Larry,
Russell had an interesting insight on his web site tonight both Walmart & Microsoft are trading below their 200 DMA, I checked and sure enough they are. Maybe they would be good additions to the options portfolio.

Gary

Gary,

They are both on my list along with a lot of other stocks. I think the interesting thing about WMT and MSFT is not that they are great shorts (although they may be), but that it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the market makes big advances without the participation of these two industry leaders. And they both peaked in September. WMT really surprises me by tanking right in the middle of the holiday shopping season. I agree – I find the failure of these two stocks very interesting.

Larry

larry said: "I find the failure of these two stocks very interesting." those aren't the only stocks in the S&P that stink.

another guy i read is louis navellier - he has a newsletter and runs mutual funds. (does that make him "smart money?") i don't follow his portfolio but i do think he's pretty sharp. he has a website that grades stocks according to 10 of his fundamental criteria. you can type in your stocks and get a portfolio grade (from A to F) plus he grades each stock individually.

just for fun i entered the S&P 100 stocks to see how they did. the index gets an overall grade of D. several companies get F and there are no A's.
(WMT gets a D and MSFT gets a C.)

that doesn't mean that the market will go down anytime soon... but if the top 100 stocks in the S&P 500 are fundamentally weak - i read that as bearish!

-ja

by the way, i had typed in a precious metal portfolio too with 10 stocks including NEM and PAAS. the portfolio gets an A - the lowest grade is a B.

-ja

Joe,

What is the web site that grades the stocks?

Thanks,
Steve E

http://stocks.navellier.com/

it's free.

-ja

Larry,
I bought a few Walmart puts right after posting this info from Russell's site. I think I'm going to buy a few more today. But this might be interesting to the everyone. Several months ago I noted that the level of credit card usage that I was seeing at the restaurant had skyrocketed from last year. Well about a month ago credit card use just fell off a cliff. Nobody's using their credit card anymore. I can see 2 reasons: 1 everybody's tapped out and has no more credit or 2 their saving their credit cards for Christmas. However if their saving their cards for Christmas it means their almost tapped out. Either way this is probably a very bad sign for retailers. I talked to one of the local managers from a nearby Best Buy and he said that the Friday after Thanksgiving was great but right after that sales dried up. It appears that the Jan. quarter isn't going to be pretty for retailers. Have you checked any of the other retailers for shorting opportunities?

Gary

Gary,

That really is an interesting anecdote about people not using credit cards. One thing’s for sure – there is definitely something wrong with the retailers. The only retailer that I’m short at the moment is Select Comfort (SCSS).

Larry