Trader MD: V - Visa - Cup & Handle; VMW - VMWare - Descending Triangle; MA - Mastercard

Let me start off with a little self promotion and say that my eye on the dollar was right on.

If you've been watching this blog over the last few days, today's move up shouldn't have surprised you. Even if you checked the watch list for today (albeit I end up posting them late for some of you as I'm on the West Coast), you'll know that the focus was all about the dollar.

From last night's watch list:

For an idea of what to go trade, keep an eye on the dollar. If you don't get get futures data, you can watch the ETFs to get a good idea of what's going on: FXE (the euro), FXY (the yen), and FXB (the pound) are the currencies to be watching. Then of course the commodities: GLD (gold), SLV (silver), and most importantly USO (oil).

With weakness in the dollar look to for long setups in anything commodity related: Ag, Coal, Steel, Energy/Oil related names.

If the dollar can firm up a bit look to tech & transports (esp the rails).

Pre-market the dollar was much stronger (The PCE deflator definitely helped with that) and the FXE, FXY, FXB, USO, SLV and GLD were much weaker.

That in turn helped push the rally in techs & financials (which I like to stay away from).

Speaking of today's rally. I believe it still has some more legs. Keep an eye on that dollar and the reaction in the markets.

Things I liked about today's rally:

Strong volume & price action on the QQQQs (Nasdaq 100, essentially Tech), XLF (Financials), IYT (Transports), and SMH (semis)
In addition we had good strength in the dollar, which in turn leads to weakness in the aforementioned currencies and commodities
The SPY moved up strongly above the 1400 level (although I wish volume was better)
The DOW (the meaningless index IMO) closed above 13,000
Leadership appears to be changing from the Commodity (XLB) and Energy (XLE) leadership to things like Tech (XLK or Q's), and IYT (Transports, which continue to be strong) and Financials (XLF)

Things I disliked (or wished that they would have been better) about today's rally:

The IWM (Russell 2000) still continues to lag and I want to see it close above the 73 level and volume to pick up.
And as mentioned, I wish the volume on the SPY was a bit better.

Now onto today's charts (most of the annotations are on them).

I also had some solid cup & handle type trades in the Ag sector (IPI & MON) late in the day.

As for an update on the swing positions I had open. I took a little off the table off the DUG when it started to back off of 34 and then tightened my stop on the rest of my position (I was stopped out). DUG will probably move higher as oil moves lower, but as it's been so strong, people will keep trying to buy the dips in it and as a result I'd rather stick with the better of my 2 strong dollar plays, the DZZ (inverse gold).

One thing I said last night that I didn't want to do was add a swing position ahead of tomorrow's job number, but the price action on RIMM today was very compelling and I picked it back up as it broke out of a cup & handle type formation late in the day. I loved how it closed strong (near the highs of the day) and volume picked up. In addition, this is the 4th highest close for RIMM. I suspect we set a new high sometime soon and, no it's not too late to get on the RIMM bandwagon. Out of all the leader-type tech stocks, its the one that's just breaking out of its base, while GOOG, AAPL, BIDU, etc have all run up quite a bit.

Another swing type name to keep an eye on is AMZN, but I suspect that will lag and struggle more than the other leader type tech stocks.