I’ve been in Geneva, so I can combine business with pleasure. I wish it had been more pleasure, but I still wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. If life ever ceased to be an educational experience, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed.
After a while, the size means nothing. It gets back to the question of whether you’re making a 100 percent rate-of-return on $10,000 or $100 million. It doesn’t make any difference. If you complete 78 percent of your passes, it’d be nice if you were in the NFL, but if you’re in college or high school or even elementary school, I’m sure the thrill is just as great.
 

Paul Tudor Jones’s intensity and passion is quite apparent throughout as well. The film crew follows him over a course of several months, so viewers are able to see him on a down 5 percent day and an up 5 percent day. Paul Tudor Jones shares some insights on the qualities he values most as an investment manager:

The whole concept of the investment manager making these incredible intellectual decisions about which way the market is going to go — I don’t want that guy managing my money. If he can be that dispassionate, he doesn’t have the competitive nature which is necessary to be a winner in this game. I want the guy who is not giving to panic, who is not going to be overly emotionally involved, but who is going to hurt when he loses. When he wins, he’s going to have quiet confidence. But when he loses, he’s gotta hurt.
To do the job right requires such an enormous amount of concentration. It’s physically and emotionally mandatory that you find some time to relax. And you’ve got to be able to turn it off like that. There will be times though that I get so incredibly excited about a trade or even a project that I’ll wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning and there’s no way in hell that I’m going back to sleep. I’ll sit there in my dreams and trade for four hours. (more…)

1929 Wisdom

  
  Education
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From John Hussman:

Galbraith reminds us that the 1929 market crash did not have observable catalysts. Rather, his description is very much in line with the view that the market crashed first, and the underlying economic strains emerged later: “the crash did not come – as some have suggested – because the market suddenly became aware that a serious depression was in the offing. A depression, serious or otherwise, could not be foreseen when the market fell. There is still the possibility that the downturn in the indexes frightened the speculators, led them to unload their stocks, and so punctured a bubble that had in any case to be punctured one day. This is more plausible. “Some people who were watching the indexes may have been persuaded by this intelligence to sell, and others may have been encouraged to follow. This is not very important, for it is in the nature of a speculative boom that almost anything can collapse it. Any serious shock to confidence can cause sales by those speculators who have always hoped to get out before the final collapse, but after all possible gains from rising prices have been reaped. Their pessimism will infect those simpler souls who had thought the market might go up forever but who now will change their minds and sell. Soon there will be margin calls, and still others will be forced to sell. So the bubble breaks.”

(more…)

The Wisdom of the Legendary Paul Tudor Jones

  
  Education
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At 56, Paul Tudor Jonesis a  self made billionaire with a net worth of 3.3 billion and is ranked as the 336th richest  person in the world, he  knows exactly how to trade the biggest money for the biggest returns. One of Jones’ earliest and major successes was anticipating and trading through Black Monday in 1987, tripling his money during the event due to large short positions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 508 points to 1738.74 (-22.61%) on that day. While the majority of others lost more than they ever had in their lifetime, Jone’s was on the other side of their trade making a fortune. That is the sign of a truly great trader making money at the tipping points that most others miss.  Paul Tudor Jones has returned double digit annual returns to his investors for decades. He is one of the greatest traders to have ever lived, we need to sit up and listen closely to his advice, it is priceless.

Risk Management

“Don’t focus on making money; focus on protecting what you have.”

“Where you want to be is always in control, never wishing, always trading, and always, first and foremost protecting your butt.”

“At the end of the day, the most important thing is how good are you at risk control.”

Trader Psychology

“Every day I assume every position I have is wrong.”

“Losers average losers.”

“Trading is very competitive and you have to be able to handle getting your butt kicked.”

Method

“I believe the very best money is made at the market turns. Everyone says you get killed trying to pick tops and bottoms and you make all your money by playing the trend in the middle. Well for twelve years I have been missing the meat in the middle but I have made a lot of money at tops and bottoms.”

“The secret to being successful from a trading perspective is to have an indefatigable and an undying and unquenchable thirst for information and knowledge.”

“The concept of paying one-hundred-and-something times earnings for any company for me is just anathema. Having said that, at the end of the day, your job is to buy what goes up and to sell what goes down so really who gives a damn about PE’s?”
“The whole world is simply nothing more than a flow chart for capital.”
That cotton trade was almost the deal breaker for me. It was at that point that I said, ‘Mr. Stupid, why risk everything on one trade? Why not make your life a pursuit of happiness rather than pain?’

Black Monday October 19th 1987 ,Dow Jones Lost 22.6% in Single session

  
  Education
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black_monday

Where were you on Monday, Oct. 19, 1987?

Today is the first time since 2009 that October 19 has fallen on a Monday, and that has me thinking about that day. 

For you youngsters, that is the day better known as Black Monday, when the stock market plunged 508 points in a single session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22.6 percent, the worst daily percentage loss on record, closing at 1,738.74.

The New York Times front page headline the next day asked, “Does 1987 Equal 1929?”

Anyone working on Wall Street today who is under 40 is unlikely to have any professional memories of the event. To you, I suggest reading “Black Monday: The Stock Market Catastrophe of October 19, 1987” by Tim Metz. It is the definitive account of the crash, including the key players, personalities, decisions, news flows and first-hand accounts of what happened that day.

Bull vs Bear Market

  
  Education
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Bull Markets: Fear of missing out.
Bear Markets: Fear of being in.

Bull Markets: Everything I buy is going up — I’m a genius.
Bear Markets: Everything I buy is going down — I’m an idiot.

Bull Markets: See, fundamentals always win out.
Bear Markets: See, technicals and sentiment rule the markets.

Bull Markets: I knew I should have had more of my portfolio in stocks.
Bear Markets: I knew I should have had more of my portfolio in bonds.

Bull Markets: That guy’s been calling for a crash for years — he’s an idiot.
Bear Markets: That guy just called the crash — he’s a genius. (more…)

Bull Markets vs Bear Markets

  
  Education
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Bull Markets: Fear of missing out.
Bear Markets: Fear of being in.

Bull Markets: Everything I buy is going up — I’m a genius.
Bear Markets: Everything I buy is going down — I’m an idiot.

Bull Markets: See, fundamentals always win out.
Bear Markets: See, technicals and sentiment rule the markets.

Bull Markets: I knew I should have had more of my portfolio in stocks.
Bear Markets: I knew I should have had more of my portfolio in bonds.

Bull Markets: That guy’s been calling for a crash for years — he’s an idiot.
Bear Markets: That guy just called the crash — he’s a genius.

Bull Markets: I want to be a long-term buy and hold investor.
Bear Markets: I want to be a short-term trader. (more…)

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