Technology, speculating and random musings

Get Long or Get out of the Way

2009-07-14T04:06:00.001-05:00

Ever since the March lows every pundit out there has been calling for a small pullback to slow down the thrust of the upward movement.

We finally got our pullback and everybody and their mother turned bearish calling for the resumption of the Great Depression Trade.

Luckily for us we do not have to wonder if the world is going to end or prosper. The market gives us all the cues we need to successfully navigate it.

After pulling back strongly the market has finally put a reversal day last Wednesday followed by a huge upside candle yesterday. The Wednesday reversal is marked by the upward pointing arrow on the chart. Yesterday’s action is the last bar on the chart and is clearly bullish as we have a wide range day finishing at the highs of the day.

As a speculator you can trade this market from either the bullish or bearish side. If you are a bear, you look at the high put on 6/11 as the high of the current swing and that would be your stop and you would go short here. That’s a valid trade but the difference between yesterday’s close and that high is 55 S&P points. Which means that if you go short here you either have to use a small position size to manage your risk or to take undue risk.

If you are bullish at this juncture you could go long at the open on Tuesday with your stop right below Wednesday’s lows. That’s 32 points of the S&P and is more manageable and allows for larger position size.

I was short few weeks ago and then went flat recently and finally went long couple of sessions ago. So obviously I am leaning to the upside here though I have my stop level well defined and will be ready to exit in a heart beat if the stop does not hold.

I did not switch positions rapidly because I like to flip flop ala Sen. Kerry, nor did I do it because I can foresee the future, which I cannot.

I switched positions because I am trying to manage my risk. Technical analysis does not foresee the future but merely helps us stack the odds in our favor. However to be honest with you so many people interpret the charts so differently at the end it is probably no better or worse than a coin toss.

The good news is that you can make money in the stock markets even with a coin toss. If you randomly guess the direction of the markets you can still make money if you know how to manage risk. All what you need to do is to make more money when you are correct than you lose when you are incorrect and then to compound your gains. The effects of compounding can be amazing.

In order to do so, you just need to look at the charts and try to locate reversal points. This means that you do not want to short an equity just because it had gone up so fast and you definitely do not want to go long an equity just because it went down too much.

What you need to do is find pivot points that can be used as your stop level, whether on the long side or the short side. Once you find those points you need to use proper risk management techniques to size your position. Finally you want your profit target to comfortably exceed your stop loss. This way you can flip a coin and still make money in the market as long as you can stomach extended draw downs because even a perfect coin can go on a long streak of heads or tails.

Weekly Wrap

2009-07-11T09:05:00.001-05:00

Portfolio	S&P 500	Nasdaq	Dow
7.98%	-2.67%	11.35%	-7.18%

Thanks to a good ride in QID (the inverse Nasdaq 100 ETF) the portfolio is back near its highs for the year and now sits over 10% ahead of the S&P 500. The Nasdaq continues to be the leader for the year and is about 5% ahead of the portfolio at this time.

After having gone down quiet a bit since the highs of early June it looks like the market has found its footing here. Earnings season is upon us and that should be the catalyst for large moves. Reading the charts at this juncture I would assume the large moves to be to the upside. However if we break the lows from this week it could get pretty ugly on the downside.

In the portfolio I am positioned to reflect my sentiment with a single equity stock, RIMM, making up most of the money in the portfolio. I am thinking that RIMM would hold the lows of this week and move higher from here. I will be doing some travelling this coming week so the chances are that I am not going to trade out of this position on Monday. But come mid week if we had broken this week’s lows then I am going to sell RIMM and turn bearish. If we hold the lows and move higher then I will give it lots of room to breath. A gap down would be devastating here but RIMM does not report earnings for a while, so I do not see a catalyst for a gap down.

Barring getting stopped out of RIMM there would be no trades this week as most of the portfolio’s cash is tied up in RIMM.

Really Feeling It?

2009-07-10T13:31:00.001-05:00

After yesterday’s purchase of 2000 shares of RIMM I got a tweet that I must be feeling it for tying up so much money in RIMM.

I am of course not feeling it no more nor less than any other trade I take. I have no crystal ball and cannot tell the future. All I do is to try to take trades that have an edge, cut my losses short and letting my profits run. The amount of money tied up in RIMM is truly irrelevant in this case, especially that I am looking for a short term trade.

What matters to me in this trade is not the total position size of the trade but the amount of money risked in the trade.

Let us dissect the elements of this trade.

First of all the setup. RIMM recently topped off at $86 exactly a month ago. since this it has crashed all the way to $63.36 two days ago. That day the stock’s volume was above average and it put a very long candle, meaning it recovered most of its losses for the day. While the range of the day was very wide, the difference between the open and close was very little.

Such a long wicked candle indicates a bullish behavior. After selling off for a month the sellers got exhausted and the buyers stepped in on above average volume.

This of course does not necessarily mean that the stock will rise from here but it does give us a great trade setup on the long side. Our stop is very well defined at the low of $63.36. Anything below that indicates that the buyers could not hold off the sellers and that it is time to exit our trade instead of buying and “hoping” for a recovery later.

The other factor is the sell-off over the last month. This is not a broken financial stock or a loser bank, this is a tech powerhouse with great earnings to boot. The deeper the sell-off the higher the probabilities of a snap back rally.

Once we figured out our setup and our stop loss level we need to decide our position size. I entered at $67, so my risk per share (assuming no gap down) is $67 - $63.36 = $3.64 per share.

Next I need to see how much am I willing to risk per trade, if I wanted to limit my total trade risk to $500 for example then I would buy $500/$3.64 = 137 shares (rounded down).

In this particular case I am willing to risk up to $10,000 per trade so I purchased 2000 shares. While the total size of the position is considerable, the actual risked amount is a fraction of that, and that’s the only thing that matters in this scenario.

Since I am risking $3.64 per share I would want to set my profit target to be at least $7.28. If my profit target is twice that of my stop loss level and my win percentage is little higher than 50% then on the long run the account will grow and compound assuming I can withstand draw downs and losing streaks and keep faith in my system.

Flip Flop

2009-07-09T11:42:00.001-05:00

After closing my bearish position (QID) yesterday I just went long RIMM few minutes ago as a proxy for the Nasdaq.

I could’ve gone long QLD as well, just choose RIMM because I think it will have a higher beta over the next few days.

I did not go long RIMM because i am overly bullish all of the sudden but because the setup is nearly perfect. The key to successful speculating is to take low risk setups and to cut losses short and let profits run. As we can see in the chart above, the Nasdaq had a considerable drop over the last couple of weeks. It finally put a long tail candle yesterday. The fact that we are oversold, as well as the statistical evidence in this scenario coupled with the fact that we have a very well defined stop loss level leads me to go long today, at least for a quick trade.

The stop for such a trade would be right below the low from yesterday’s candle. You know exactly how much you are risking per share and thus you can size your position based on how much you want to risk per trade.

This is a textbook setup and that’s the kind of setup that gives you an edge in trading.

As Flat as Can Be

2009-07-08T14:06:00.001-05:00

Booked my profits in QID and back to no equity exposure and 100% (except for the bonds) cash for the time being.

This market looks like it can go a lot lower from here as it has pierced through the moving averages and support levels.

However it is getting too easy on the short side here, and one thing I learned throughout the years is that whenever it gets too comfortable I am in for a bad surprise. The portfolio is sitting at the highs of the year so I am going to the sidelines for the next few days while I reevaluate the situation.

Weekly Wrap

2009-06-27T15:23:00.001-05:00

Portfolio	S&P 500	Nasdaq	Dow
0.58%	1.73%	16.56%	-3.98%

For about four weeks now the broad markets have been stuck in a range, between 880 on the down side and 950 on the upside.

We ended the week smack in the middle of the range at near 920 on the S&P 500. There is lots of chatter about the golden cross of the 50 day moving average above the 200 day moving average. Or the fact that we are went above the 200 day moving average and held it. Lots of reasons to be technically bullish at this juncture. Including the long bullish candle at the end of the week.

Due to all the reasons to be bullish I chose to be contrarian and bought 3000 QID (inverse Nasdaq ETF) at the close on Friday. I have a tight stop for them of about 4%. If the bullish trend continues, I will be stopped out and will look to re-enter a high beta long position. On the other hand, if we move downward from here on the broad market then my position will gain in value. It has been eight weeks since we entered this range, so I do not know if next week will take us out of it, though I am hoping for a quick resolution in either direction so that I can position accordingly.

As of now, my equity position is made up entirely of the QID position I entered on Friday. I have a stop order but I do not have any planned trades otherwise.

Darvas

2009-06-23T03:31:00.001-05:00

Nicolas Darvas famously made money in the stock market by being disconnected from the news and following price patterns while on the road. I’ve been out of the country for over three weeks. I have been shut out from CNBC and the other media outlets. I am not reading stock related blogs. I have no “expert” input as far the market is concerned. All I have is the charts on my Tradestation platform.

As such, I have been feeling that I have no edge as I could not convince myself to be long the market. In fact, I let my stops take me out of my positions and proactively closed the last of them last week and did not attempt to replace the sales. Typically I would be watching Fast Money or other media shows and would find “plenty of stocks to buy”.

Looking back at the positions that I have sold, which got killed subsequent to my sales, they were also down prior to my sales erasing my profits for the year, I feel lucky for having sold and stayed out of the market over the last few days.

In retrospect, it is clear that CNBC and the other sources are not really an Edge but a distraction for any system trader. I am glad that I am following in the steps of Darvas, though with much less success… so far.

Looking at the broader market we see the extent of the damage over the last week. The commodity related stocks and the momentum stocks got destroyed at much harsher rate than the broader market. The chart shows that the next logical support level for the S&P 500 is the 880 level. If this is a mere pull back in an uptrend then we should be able to bounce off the 880 level and continue the upward move. If that level cannot hold we can be erasing all the move since March in a heart beat.

From this vantage point the safest action is to stay on the sidelines or to go short. Going short here gives us the advantage of having two well defined stop levels. The aggressive traders can place a stop above Friday’s high of 927. People that want to give the position more breathing room can place the stop above the swing’s high of 956.

Weekly Wrap

2009-06-21T07:16:00.001-05:00

Portfolio	S&P 500	Dow	Nasdaq
0.04%	1.99%	-2.80%	15.88%

When in doubt, Get Out!!!. The portfolio, aided by an interest payment on one of the GMAC bonds ended the week barely in the black after another horrid sell off in commodity related stocks. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is barely in the black for the year and the Dow is barely in the red while the Nasdaq outpaces every other major index and is still up double digits for the year.

I am in doubt of the direction of the market so I sold the remaining stock positions and now in 100% cash as far as equities are concerned. Still holding the three bond positions.

The weekly chart of the S&P 500 shows that this was only the second down week since the March lows. More importantly, while we had continuous progress to the upsides for the first part of the move we have stalled for the past several weeks. This can be a consolidation pattern after the big move that resolves itself to the upside. However it is more likely that we have stalled here and that we will correct through time (side ways action) and price (lower price action) over the next several weeks. Fall is typically bullish for stocks. So if we manage to consolidate in time and price over the next couple of months, without too much damage, we should have a nice rally towards the end of the year.

Any any rate, I do not have much clarity and will wait to see what happens next week and try to pick new positions carefully.

No Edge

2009-06-18T15:25:00.001-05:00

The market cannot decide where it is going here and neither can I. I am going to the sidelines while this action resolves itself one way or another.

The Fly

2009-06-18T04:24:00.001-05:00

When Dylan Ratigan walked off the set of Fast Money and quit CNBC I was quick to message Howard (aka Mr. Serial Entrepreneur) suggestion he hook up with Ratigan on a future endeavor, a real life, real traders show to replace the soon-to-be-very-lame Fast Money.

Howard of course was not sitting on his ass waiting for somebody like me to bring this up. Among his many ventures he was working on beefing up StockTwits to include a new feature, StockTwits TV.

I do not know if something is in the works to bring Dylan on board though I keep bugging Howard about it. The timing could not be any better as CNBC is becoming more pathetic than ever and there is a real need for a show (or a channel) by speculators for speculators.

CNBC this week sunk to a new low even for them when they wasted time and energy on the stupid Fly story, where Obama swatted a fly that was bugging him. The amount of coverage that CNBC has devoted to the Fly story has ushered them from the marginally irrelevant to the utterly useless.

Weekly Wrap

2009-06-13T09:15:00.001-05:00

Posting continues to be sporadic as I am travelling and busy on some projects.

The portfolio ended the week up just over 7% for the year, besting the Dow and the S&P 500 yet lagging the Nasdaq which is now up just under 18% on the year:

Portfolio	S&P	Dow	Nasdaq
7.24%	4.76%	0.62%	17.87%

The broader market continues its assault on support at the 950 level. While the markets couldn’t break through this level to the upside they were not turned away by it. If it wasn’t for the seasonally low volume this action would’ve been quiet positive for the longs as it indicates consolidation before breaking above the 950 level and continuing the upward trend.

I am personally assuming that this congestion will resolve itself to the upside as we break above 950 and continue higher. However if proven wrong the markets have done us a great favor by defining clear stop levels for us. Aggressive traders can set stop loss levels below the action of the last two weeks at 920. Traders that want more breathing room can use the most recent swing lows of around 880 for their stop. Either way it the stops are a long way from the March lows and definitely much higher than eventual lows if indeed we turn lower and resume the larger bearish trend.

In the portfolio I did not like the way LVS and DRYS behaved over the last two weeks during a moderately bullish action for the broader market. So I have been tightening my respective stops in both. LVS stop got hit on Friday, at the low of the day exiting this losing position, for now. I may go back into LVS if it breaks out to the upside, but for now I am letting it go.

My stops on DRYS are getting very tight as well as you can see by the horizontal line in the graph.

While I still own DRYS it will probably get stopped out this week. I am currently researching other choices to replace LVS and potentially DRYS if it gets sold.

TCK on the other hand continues its upward march and I continue to adjust my trailing stop accordingly. This stock has gone up over 400% since the March lows and it does not show signs of slowing down. I am inclined to put some (or all) of the money raised from selling LVS into TCK. Still debating and will tweet my trades when I make them as always.

Interesting note this week, the Dow has finally climbed back into positive territory for the year, if barely, and now all major averages are in the green for the year.

Earlier in the year I was getting spammed by all those “think tanks” putting out position papers on how the Obama economic plans are destroying life as we know it and are the sole cause for the declines in January and Feb. of 2009. My replies to all those people was the same, if you did not speak up during the Bush regime fiasco’s and raping of America then shut the fuck up. I wonder if all those so called thinkers are busy drafting new position papers attributing the massive rally since early March to Obama’s plans?

Weekly Wrap

2009-05-29T18:16:00.001-05:00

Propelled by strong moves in DRYS and TCK the portfolio ended up positive on the year again this week. This time leaping past the S&P 500 and setting its sights on catching up with the Nasdaq. The lowly Dow continues to lag and is still negative on the year.

There have been no trades in the portfolio this week and barring a speedy collapse and/or pull backs in the portfolio stocks there will be no trades next week either. I am going to start marking my stop levels on the charts of my positions so that you can see where my exit points are and how close/far they are from getting hit.

People keep talking about volume and about reasons for this market to pull back. But as we can see from the charts, the market is holding its own and continuous to consolidate on its way for a break out above 930. If that happens, 1000 on the S&P 500 could be within easy reach. If you are anticipating the end of this bear market and are aggressive with your trading the markets gave you a gift this week by defining a good stop level on the S&P 500. The 880 level which has held up all of May is now the perfect stop level for people anticipating the end of this rally. If we hold that level we can continue to be bullish. If we firmly close below that level we can turn bearish.

After six months of zig zags, ups and downs, and bunch of horrid losses in SRS and DRYS, the portfolio ended the first half of the year up nearly 9%. Not the most exciting thing in the world but I will take it. The portfolio is powered by DRYS, TCK and LVS.

TCK continues to defy gravity and rocket up. My buddy asked me today if I am going to book profits in TCK. I mentioned that the last time I booked profits was right before the stock doubled in a month’s time. I am going to stick to my system and wait for trailing stops to take me out of my positions, fully knowing that I am going to be leaving 20-30% on the table when the stock finally comes back to earth.

LVS is still consolidating but with too much volatility for my taste. I am worried as this pattern often indicates topping action and resolves itself to the down side. None the less, I am not going to anticipate direction and act on those thoughts. My stop as indicated on the chart is around $7.50. I am going to hold on to the stock and see if it will continue to move higher or take my stop out.

Meanwhile, DRYS, which lost almost 40% in three days right after I bought it earlier in the month looks like is going back higher. I love the volume pattern on this chart even though the price pattern has not cooperated. You can see the volume on up days outpacing that on down days. This is a classical accumulation pattern where big money is flowing into and accumulating the stock.

I am holding the stock now with a stop loss below the recent swing’s lows. The idea is for this pattern to resolve to the upside starting a longer term up trend.

No planned trades for next week unless one of my stops gets taken out.

Weekly Wrap

2009-05-23T12:13:00.001-05:00

The portfolio ended the week down almost 3% on the year. Badly lagging the Nasdaq and roughly in line with the S&P 500 and the Dow. Interesting to note that over the last few weeks my GMAC bonds have been showing strength while the GM bonds are quickly heading to $0. On the equity side I have four positions, FAS is a tiny position while TCK, LVS and DRYS comprise the bulk of the portfolio. Interestingly, the position sizes ended up roughly of the same value after recent ups and downs in the market though they did not start to be of equal value.

The broad market is still behaving well since the March lows. While it ended the week on a low note the uptrend is still intact and only show sideway consolidation which is good for the bull case. Many people, including myself, are jumping the gun and predicting the end of this run. We may witness that soon, but till we start trending lower the best risk reward ratio is on the long side for now.

TCK is still doing well, continuing its near vertical climb upwards. It looks like it wants to break above $14.50 and continues to test that level. If this push fails then the fall would be quick and steep. On the other hand if we break above the $14.50 level convincingly then we easily see another 50% move up in the stock pretty quickly based on a measured move analysis.

DRYS is behaving well on up days with nice volume spikes. However it had crashed after announcing a dilutive equity offering. The ATM (At the money) offering is now complete and we shall see if DRYS can muster a continuation of the upward trend it started in March. Shipping rates continue to climb and the Baltic Dry Index is soaring. My trailing stop is in the low $3, so if falters from here it will cost me a bundle.

LVS looks like it is consolidating after the near 1000% run up it had in the recent few weeks. I am not too crazy about the recent pattern with the high volume and the wide long candles. This is a reversal pattern in my book so I will be keeping a close eye on this one. My stop is in the mid $6 and I may move it up if the stock does not behave well next week.

Natural Gas is the Widow Maker. It again fooled me into going long (not in the blog’s portfolio but in another account of mine) as it showed a reversal pattern on strong volume. This did not last as the price crashed shortly there after leaving me with a big loss. I still think that the current pattern is indicative of a bottoming process to be followed by a long run in natural gas that would last a year or more. But for now, I am on the sidelines.

What are they thinking?

2009-05-21T14:21:00.001-05:00

I needed to ask Comcast a question today. I hate talking to them over the phone because after going through a maze of options I always end up with somebody that is either unwilling or unable to help me.

So I visited their website and was pleasantly surprised to see a link to chat with customer support on their home page. That’s awesome, I always prefer to use online chat to resolve my issues and have used it with many companies very successfully in the past. Including last week when I registered an international domain for my new project and I used an on-line chat to ask the customer rep many questions on the mechanics of international domain registration.

Any how, so I clicked to chat, eagerly waiting for the familiar LivePerson, or similar, interface to pop up and for me to ask my questions.

Instead I was taken to a page where I got to select which service I want to ask questions about. Fair enough, they do offer cable, t.v. and phone services. My particular question pertained to my overall service and not specifically to one of those three, but none the less, I picked one.

I was then taken to another page, with about a dozen required fields. I needed my first name, last name, address, phone number, email address, description of my issue, issue type, etc… just so that I can start chatting and asking my questions.

Patiently, I filled in all the fields and clicked submit, only to be told that my phone number was not in a valid format. Didn’t explain what they consider to be a valid format. So I had to play with the formats for a while and finally it let me in.

Only I did not get to chat with anybody. Instead I was dumped on a page that told me there are no matching documents? Whaaaat? What are they talking about? A button on the bottom of the page claimed that it will take me to the chat screen.

I clicked on it, to finally get the image above. Something about the Queue not being available.

I guess i should not have expected Comcast’s online support to be better than their phone support. In fact, this is pretty much par for the course.

My question however is the following: When some mid level Comcast manager is tasked with the job of providing an online chat support mechanism, what is the thought process that results in what they currently have onsite? I mean you really have to get out of your way to fuck up this task, do not you think? There are thousands of sites that use online chat for customer service and they all pretty much follow the same format. You submit a nick name, possibly a topic, and immediately a LivePerson (or similar product) window pops up and you start chatting.

Have these people never done this before? Had they not researched it? Had they thought they were the first ever to implement this functionality and thus decided to pioneer this novel approach?

I mean, which is it? Did they look at the way others implement the service and decide to screw it up instead of following the successful models? or did they not consider what others are doing? simply assuming they were the first to do this?

I cannot decide which answer is worse.

“Capitalists” always claim that big government is the problem. Had they actually lived on this planet instead of in their own dreams, they would realize that Big Business is as big a problem, if not bigger, than Big Government.

Asp.net MVC and the Microsoft Charting Control

2009-05-17T22:25:00.001-05:00

For the new project I am working on I require the display of some dynamically generated charts. I am developing the code using asp.net MVC. So I was pondering what charting component to use. I have used Google charting services in the past. They are so easy to use and I do not have to develop or host any components locally. There are two limitations with using the Google charts. One, is that they are served using the http protocol. Applications that require the use of SSL end up with mixed secure and insecure content on the site, causing browsers like IE to give warnings every time you visit the page. The other issue is that there is a usage limit. The limit is high, but with several charts being displayed on every page I can possibly hit the limit if the project has moderate success.

So instead I decided to generate the charts locally, this way I have full control over the charts and also can control caching which will be important in this particular case.

The next question then became which charting component to use? I have used http://www.dotnetcharting.com/ in the past with great success. I have also used http://dundas.com/ charts in the past and was also happy with them. Not wanting to spend any money on the charting component I investigated the new release of a Microsoft component called Microsoft Charting Control which Scott Guthrie announced recently. After spending some time researching this I found out that Microsoft had bought some software from Dundas and that this component is in reality the Dundas charts repackaged. So that gives me the best of both worlds, a world class charting component, for free.

Here are the links to download the charting component and the tool support for Visual Studio 2008:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=130f7986-bf49-4fe5-9ca8-910ae6ea442c&DisplayLang=en

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1D69CE13-E1E5-4315-825C-F14D33A303E9&displaylang=en

There is plethora of examples on how to build the charts and sample code:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mschart/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=1591

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EE8F6F35-B087-4324-9DBA-6DD5E844FD9F&displaylang=en

But very little in the way of integrating them with asp.net MVC. In the comments, Scott posted a link to a blog that described this but it was not really complete nor 100% clear to me.

Here is what I needed to do (after installing the actual control from the links above) to make my app recognize the charting components.

In my web.config I had to add the following lines:

in the <controls> subsection of the <pages> section.

in the <httpHandlers> section.

For IIS 7, I had to add the following

<add name="ChartHttpHandler" preCondition ="integratedMode" verb="GET,HEAD,POST" path="ChartImg.axd"
type="System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.ChartHttpHandler, System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"

to the <handlers> section.

Visual Studio adds the following line the first time you drag a chart from the tool box to a design surface:

to the <assemblies> section.

This allowed me to create a simple page with a chart using the designer. It showed sample data when I ran the project in Visual Studio, but then the minute I published the project, it stopped working.

After a whole lot of time wasted trying to figure out why this failed, I discovered that the controls create the images by storing them in a temp folder on disk. The default path for the temp folder is some weird path (c:\tempImageFiles) that does not exist on my machine and the controls do not create it.

Turns out that I can override the path by adding a setting to the <appSettings> section to change the path, the setting is:

<add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;dir=c:\TempImageFiles\;" />

I just changed the path to an existing path on disk and that worked when I published to my local IIS.

However when I tested by publishing to my shared host, it failed again. So back to the drawing board. After a lot of head scratching I found that I can instruct the controls to use Memory for temporary image storage and that solved the problem at my shared host.

Here is a link http://blogs.msdn.com/deliant/archive/2008/12/02/managing-chart-generated-images-with-chart-image-handler.aspx that describes the different settings for that key.

Great, so that solves the setup problems, but how do actually use this in MVC?

A quick Google search unveiled several unacceptable solutions. Some require writing directly to the Response object. I was not about to go down that path. The whole reason for going MVC is not to do stuff of the sort any more.

Another solution requires the use of the MVC Futures project, code that is slated to become part of the official release in the future, but may not make it. I wanted to use the released MVC.

Other solutions require writing your own custom ActionResult classes. While I do not mind doing this, I am not crazy about maintaining my own set of extensions to asp.net MVC that may become obsolete or broken with future releases.

What I really want to do is something like this:

<img src=’/MyChartController/GetChart/1’ alt=’Chart generated with MS Charting Control and served using MVC controller’>

to my html and have the code in my controller generate everything needed to display the chart correctly.

My final solution ended up using bits and pieces of the last two solutions I mentioned though relying on released MVC features without the need to write custom classes or using the Futures libraries.

Here is my sample code:

// Notice the return type, the regular, released, FileResult ActionResult. Not a generic result, nor a custom written class.

public FileResult GetChart(int id) {

            // Create a Sample Chart with bogus data. Sample code can be found in the documentation, i just used some of the sample code in the examples I linked to above.

            System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.Chart Chart2 = new System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.Chart();
            Chart2.Width = 400;
            Chart2.Height = 300;
            Chart2.RenderType = System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.RenderType.ImageTag;
            Chart2.Palette = System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.ChartColorPalette.BrightPastel;
            System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.Title t = new Title("IMG source streamed from Controller", Docking.Top, new System.Drawing.Font("Trebuchet MS", 14,    System.Drawing.FontStyle.Bold), System.Drawing.Color.FromArgb(26, 59, 105));
            Chart2.Titles.Add(t);
            Chart2.ChartAreas.Add("Series 1");
            // create a couple of series
            Chart2.Series.Add("Series 1");
            Chart2.Series.Add("Series 2");
            // add points to series 1
            for(int value=0;value <10;value++) {
                Chart2.Series["Series 1"].Points.AddY(value);
            }

            for (int value = 20; value < 50; value++)
            {
                Chart2.Series["Series 2"].Points.AddY(value + 1);
            }

            Chart2.BorderSkin.SkinStyle = BorderSkinStyle.Emboss;
            Chart2.BorderlineWidth = 2;
            Chart2.BorderColor = System.Drawing.Color.Black;
            Chart2.BorderlineDashStyle = ChartDashStyle.Solid;
            Chart2.BorderWidth = 2;
            Chart2.Legends.Add("Legend1");

            // This is the most important part, and the departure from using any custom classes or Futures library.

            // Simply use a MemoryStream to save the chart.
            MemoryStream imageStream = new MemoryStream();
            Chart2.SaveImage(imageStream, ChartImageFormat.Png);

            // Reset the stream’s pointer back to the start of the stream.
            imageStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

            // return the normal FileResult available in the current release of MVC

            return File(imageStream, "image/png");

        }

Of course, the content of my chart will not be this trivial. You could load the image from a database, but in my particular case, the images will constantly change as the underlying data changes so I cannot store a static copy in the database. Instead, i will generate the data series from the database and bind the Chart to my data source. I will also have other chart types, like pie charts, etc… but the general concept will be exactly as laid out above. Build the chart programmatically, load it with data, write it to a memory stream and return the stream as a FileResult.

The best news is that the solution uses a free (but very powerful) charting Control, using the released ASP.NET MVC and works in shared hosting environments.

Easy as pie :)

Weekly Wrap

2009-05-09T15:07:00.001-05:00

Doh!!! After having gone positive for the year last week, and up nearly 10% on the year by mid week, I made all the wrong moves and ended the week down 3% on the year, a 12% swing in matter of days.

My first mistake was to buy DRYS in size right before they announced a very dilutive equity offering that sent the stock plummeting over 30% from my purchase price within 36 hours of my purchase. While not completely my mistake, still, it was my bad luck I guess. That position along caused a near $15,000 swing in my portfolio and sent me from positive on the year to negative on the year.

My other mistake, though not as devastating, was to declare the end of the bear market’s rally after witnessing Thursday’s distribution day on heavy volume. Friday reversed most of the action and taught me once again to stick to the system and not to try to make predictions. I should’ve just stuck to my trailing stops and kept on buying into new highs. I was so convinced my of prediction that I sold my BAC preferred stock and bought TWM, the Russel 2000 inverse ETF.

I am losing money on TWM, but the losses are minimal compared to the destruction that DRYS imposed on my portfolio.

My last position is LVS, which is down slightly, but nothing material. Other than that, it is cash and GMAC/GM bonds.

The breadth of the move recently coupled with Thursday’s actions still indicates to me that the risks of a downward move outweigh the risks of an upward move, none the less, I am going to try to stick to my system and not try to front-run the markets. As Howard tweeted to me, there will be plenty of time to go short when the time is right.

I am not going to post any charts this weekend and will have light posting over the coming week as I am working on an exciting project that I hope to unveil in about a week or so.

happy trading.

Your Bear Market Rally is Over Dude

2009-05-07T13:02:00.001-05:00

They bought the rumor (Bank Stress Tests) and Sold the News. Notice how the S&P 500 has climbed up steadily nearing the 200 day moving average only to get turned out when we got close there. So many people are watching the 200 day moving average to sell this rally and book their profits, but the market is not going to let them have it this easily.

This may be a one day event, but with my money I am betting that the next leg is down in this market, we probably retrace 38-50% (those wonderful Fibonacci sequences) of the rally. A 50% retracement would be around 130 points on the S&P 500 which would put us back at 800 which is where the 50 day moving average is and an important psychological point.

With my money, I sold the last of my BAC-B preferred shares and bought TWM, the inverse Russell 2000 index. I am holding on to LVS and DRYS for now just because I love the volume pattern on those charts but I realize that I could be in for painful pullbacks on those high fliers.

In my day trading account I bought QID, May SRS calls that expire in 8 days, May FO puts and shorted FSLR mid morning. Going to try to ride the down wave early. My stops are all at today’s highs (today’s lows for SRS)

Weekly Wrap

2009-05-02T11:30:00.001-05:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pZVKBLMyPP0OOCwx7fnPEaA

The portfolio ended the week positive on the year. This is only the second time this happens in 2009. The first time was short lived as the portfolio went back into negative the very next week. Interestingly it was not till the last day of the week that the portfolio went positive, it was down almost 8% earlier in the week, a 10% turn around in 3 days.

The portfolio is now made up mostly of TCK. My two other large positions were in QLD and the BAC preferred shares. I sold QLD near the close on Friday. I had a limit order to sell BAC-B at $12.60 and most of the position got filled except for 383 shares which is what I have left. Other than that it is all cash and TCK, plus my GM/GMAC bonds.

I have been tweeting my trades instead of posting about them. Tweeting is a lot more lightweight and if you wish, you can follow me and get the trade alerts right away. I still immediately post my trades to the Google Spreadsheets which are always accessible from this blog and also can be subscribed for immediate updates.

So why did I sell out of QLD and BAC-B? Well, I had tweeted earlier that I believe a close above 875 on the S&P 500 would be very bullish and propel us another 10-20% to the upside on the broad market. I still believe so firmly, however, the push to close above 875 in the last 2 minutes of trading was too cute for me. This reminds me of the time when the Dow closed about 14,000. It happened very late, on light volume and reached precisely the point that everybody was waiting for. It went tumbling from there on.

I do not believe that the market will tumble from this point, but I do think the nature of the close indicates that we are going to have a pull back this week before we continue with our upward trend. As such, I raised some cash, not because I am bearish, but because I want to add high beta stocks on the upcoming pull back. I do not want to merely ride the next up leg of the market, I want to ride the rocket stocks that move significantly higher in the short term after the pull back.

The stocks that I am considering to add to on the pull back are LVS, DRYS, FEED and ICO. Each of those had monstrous runs lately and they could very well come down crashing from here. So this is not a move for the faint of heart. However, I believe that they have more room to run on the upside as the current broad market rally continues. I also believe that when they do run they will outperform the market. I will be managing my risk with stops and monitoring the stocks closely.

The S&P 500 continues its beautiful rally making higher highs and higher lows in a perfect trend. It cleared the important level of 875 but as I said earlier I do not put too much stalk in that as literally came in the last two minutes of trading on Friday. Looking at this chart I expect a shallow pull back to around the 840 level and then resumption of the uptrend. The prior lower high in the dominant down trend occurred at either 943 early this year or 1007 in the Fall of 2008 depending on how you read the chart. Clearing those levels would officially break the down trend and end this bear market. While I think this rally has room to go, I am not sure that the bear market will end. We shall see what happens as we approach those critical levels.

TCK continues its amazing run. The falling 200 day moving average is acting like a magnet now and it seems only a matter of time before we reach it. The question then becomes whether it will barrel through the 200 day moving average or fall down hard. This run has been amazing as of late, but if it clears the 200 day moving average it has the potential to triple from there as there is literally no upside resistance due to the severity of the sharp drop in Fall of 2008. Due to the way the stock ran up so quickly my stop is now extremely wide, the stock could drop 50% from here and my stop would not get hit. That’s good in the sense that I will give it breathing room on pullbacks but bad in the sense that if it comes crashing from here my gains would turn to losses.

The following charts are stocks I am considering adding to on pull back next week. They all share the same characteristics of being severely beaten down with massive recent run ups on volume that is way above average. My type of stocks.

Trader Mike

2009-05-01T17:51:00.001-05:00

I started this blog in part to expose my view that there is no such thing as an “investor” in the equity market. It is all about speculation. The difference between the people that understand that is speculation and those that claim to investors is that the former group knows how to manage risk and the latter group does not.

Trader Mike has a great post about this today. Here is a snippet.

Ah, so perhaps using stop loss orders is what is ’such a gamble’? Well I can come up with all kinds of scenarios in which ‘long term investors’ and ‘buy and holders’ who didn’t have stops in place got crushed. Look no further than most bank stocks these days. Bank of America is still down over 80% off of its highs. Not to mention all the ones that have gone to zero. I guarantee you there were plenty of ‘long term investors’ who went down with those ships, some probably even doubled down.

You can find the rest here.

good stuff.

Zignals.com

2009-05-01T12:18:00.001-05:00

In response to my latest post, Declan left a comment introducing his latest project, Zignals.com. Declan is one of the original traders-turned-bloggers and he is also one of the best. So when I saw the comments I went to check out Zignals.com.

I like some stuff about it and not others. I will start with the stuff that I did not like since it is a short list. There is no good way to link a watch list to a chart, so if i am in the chart application I have to manually enter the symbols. Also, the interface for adding indicators to a chart can be just a tad easier.

Now to the stuff I liked about it. This has to be one of the best looking web applications I’ve ever seen, and I have been developing web apps for a living since the first beta of Mosaic was released many years ago. It is beautiful, runs well, mostly intuitive, and it simply works. I love it as a software developer.

Past the beauty of the application comes the functionality. I do not know if they plan to charge for this or not, I have not read the help, I assume they would, and I think they should, at least for a tiered premium access. The application is full of functionality that you seldom find in more mature, and more expensive products. It has Alerts, Charts, Screeners and what must be the best web based portfolio manager out there.

Do not take my word for it, hop on to Zignals.com, sign up and start using it, be careful, you may get addicted :)

Kudos to Declan and the team for a job well done.

Best Free Charts

2009-04-27T21:22:00.001-05:00

Maoxian had a post a while ago discussing various web charting software. It had the usual run of the mill. Nothing interested me since I use, and love, Tradestation for my charting and my short term trading.

Well, today somebody left a comment mentioning a site called BestFreeCharts.com I thought a site with such a cutesy cannot be any good but I am always curious so I visited.

Lo and Behold the charts are awesome, they are the closest thing I have ever seen to Tradestation. I know many people swear by Think or Swim, but I never liked their charting setup, some how it just did not click for me. This on the other hand felt natural right off the bat. The market is closed now, so i do not know what it will do during market hours, if it actually has real-time charting that would be amazing.

What’s even more interesting is that the site is written in Microsoft’s new technology, SilverLight. I’ve been delaying toying around with SilverLight, mainly because I am so busy with other stuff. But now I am thinking that I should start playing with it.

More Tech less Politics

2009-04-26T20:28:00.001-05:00

I grew up in a political house and politics is in my blood… but my intent of this blog was to muse about software mostly, and stocks and politics as fillers. Ended up spending more on the fillers than on the tech stuff.

Time to refocus and retool. No politics unless something grandiose happens…

Weekly Wrap

2009-04-25T21:14:00.001-05:00

For the third week in a row, the broad market index, S&P 500, finished around the 870 level without managing to break through it to the upside. It looks to me like the index by moving sideways is digesting its recent run up from the March lows in preparation for another run up to the 950 level nearing the falling 200 day moving average. While the longer term trend is down and indicates another leg down in few weeks, the current trend is up and there is no reason to fight it. The proper position for now is to be long the market with a trailing stop. The trailing stop can be as tight or wide as your tolerance allows.

The Nasdaq composite continues to motor higher, at better than 7% up for the year, it is the strongest of all the broad domestic indexes. I am long the QLD, which is the double long ETF of the QQQQ, the Nasdaq 100 index.

The Nasdaq’s run is steep and a little breather is in order, but just like the broader market, the current trend is up and there is no use fighting the tape.

My other position is in TCK. It had a huge run up but then started to consolidate for few days. Earlier this week it dipped even lower tripping all kinds of stop losses. Then some news came out about some financing deal and within a single minute the stock shot up over 30% and held its gains for the day. The volume for the day ended up being the highest ever as far as I can tell. If you read William O’neal books you know to respect the volume and I intend to. While some may view this move as an opportunity to sell, to me, it is an opportunity to buy.

AIPC, as reported earlier in the week, was my largest position and got sold this week as my stop got hit. This is probably market manipulation ahead of earnings so that the big players shake out the “weak” hands like me. I’d rather be a weak hand and get shaken out than to hang on stubbornly and watch my position turn into a big loss. I intend to redeploy the money into TCK in the coming days.

Darn

2009-04-24T14:41:00.001-05:00

The market keeps on rallying… but it rallies without me as my largest position took a hit. AIPC has dropped significantly from $35 couple of weeks ago and took out my stops today. I ended up getting horrible fills to boot and sold out at the low of the day. Some of the shares got filled at over 40 cents away from my stop price, in the middle of the day, these market makers have no shame.

It looks to me like big players are toying with the small speculators ahead of earnings. My guess is that earnings impress and AIPC runs much higher from here, but I am not going to impose my opinion on my risk management. My stops got hit and I am out of the stock… for now.

TCK

2009-04-21T14:45:00.001-05:00

This is a 1-minute chart of TCK today, showing how in a single minute, the stock moved up 30%.

How would you like to have been short that stock this morning? holly crap.

Of course, if you are reading this blog then you should’ve been on the right side of this trade and would’ve been long TCK this morning as I’ve been posting about it for ever and postulating that it will be, in my opinion, the best performing stock of 2009.