Author: Ivanhoff

IPHS update

In a typical bull market, stock like IPHS would gap up significantly on earnings (as it did) and from there it would continue to rise. Not in this non-trending environment, where most earnings’ breakouts don’t see an immediate follow through and correct. 13% of IPHS float has been shorted. Now, the stock being close to its all time high, most shorts are under water. That should have added more fuel to the upside momentum. Unfortunately, market doesn’t always agree with my analysis. This is why stop losses and position sizing were invented.

I have said it many times before, that during bearish markets and during non-trending periods is not a wise idea to buy a stock after it gaps up 20%, disregarding how good the earnings were. In many cases, such big move is partially faded away, giving savvy traders a very low risk opportunity to enter and make a quick profit.

An Earnings' Breakout

On Thursday, Innophos had reported second-quarter earnings of $2.74 a share, compared to a loss of 25 cent a share a year ago. Net sales for the quarter rose about 74 percent to $264 million.

Analysts, on average, expected the company to earn 73 cents a share, excluding exceptional items, on revenue of $211.9 million, according to Reuters Estimates.

Friday, IPHS rose 27% on 5 times the average traded volume.

The stock reached an all time high and will be an appetite bite for momentum investors in the following weeks.

Quotes by Paul Tudor Jones II

Paul Tudor Jones II is one of the most successful hedge fund managers. He has never suffered a losing year. His fund has returned 23% annualized gain since its inception in 1986. Paul Tudor is a momentum trader, who believes that price move and trend unfold only because of investors’ behavior.

Markets have consistently experienced “100-year events” every five years. While I spend a significant amount of my time on analytics and collecting fundamental information, at the end of the day, I am a slave to the tape and proud of it.

I see the younger generation hampered by the need to understand and rationalize why something should go up or down. Usually, by the time that becomes self-evident, the move is already over.

There is no training — classroom or otherwise — that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it’s the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market. There’s typically no logic to it; irrationality reigns supreme, and no class can teach what to do during that brief, volatile reign. The only way to learn how to trade during that last, exquisite third of a move is to do it, or, more precisely, live it.

Fundamentals might be good for the first third or first 50 or 60 percent of a move, but the last third of a great bull market is typically a blow-off, whereas the mania runs wild and prices go parabolic.