Pre Market - July 5th 2007

Good morning to all...

A few items of interest before the markets open:
Asian stocks rose for the 6th day (except China) on increasing prices of computer chips and metals. China tumbled on concerns over the new share sales may drain liquidity from that market. Bloomberg article.

The Bank of England raised their benchmark interest rate to 5.75%. The feeling among the investors in Europe is that inflation pressure will force the Bank of England to eventually raise the rate to 6% by the end of this year. European markets are trading down overall as this moment.

Research in Motion (RIMM) after many years of paperwork and lobbying has now received permission to sell their products in China. This is a rather significant event and bodes well for long term holders of RIMM stock.

Recent IPO Blackstone (BX) has not wasted much time in flexing their muscles as they have announced plans to purchase Hilton Hotels for $47.50 cash per share. No feeling on this other than it is great news if your a long time holder of Hilton stock. I wonder if the recent IPO of Blackstone is going to provide them the ambition to be even more aggressive now and go after more companies than they have been.

Over the holiday I received an email from a friend who works for a Fortune 100 company. He said that their IT department issued a memo to all employees telling them that the new Apple (AAPL) iPhone would not be allowed in their facilities. The IT team went on to say that the iPhone did not have enough security protection features to protect company data and thus is being banned from that Fortune 100 company network.

Us futures are up slightly at this time. Oil is also up again and is approaching $72.00. Everytime oil ticks up I get more nervous about a summer slump in our markets. Spot gold prices rose overnight slightly during trading in the Asian markets and European markets. Currently gold is pricing at $655.90 Us.

A note to my readers: It is my determination and focus to always be objective in my observations of the markets. I look at a chart and I view the overall greed and fear (supply & demand) for a stock and I will always objectively report how I feel what the chart is saying. I will never 'pump' any stock for my own benefit or for anyone else's. I will never tolerate that type of action and it will never appear here. I see too many web sites, forums, and chat rooms where the majority of posts are all about how great this stock is or how wonderful some company is. They are encouraging others to buy in to the stock so that they can benefit from the increased buying. That is what 'pumping a stock' is. And it will NEVER happen here. I despise that behavior. One of my reasons for creating RebelTraders is to have an open exchange of ideas. And we will leave the stock pumping to the yahoo message boards and the many other sites that people SPAM constantly trying to encourage people to buy a stock.

Remember that the PRIMARY goal of RebelTraders is to educate, provide stock trade ideas, provide commentary on price movements from a technical analysis perspective, and to promote and teach the proper ways to make money in the stock markets by providing examples of how to enter a trade, when to exit a trade, and how to learn to perform these actions on your own. The best reward for me will be that I have contributed to a person's understanding of how the markets really work and how to survive them. For example: If I save someone from losing money by providing a long term chart detailing a specific price that should be used as a decision point to sell and take profits (before it falls even more) then I will feel good. If through my teachings and commentaries I take a newbie in the markets and turn him or her into a disciplined trader who understands how to read a chart then I will feel good. There is way too much corrupt money making schemes out there in the world. People selling books claiming that you will make $500,000 in the markets in just 2 months, or they entice you into buying some system for many $$$ only to find that their money making results are the same or worse then before they bought the system. You know that you do not need to buy complex 'black box' trading systems, you do not need to have inside information to win, you only need to know how to read the charts and determine what the flow of money is saying. All of the news, fundamental data, inside information, mutual fund buyers and sellers, speculators, rumors, etc etc etc is in the chart. Reading the chart you get all the news you can ever want.
Also, you will notice that I will never discuss penny stocks "pink sheet securities" on this site. The penny stocks are ripe with false information, rumors, poorly managed companies who are not required to file earnings statements to the standards established by the SEC, and are the biggest target of stock pumpers. How many of you have received an email (SPAM) from some John Doe saying "buy xyz before tomorrow.. this stock will skyrocket and go to the moon!". The stock they are referring to is probably trading at a price of less than .05 cents and is worthless. But through their complex SPAM and pumping they entice the uneducated to put their hard earned money into the stock and then nothing. It flops.

So at RebelTraders.. I will help you learn the ropes to survive the markets and eventually hope that one day you won't need RebelTraders anymore as I will have provided you the encouragement and skills for you to pursue your own trading career. But it would be nice if you still stop by once in a while and say hello!