Changing Focus
The Qs are trading south of
key hourly support this morning on thin
volume which is to be expected on this New Year’s Eve. Given today’s light holiday
trade, I thought it would be helpful to step back and focus on the larger
perspective as we prepare for a new year and new opportunities. Specifically,
I’m continuing to keep a watchful eye on the weekly chart which is setting up a
potential handle entry on any retrace to 15-MA support. The daily and weekly
charts are currently in conflict, with the daily testing resistance and
the weekly in an uptrend. Yet the angle of weekly 15-MA support (currently
sloping upward at about 37.20) is worth monitoring as we enter into January,
should we pull back when the players return.
Monday December
31, 2001Â 12:00 PM EDT
As the year draws to
an official close, it’s hard to believe that the Q column has now been live for
over six months. As I’ve said before, if you had told me a year ago that someone
would be doing a daily column on a tracking fund, I would have handed you the
keys to the nearest rubber room, yet the interest in Qs continues to grow among
traders, investors and fund managers. Q volume growth continues to outpace that
of the underlying equities, and continued improvements in ECN access has created
a literal snowball effect as more traders have migrated from individual equities
to the highly liquid Qs which so effectively combine automatic diversification
with sufficient tradable volatility.
I greatly appreciate the relationships and friendships that the column has
generated over these last several months and look forward to continuing and
enhancing them as we enter a fresh year. Please keep in mind that we all start
each day, week, month and now year with the same clean, unwritten slate, and
that past performance — good, bad or indifferent — has no bearing on our
future successes except for the lessons learned. And 2001 indeed provided many a
lesson which we’ll carry into the future.
Good trading and have a
safe New Year’s Eve!