RunawayTrader

Never mind that Halloween has come and gone. This market is eerie as hell. All of the stocks I’m watching (on my iPhone), are simply marching in step while the indexes would have you believe this is a blazing rally.

I hate that.

In fact, the only stock I’m holding that is raging is F, as in Ford. It’s up better than 8% today and it’s up 80% since I bought it at $4.21.

The only glimmer of a future bonanza is The Hartford (HIG), which, like the rest of the stocks on my watch list, is treading water. I play this stock a couple of different ways. First, I hold shares in my long-range account and over there, it’s doing nicely. Up 56%. And I also day trade this stock and it might be an interesting bet for Tuesday.

Visitors to Earningswhispers.com think there’s an 80% change Hartford’s earnings will surprise to the upside. But, “visitors”? What the hell do they know? It’s like basing your buying decision on tea leaves. And the leaves might actually give your better intelligence.

Earnings reported by other insurers won’t help you much, either. Lincoln National posted better-than-expected results last week, but mostly on the basis of the sale of assets and cost-cutting. Still, its stock price got a super injection.

Insurer Cincinnati Financial reported on Thursday that third-quarter profit fell 31%, to $171 million. Share prices rose a bit after the report, but nothing to make real money on.

MetLife, the No. 1 U.S. life insurer, posted its third straight quarterly loss on Thursday, hurt by investment losses. The stock rose nicely during the day, but as soon as its $620 million loss hit the wire, MET gave up all its gains.

And Hartford?

As you can see, other life insurance stocks paint a pretty hazy, and I might add, hazardous picture so it’s difficult to see what anybody visiting EW would vote for an upside surprise. But, Since Hartford reports after the close, you don’t actually have to take all of the risk of holding through earnings. You can do like I will: Wait till they make their confession, see which way the wind (and the earnings and guidance blows) and then place your bet.

My hunch is that Hartford will tank. And when it does, I’m looking for a 5-point downdraft.

Good News from iStockManager!

By the way, I rattled on yesterday about my travails stock trading on the iPhone. My gripe revolved mostly about the lack of iPhone-sized web sites, and the fact that my trading app from iStockManager didn’t provide an alarm system to warn me when certain trading levels (price, gain, loss, etc.) were met.

After I posted that plaint, I got a nice message back from iStockManager, which indicated they’re working on such an alarm as we write and it should be available in the near future. Yippee Skippy! I can hardly wait. I’ll let you know when it arrives and a hats-off to ISM for providing this info.

Charlie the Runaway Trader