Comparative Thinking

Today was somewhat dramatic -- we traded our plan by buying our spots which hit near the open, and then sold the rally into the morning bounce and went flat. We posted the exits real-time in our account.

Why did we exit? Because while commodities were trying to bounce most non-commodity tells we watch were acting poorly -- and a true oversold market bounce almost always has good breadth, i.e. all sectors should have participated in the bounce.

Here's an example of AAPL, one of our favorite tells, against WLT (AAPL black line at bottom):





But what does AAPL have to do with coal? Nothing, but real turn-arounds in the market almost always have participation by market leaders such as AAPL.