the Trade-Radar + TradingStockAlerts blog

When I first began writing this blog, I was fascinated with the ProShares Ultra ETFs. I believed that by using the TradeRadar software, I would be able to time the market with sufficient accuracy to profit in upward trending markets with the ultra long funds and profit in down markets with the ultra inverse funds. The reality has turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. As some of you who commented on those early blog posts knew, market timing is no piece of cake, even when you have a software tool to help. It seemed that I ended up chasing trends that did not play out with sufficient duration to make the trade worthwhile. My trading record, such as it is... My record has not been encouraging. In my first attempt at using an ultra inverse fund, I purchased QID , the Ultra Inverse QQQ ETF, in early February, before the market broke down later that month. The NASDAQ began to recover soon after and I ended up losing over 5% on the investment because I held QID too long. Withou...

Since Agnico-Eagle Mines may not be well known in the US, I went looking for some analysis that might provide support for the TradeRadar BUY signal. The following is an excerpt from a Business Week article from June 7 titled "Canada's Resource Boom: Five Great Plays" where AEMLW is one of the five: The weaker U.S. dollar, inflation concerns, and rising demand from the jewelry market out of India, China, and the Middle East with their growing economies have made gold a hot commodity lately. With mining production slipping from a peak in 2001 and more physical bullion being socked away in bank vaults as collateral for gold exchange-traded funds, the supply-demand imbalance has also favored higher prices. Toronto-based Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited (AEMLW) has only one mine, in Quebec, currently producing gold. But it's poised to grow rapidly as it brings three additional mines in Quebec and projects in Mexico and Finland onstream in the next couple of years. The company h...

I wanted to write a small post to describe what steps I took that led me to believe it was time to bail out of QLD , the ProShares Ultra QQQ ETF, and jump into QID , the ProShares UltraShort QQQ ETF. First, general intuition came into play. I was not alone in feeling that the markets were over-bought. There was plenty of discussion on this topic in the financial press and on financial web sites and blogs. The economic news continues to be somewhat downbeat so the current healthy earnings season and rising stock prices came as somewhat of a surprise. This lack of correlation between the economy and stock prices sounded a cautionary note. Checking the StockConsultant.com site, which is one of the tools provided on the TradeRadar blog, my overbought assumption seemed to be reinforced. The site showed QQQQ, for example, to be at the top of their proprietary RallyBand and the reversion to the filtered trend or down to the bottom of the RallyBand seemed to be the most likely next move. ...

Like many other investors, I have been enjoying the recent run-up in equity markets but have worried that it has been a bit overdone. It seems that every piece of news, good or bad, resulted in the market advancing. This is something that can't go on forever. This afternoon, with QQQQ down about 1%, I pulled the trigger and sold the ProShares Ultra QQQ ETF ( QLD ) and bought the ProShares UltraShort QQQ ( QID ) again. QLD was sold at $90.28 for a 2.7% gain over the course of under three weeks. QID was bought at $48.39 and ended the day at $48.53 for a 0.4% gain. If the mood of the market is going to change now that the enthusiasm of earnings season is over, bad news will be interpreted as bad news, not ignored. For a list of all the things wrong with the market these days, check out this post by Doug Kass .

I have written about the ProShares Ultra funds in previous posts. I would like to recount some of my observations on using these funds to capture gains on swings in the market. My premise has been that with reasonable market timing, an investor should be able to jump in and out of these funds and capture a reasonable portion of profits in both market downswings and upturns. I chose to experiment initially with the ProShares UltraShort QQQ ( QID ). The NASDAQ seemed weak back in January and February so I loaded up on QID. Sure enough we got a market break in late February. As the market tanked, QID gained at twice the rate the PowerShares NASDAQ 100 ETF ( QQQQ ) declined. So far so good. After the initial break in the market, the NASDAQ took a couple of weeks establishing a bottom and then began rising. I watched as my profit disappeared. I held on because economic readings led me to believe that the market would move lower rather than rise to new highs. I, and many others with a...

Millicom International Cellular S.A. ( MICC ) provides cell phone service worldwide, especially in developing countries. Headquartered in Luxembourg, Millicom focuses on offering prepaid cell phone services across 15 countries including El Salvador in Central America; Paraguay in South America; Chad, Ghana, and Tanzania in Africa; Sri Lanka in south Asia; and Cambodia and Laos in Southeast Asia. These may not be on the top of your list of vacation spots but they are rapidly growing markets for cell phones. Rather than spending millions to deploy land lines, why not install some towers and sell prepaid cards and cell phones? Millicom has developed a sweet business model. How good is their business model? How about quarterly revenue growth of 85% year-over-year, gross margin at 72.5% and operating margin at 27.8% and return on equity of 61%? This kind of growth is only available in emerging markets and that is the specialty of Millicom. Whereas cell phone penetration in places like the U...

Introduction Many money management professionals take advantage of various hedging strategies to avoid being whipsawed by the markets and to avoid losing money in down markets. They may use combinations of swaps, options, futures and derivatives to offset risk and to generate returns when traditional investments are losing value. Some of the investment tools used by these professionals are now available to the public. There are several companies that have developed families of mutual funds and ETFs that bundle all these exotic vehicles into easy to understand funds that track common indexes. I will focus on two companies, Rydex and ProShares, as I describe a strategy that will allow you to invest and profit like the professionals. Both companies have products that track, as a minimum, the Dow, the NASDAQ 100 and the S&P 500. What is interesting and pertinent to our discussion here is that they also have funds that track the INVERSE of the associated index. For example, if one fund...