Trading Plan for Sept. 23, 2010

Current Long Positions (stop-losses in parentheses): TICC (9.04)

Current Short Positions (stop-losses in parentheses): None

BIAS: 3% Long

Economic Reports Due Out (Times are EST): Jobless Claims (8:30am), Existing Home Sales (10am), Leading Indicators (10am), EIA Natural Gas Report (10:30am), 

My Observations and What to Expect:

• Futures are moderately lower.
• It is very possible that futures will open up below 1130 this morning, but I wouldn’t look at it as weakness from the bulls, but more as a pullback at this point. 
• I would be more concerned if they starting  dropping below 1100-1090. 
• First time since August we have seen two days in a row in the negative. 
• Jobless claims that misses, could result in a very nice decline and offer an opportunity to put some capital to work. 
• A healthy sell-off today, would go a long ways in working off these overbought conditions. 
• One thing I would keep an eye on has been the volume on the down-days during the past two days of selling – they have been higher than all other days except for 9/2. 

Actions I Will Be Taking:

• Could add 1-2 new long position to the portfolio today if we can get a sell-off of respectable portions (nice wording, eh?)
• Will not be adding any new short positions to the portfolio for the foreseeable future, unless there’s some kind of game-changer that takes place.
• Upon adding a few long positions, will not hesitate to hedge those positions with a short position (ETF – SPY), if the market wants to continue the selling pressures. 
• Be careful with fading the gap this morning, with the jobs report coming out later, you could have a pretty substantial sell-off to start things off, and one that might not get filled. 
• Added a few more stocks to the chart pattern page for you to look at. 
• I could see myself having 3-4 new long positions by week’s end, if we end up giving back all of Monday’s gains in the days ahead.
• Raised the stop-loss in TICC to 9.04.