Molycorp, Inc. produces and sells rare earth and rare metal materials in the United States and internationally. The company’s Resources segment extracts rare earth minerals, including rare earth concentrates; rare earth oxides (REO), such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, praseodymium, and yttrium; heavy rare earth concentrates, which include samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, and others; and SorbX, a line of proprietary rare earth-based water treatment products (more…)
Quanta Power – a conservative play on the Renewable Energy industry
As President Obama readies to speak to the nation tonight for his State of the Union address, I, as an investor, am preparing and positioning for profitable trade ideas that could get sparked by his speech. A stock I have been watching with interest since it broke out in 2012 from a 3 year consolidation (2009-2012), is Quanta power. Something significant has changed for Quanta to help it out of that consolidation, and the headliner is its involvement in the Keystone pipeline. (more…)
Gold – shaping up to be a great hedge on Equities
Last week, I noticed how Gold seemed to be catching a bid whenever the S&P 500 was in sell-off mode, and selling off whenever the S&P went back up. This got me starting to think, is Gold maybe the market of choice for HFTs when we eventually do get a major correction of this move off the bottom that started in November? Furthermore, could GLD, instead of TLT (us treasuries), be the inverse trade that we should be pushing our chips towards when we anticipate a turn in this market (more…)
Bearish on Africa (EZA)
EZA – the south africa etf is is the only African ETF that trades options. The shares are down today likely due to unrest in Africa, and the murder of the US ambassador to Libya. There also has been violence recently at a platinum mine, which resulted in 34 deaths. Investors in Africa are spooked. (more…)
Long JOY Global – bullish inverse H&S pattern
Basic Materials stocks are on a run lately, and are starting to play catchup with some of the parabolic moves in Energy stocks. (more…)
Long Sanderson Farms based off of Corn trader profit taking
Late on Friday, Sanderson Farms (SAFM) was spiking due to a late day sell-off on the corn futures. SAFM had some very active call buying in the Sept $40 strike. The drop in corn prices (even if temporary) are a relief to companies like SAFM and TSN which rely on corn for foodstock for their cattle and chickens SAFM reports earnings Aug 20th. (more…)
Is it Time to Get Long? UNG Natural Gas
I will admit that I tend to have a permanent bias towards the downside. However, I think that this market just does not want to go down. The S&P 500 keeps hitting support and bouncing despite earnings, crisis, politics, etc. It seems that bearish traders are getting a little tired. (more…)
Attractive Risk/Reward in Alpha Natural Resources
Shares of Coal companies like ANR have been in long term downtrends since Aug 2011. Competitive pricing of natural gas and stricter US domestic EPA requirements for future coal plants have led to the decline. I see some positive divergences between the Oct low and yesterday’s low, stochastics are tracing out a bullish divergence and violations of the lower bollinger band, are all telling me that the share price could move higher from here in the short term. Today a bullish engulfing reversal could have formed. I am targeting a quick move up to the 20 ema at 16.50, before price succumbs to the long term downtrend again. (more…)
US Steel (X) – play the short squeeze
US Steel is higher today as shorts begin to cover their positions. You can tell the short covering in the attached chart, where clusters of large volume trades are taking place today (Wednesday). (more…)
Playing Alcoa (AA) Earnings Release
In anticipation of Alcoa’s earnings release on 1/9, I am opening this bearish options play. John Jagerson mentioned in last night’s ATE that Alcoa is technically bumping into resistance at the downtrend line. Also, there was news released yesterday that they are taking a 155-165 mill charge to shut down a smelter, in an attempt to reduce production by 12%, which in theory will steepen the global supply of Aluminum. Less supply should mean more demand and higher prices for the metal, which would be good for business. A similar move was attempted in 2009 to mixed success. The cost of the plant shutdown will negatively affect EPS by .15. (more…)