Paper Trade of City Developments

Bear Flag spotted for Capitaland but it broke out too far from the resistance cum support line. Shorting City Developments instead due to breakout of the right-angled ascending broadening formation.

Shorting City Dev on market opening of Tuesday, 19th August 2008.
Filled at $9.97
Covering City Dev on market opening of Wednesday, 27th August 2008.
Filled at $10.04
Percentage loss with commission at 1%.

Got whipsawed for the 3rd consecutive time. I was not at home yesterday so I din manage to update my covering back of the short this morning. It is getting harder and harder to trade. It is to my surprise that I got whipsawed on City Dev when the other property counters such as Kepland and Capitaland continues to head south.

City Dev on 26th August 2008


City Dev on 18th August 2008

Paper Trade of Noble

Taking a another go again due to Noble forming a head and shoulders formation.
Got whipsaw again. This time, it is a huge whipsaw and unexpected things do happen. Should be looking at a loss of at least 5%. The main reason for this huge loss is because of the release of results for this quarter by Noble. Perhaps one should not take position before important dates such as this.

Shorting Noble on market opening of Friday, 8th August 2008.
Filled at $1.88
Covering Noble back on market opening of Friday, 15th August 2008
Filled at $2.10
Percentage Loss with Commission at -12.0%


Noble on 15th August 2008


Noble on 8th August 2008

Paper trade of NOL

Shorting NOL on the market opening of Tuesday, 5th August 2008
Filled at $2.63.
Covering back on market opening of Thursday, 7th August 2008
Filled at $2.64.
Percentage Loss with commission at -0.68%

Got whipsawed. The feeling of being whipsawed is horrendous. Especially, when NOL tanks immediately after opening.

NOL on 7th August 2008



NOL on 5th August 2008

Back from 3 months hiatus

I am finally back from a 3 months hiatus. The last post I made was on 7th of May which was like 3 months ago and that is such a long period of time. During this period of time, I was attached to the main shipyard under Sembcorp Marine. I guess I was also pretty drained from blogging on a regular basis so I will be blogging when there are important stuff for me to post or just to share some of my observations.

During this hiatus, I actually completed the 'The Intelligent Investor' by Benjamin Graham which I bought it 4 years ago but I always cannot find the determination to finish it. It is ironic that I only finished reading it in a month's time during my internship. I must say that it has been an eye-opener as I learned the concept of buying undervalued companies and the all-important concept of margin of safety. Suddenly, terms like NAV, NTA, P/E, ROE and all the weird-sounding acronyms made sense to me now and I will definitely be doing additional readings on this subject. I have also completed half of the 'Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns' by Thomas Bulkowski and it was a rather refreshing read for me. This is definitely a good book to have since the author has done extensive research on the different types of chart patterns and I must say that after finish reading this book, a lot of technical analysis books in the market pales in comparison to this book.

Technical Analysis is now just a tool to me. Just like an painter has various colours on his palette, it is good to acquire more tools. A painting will not look that great with only just a single colour unless the painter is exceptionally skillful.

For the past 3 months, I have been watching by the sidelines and waiting to collect some counters cheaply. The blue chips seems to be at fair valuation now since they are only trading slightly lower than than the historical average of a P/E of 14 to 15. I have been observing some of the movements for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Straits Times Index and I do notice something interesting.

If you look at the weekly chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, you will notice that the volume of the market has been increasing ever since the bear market started close to a year ago.

Dow Jones Industrial Average:


Now if we take a closer look at the Straits Times Index, you will notice that the volume has been receding ever since the bear market started. Another important fact is that the Straits Times Index has not broke it's lowest level yet.

Straits Times Index:


Now the conclusion seems to be more tricky to me and I do have problems interpreting it. For the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I can conclude that the heavy increasing volume is due to real panic and bearishness in the market. I doubt the end is even near since the volume do not seems like it is going to recede anytime soon. As the saying goes, the bottom for a bear market is found when no one wans to buy any equities and this can be seen technically by the low volume. Now for the Straits Times Index, the volume is already receding. In my opinion, this does not mean that the bottom is near since this depends on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. So the question I posed to myself is that will the Straits Times Index continue to head south slowly by it's own weight or it will recover sooner than the Dow Jones Industrial Average since it has not breached it's lowest level yet ?