The Oxen Report - Thursday Looking Red on Job Losses and a Mixed Bag of Earnings

Yesterday, we had some pretty strong success with our Short Sale of the Day pick Ultrashort Proshares Financials (SKF). We got into the ETF right out of the gates at 24.10, after adjusting our entry price in my Morning Levels Alert since we saw that the ETF was increasing in price rapidly in the morning. We were quickly turn that entry into a 3% profit, selling at the more profitable part of our range at 23.38. On the other side, we did not close our position in our Buy Pick of the Day Isil Corp. (ISIL). We wanted to play ISIL based on the expectations that it would rally moving into earnings, but it did not happen. The stock traded flat all day near our entry of 13.98. We decided in the afternoon to hold onto the stock. The earnings came out at expectations with a strong forecast, and the stock is set to open slightly up from our entry point. We will continue to hold this one.

On to Thursday…..

Buy Pick of the Day: Direxion Daily Bear Oil and Energy ETF (ERY)

I am not looking at the market on extremely bullish terms today. While I do think we saw some good numbers from a number of companies reporting earnings this morning, there were so many that no one can stand out. What does stand out is that initial jobless claims were at 531,000 this past week, which is above the expectation of 518,000 and well above last week’s 514,000. The data, which came out at 8:30 AM, has shifted back futures. At 8:15 AM, the Dow was up 20 points, and then at 8:31 AM we were down to just 11 points up. The S&P and Nasdaq, now are in the red, and the Dow is holding a slight gain.

The fall in futures signals to me that we will open in the red and have a selling frenzy. Therefore, we can make money by inverting the market our favor by picking up a bearish ETF, such as ERY. I like ERY because of how high the price of oil has gotten. The price is starting to drop today, down below $81 a barrel on the NYMEX. Falling oil prices and a red market is a great day for ERY. The price of oil is falling due to a lot of the market feeling that $80 per barrel is just way too expensive, comments…