The chart above (click to enlarge), TLT daily, looks like a failed head and shoulder. Failing to pierce through the neckline at 87, it has been rebounding fairly strongly since 04/13 and closed the month at 88.75. I also like the rising 200-day Moving Average. All in all, a bullish case in the making. I'll be keeping an eye on good old TLT, my favourite bond ETF. I feel compelled to add a little fundamental background: the economy is apparently slowing much faster than expected (the latest reading on GDP growth came in at 1.3% annualized, I believe) and even though inflation is not exactly where the Fed would like it to be, Big Ben might just have to cut rates, which would fit in the bullish scenario for TLT.

I just discovered this pretty cool blog: Toro's Running of the Bulls Market Blog.
Smart outside-the-box unpretentious commentary. Frequent posts also....I'm jealous.

As a former day trader who had, by necessity as well as by inclination, to go from a 5-minute chart time frame to a 30-minute chart time frame (the latter corresponds to a time horizon of a few days to a few weeks), I was captivated by this article on "The price of everything" blog, dealing specifically with the importance of time horizon and time horizon arbitrage in trading.

Very good article in this week's Economist on volatility and an even better take on said article by a semi-retired pro on the " Information Arbitrage" blog.

The daily chart above is not that of an ETF but it might as well be, considering its weight within many indices and its liquidity. "It" is MSFT, Microsoft, formerly known as the Evil Empire, before Google started having a go at the title. Ok, that was it for the fundamental analysis part.

Now as far as technical analysis is concerned, there are a few things I find interesting about this chart, the most important one being the price level at which the most recent bearish move stopped, around 27 on 3/13/2007. That's about where MSFT was trading at the day before it cratered and gapped down on humonguous volume on 4/28/2006. (I forget the impetus or should I say the excuse behind that major bailout from the stock, but does it matter?) As often happens, that level seems to have become solid support once it was overcome as resistance sometime in September 2006. That price level also happened to intersect with a nicely rising 200-day Moving Average line (blue on the chart). A successful retest of that very Moving Average occured on 3/28/2007 after which we made a new local high yesterday setting a pattern of higher highs and higher lows all this starting on 3/13. Does all this add up to a fairly solid bullish case? I think so.