Trade Ideas for 9/15/08

The tussle continues... Friday's action saw a modest gain in the S&P after a bit of a tug-of-war. However, looking back at the past week, it put in a lower high and a (very slightly) lower low versus the prior week. The daily and weekly charts still show downtrends, although we have been in a short-term uptrend the past three days.

Maybe none of this is going to matter come Monday, when we have two pieces of news to contend with: the outcomes of Lehman and Hurricane Ike. I have no idea how the market will take the news, nor at this point do I know what the news is, in Lehman's case. In a sense, even though I have sell-stops set up and am managing my risk, the current environment features such wide gaps from day to day that I may not be that well-protected. It's very possible that I'll have to eat a wider loss than anticipated on a gap. The chance of whipsaws is also greater, and to combat this what some people do is sell only on a close below their sell-stop. This is risky in its own right; it's very possible that a stock will fall through the sell-stop and just keep going. So there is no easy answer, other than don't risk very much.

Current Holdings
Ticker	Basis	Closing Price	Perf.	Sell-Stop	Additional Exit Guideline	Chart
SDS	67.81	67.41	-0.6%	65.31	Consider reducing position to reduce risk	Chart

A couple ideas for tomorrow nonetheless. I doubt I'll be chasing these if they gap up at the open though!

Trade Ideas for 9/15/08

Ticker	Entry	Exit A	Exit C	Chart
ATHN (AthenaHealth)	35.04	33.15	31.90	Chart
SNDK (SanDisk)	16.73	15.09	13.42	Chart

Please refer to "How To Trade The Ideas" (right-hand side) to read this table.