UPDATE: I misspoke in the original post. The stock market is OPEN on Monday, October 13th.

Ye gods, what a couple of weeks! Starting on October 2nd, the market has been driven by sheer panic. The retracement has been over 40% from the October 2007 market high. If you recently put on covered call positions - using good stocks - without using the SuperPut structure, I sincerely hope you have not taken needless panic losses. Pretty much all the individuals in panic mode have sold, and we are starting to see a climax in institutional (hedge funds, etc.) selling.

This has indeed been a panic-driven selloff. The situation was never quite as dire as the administration painted it, but panic is self-sustaining. Pros sell at the top, buy at the bottom; amateurs do the opposite. So why have institutions - which have driven the panic - been selling out? Money managers will not be put in the position of explaining why everyone else got out and they didn’t. Many institutions saw the writing on the wall and got out, intending to get back in at a bottom. Indeed, many automated programs will start buying at about the 8,000 level on the INDU.

Unless you have lost all faith in the American economy and think it’s headed for the trash heap, it has all along been a matter of where the market ultimately finds support and rebounds. For this to happen, the selling must climax, which is likely, though not certain, to occur at a historical support level. Thus the bottom is unknown, as is the strength and momentum of a rebound. But we can look at some obvious support levels for the Dow Jones Industrials (INDU):

10,700 (2006) - blown
9.800 (2004) - blown
9,000 (2002) - blown
8,000 (2003) - being tested
7,500 (2003) - not in play yet
7,197 (2002) - not in play yet

The market is testing the 200-month moving average as the chart below shows:

As you can see, volume is headed towards a climax and capitulation point. This does not mean a bounce is right around the corner, since the market could easily look for the lower support levels. Much will depend on how much automated buying kicks in, and when. A decisive break below the 200-month moving average would indicate that the we’re going to test lower levels yet.

Volatility Indices
The CBOE volatility indices, which function as sentiment indicators and move inversely to the market (they’re high when the market is low) have all hit all-time highs; in fact, they keep reaching new highs:

$VIX - hit 74.46 today (previous high 49.53 - 1998)
$VXO (OEX volatility) - hit 99.65 today (previous high 72.13 - 1997)
$VXN (Nasdaq volatility) - hit 80.37 today (previous high 71.72 - 2001)

I’ve had to revise those highs skyward - twice - since I began writing this post. Those are 7, 10 and 11-year highs, at least based on the “official” indices. Note that the current VIX (tied to the S&P 500) was newly created in 2003. The “original” VIX was launched in 1993 (tied to the S&P 100), but was re-christened the VXO in 2003. Because it is older and S&P 100-based, and perhaps because VXO options are American-style, many market commentators prefer the VXO (old VIX).

NOTE: VXO (old VIX) data actually goes back to 1986, before launch. Using those numbers, the VXO would have hit a high of 152.48 on October 19, 1987 (Black Monday) and a high of 172.79 the following day. Source: VixandMore

Wrap-Up
The market will in all likelihood soon find a bottom and begin to recover. However, it may well be an intermediate bottom, with lower lows to come. In other words, are we going straight to THE bottom now, with a stronger recovery, or will we see only an intermediate bottom, with the market continuing the falling-range behaviour we saw from October 2007 through September 2008?

If the market does bottom soon, don’t assume the market gyrations and volatility are “over.” They likely won’t be. At the very least we will continue to see a lot of choppiness and volatility.

How strongly will the market snapback? Unknown, but programmatic buying will move the market smartly once the selling climaxes.

Covered call writers:
Use the SuperPut structure when you start writing again. Those long puts have a life of 6-8 months, and the likelihood of the market coming back down in that time frame is, um, reasonable. So don’t think you are throwing away the put cost.

On stocks that are down, do not write below your cost basis, or you will be forced to close those calls at a loss on a market snapback - and the magnitude of the snapback could be ferocious.

UPDATE - 10:50 am - Thankfully, the historic selloff predicted this morning by NYSE floor traders has not materialized, though the day isn’t over. I think President Bush’s address at 9:35 am helped, and the market seems to believe the bailout will happen over the oppostion of the House Republican Leadership and Main Street itself, which clearly does not understand either the magnitude of the problem or the bailout provisions.
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Treasury Secretary Paulsen hammered together a pretty good bailout plan in which Main Street will buy the bad mortgages - and benefit by the ones that pay. Warren Buffett says that 75% of the subprimes and Alt-A mortgages will pay. Not a bad deal.

Last night the House Republican leadership announced they will not support the bailout, demanding that the bailout be recast as a plan to insure the mortgages. How stupid. You don’t insure something after it goes toes up. Besides, Paulsen’s plan has an upside; taxpayers could conceivably come out not badly at all. The House Republican plan would mean 1) vastly greater cost to Main Street, and 2) mortgagees and mortgage lenders would have no incentive to minimize losses, since the insurance would provide a net. Maybe Congressmen should have to pass an economics test before being seated.

So - stock index futures are down today. The market, expecting a bailout, rallied a bit this week. Well, that’s about to change. Expect a horrible day today in the neighborhood. The selloff could continue into next week. NYSE floor traders were in tears this morning. They believe we will see history made today.

Forget technicals - this is bigger than technicals.

If the market tanks as expected, close the short calls. Beware of rolling the calls down, however, since some kind of bailout will occur soon - who knows what it will look like, or when it passes? You could become trapped in a strike below your basis. Only roll down IF the roll will result in a profitable trade if called. Our trade management calculator will calculate this for you automatically.

If really concerned about another Black Monday-type selloff, close the position.

Other alternatives:

1) Ideally, we would sell the stock and buy back the calls after the stock falls, but this would leave the short calls naked. Consider buying a higher-strike call (this turns the short call into a bear call spread), which will free the stock to be sold - IF you have spread-writing approval.

2) Create an OTM bear call spread (separate from the open covered call position), and close it profitably if the stock tanks.

3) Buy a long-term put and turn the CC position into a SuperPut. Puts might be, ahem, expensive today - even the long-term puts.

Stay frosty, and don’t panic. This, too, shall pass.

My negative thoughts and feelings of foreboding about the Financial stocks (mortgage, investment banking, banking) have not changed from those expressed on previous blog posts. I regard them as off-limits until further notice, since unknown problems can (and will) continue to pop up. If you are a trader, have at them, but an investment in financial stocks is highly risky.

WaMu (WM) may go into receivership, for example, and is desperately seeking Susan, or any other available suitor. Has a WaMu disaster been averted? No, but even if we were told it had, how would you or I have any possible way to know? WE DON’T. As one MSNBC commentator noted on-air, these financials will tell us everything is fine and then announce a couple of days later that they’re out of business.

Now, the Masters of the Universe at Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), proud, old names (really old) are going to turn themselves into bank holding companies so that they can borrow money from the Fed cheaply. They will then be regulated as BANKS by the Fed itself, not the SEC. And if you believe Goldman and Morgan are doing this to take advantage of great opportunities (instead of to survive at any cost), I have some land in South Florida to sell you.

You see, when Reagan ushered in the great wave of deregulation - including the tearing down of the Glass-Stegall Act, which forbid banks to be both investment banks and commercial banks - one of the senior partners at my old law firm predicted this sorry day would come. He understood greed. But no, I argued, the smart guys in Wall Street simply should be loosed to unleash their creativity, instead of being bound by unimaginative laws created as make-work by Washington’s legislative drones.

And so it did.

What my old partner Jack understood and I didn’t was that, because the Wall Street smart boys (and girls, these days) care about nothing but their bonuses and the size of their houses in the Hamptons, what we’d get one day is precisely what we got.

And these are the people Americans trust to manage their money? Good God!

Wall Street as we know it is changing under our feet. Lehman is gone and even if absorbed by Barclays it’s still gone as it existed before, Bear Stearns bought up, now Merrill Lynch bought up. There goes the last of the big investment banks. They’re GONE, people. A staple of American business, raising the money that fueled American business and thus American growth since before there even was an America… they’re gone.

This will severely crimp capital raising, don’t kid yourself. Who will underwrite corporate junk bonds now? Who will bring out deserving new public companies? Who will fund the hedge funds (hopefully no one)? Investment banks do these things (or did). Banks loan money to people who don’t need it, remember? Foreign money vendors will fill the gap to some degree, but they will cherry pick the best and safest.

Well, the good news is these Masters no longer will be able to engineer and loose upon us these toxic financial products that not even their creators truly understand. Banks, you see, are actually regulated, and bank regulators don’t find these things amusing.

If you agree with me about the dangers that inhere in the financials but nonetheless are squirming at the thought of missing their surge, buy some slightly OTM October calls, or ITM if you want better delta. Use a trailing stop if the trade is working, but set a reasonable sell-stop limit going in, to protect downside. And good luck with that.

The CBOE Market Volatility Index (VIX) is one of the stock market’s premier sentiment indicators, since it tends to move inversely to the market. At market bottoms (even bottoms that turn out to be only temporary, like a range bottom), the VIX tends to spike above 30, although above 35 is an even better sign. Please refer to my post yesterday for VIX and INDU (Dow industrials) charts, which illustrates the inverse relationship.

High spikes in the VIX tend to signal a market bounce off a support level, and the higher the VIX spike the better (low VIX readings are not very helpful in regard to market tops).

Yesterday, the VIX hit a high of 36.40, the highest reading since January 22nd of this year. Today it has hit 42.16 and is 39.25 as I write this - falling, so far.

Note that 42.16 is the highest level the VIX has hit since October 2002. Thus I think it it signaling a strong market advance off the bottom - which is forming as we speak. Like a farmer with sodden fields, I welcome the sun breaking through the clouds.

By the way, the MACD for the VIX has been climbing for several years and this year finally has risen to 1998 levels, as the following monthly chart shows:

In Dow Theory, simultaneous highs in both the INDU and the Transportation averages (still known to traders as the “rails”) is a bullish confirmation; simultaneous lows a bearish confirmation. The INDU appears to be bottoming, but the rails are up, which in Dow Theory parlance is a non-confirmation, meaning who knows?

But I think the VIX knows, because VIX spikes indicate panic, which is the stimulus point for the market to reverse course - because panic selling grows exhaused and the bottom feeders (like me) start rushing in.

Covered Call Thoughts:
What a great time for covered call writers (and call buyers) to look for trades! The best tactic will be to leg in, meaning buy the stock and wait to write the calls only after a price rise, which really makes returns take off. When you start to feel confidence in a snap-back, it is time to get in. If you can’t quite get a real confidence level, consider buying a long-term protective put (only those that are dirt cheap, with very little time value). When puts start to get cheap, what is that telling you?

If you have good stocks that are seriously down with the market, as opposed to being down on their own, don’t take a panicky loss here. The good ones should snap back.

If on the other hand the stock is Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs or AIG, to name just a few that have been wingshot (or gutshot), then a market surge can’t be counted on for much help.

The Good News:
I’m hoping the market tanks a little further to please the hard-core technicians, but we probably have enough to herald a strong market snap-back. I’m excited, friends.

UPDATE AFTER MARKET CLOSE: The Dow closed at 10,609, down over 25% from the October high; VIX closed at 36.14.

CORRECTION: the post stated originally that the INDU’s all-time high was 14,198 (what my QCharts platform shows), when it was actually 14,279. My apologies! I have corrected the post.

As I write, the Dow Industrials (INDU) have hit an intraday low of 10,660 in trading today, the lowest since January 2006. And we could see a lower low before the day/week is over. As the chart below indicates, this is a selloff over the preceding 12 months of 25.34% (3,619 points) from the October high of 14,279.

While amateurs and your dear Aunt Mabel are in panicky liquidation mode, savvy traders and investors know that the point to get in is here - or very near. First of all, the market selloff has been huge. There could be more to come, sure, as the lying scalawags of Wall Street are forced to disclose how bad things really are.

The Better News:
But an imminent market surge is on the way, as measured by the CBOE’s Market Volatility Index (VIX.X or $VIX), a premier sentiment indicator affectionately known as the VIX. It tends to move inversely with the stock market. Thus a significant market low will result in a spike in the VIX, as happened today.

In fact, the VIX hit an intraday high of 35.76, its highest reading since January of this year. The VIX strongly confirms a stock market move off this low level, which probably will be (at least) a market bottom. The market reverse on the last VIX spike, which barely broke 30. A reading over 35 is a horse of a different color. Look at January and March 2008 for an idea of what to expect.

I expect a strong snap-back in the next couple of months back up to test the upper range line (top chart), which also happens to be the 200-week moving average.

If the market breaks above the upper range line, you’ll hear a lot of idiot pundit talk in coming weeks about the new “bull market” - as if a bull market could spring forth from current economic conditions and falling corporate earnings. No, a bull market is not beginning, but we should have a couple of months of a rising market, which is a peerless time to write covered calls.

Consider legging in to the calls, meaning to buy the stock and write the calls only after the stock has risen (which really supercharges returns). If you’re really short-term bullish, consider buying ITM calls on great companies that have sold off with the market in past weeks.

What Could Go Wrong?
Of course, more catastrophic bad news on bellwether companies like AIG and Merrill might knock such an advance in the head, which would likely mean another stall-out in the market, sending it sideways, as happened after the July 15th “bottom”.

Expect another net down day today. The stock futures were heavily down. Giant insurer AIG is hanging on by its fingernails, and the NY Governor is desperately trying to keep it in business. It may file for bankruptcy protection.

Goldman Sachs’ Q3 profit was off 70%, and it didn’t make its consensus earnings projection (1.81 vs. 1.91). The purpose of this post, by the way, is not to paint a gloomy picture but simply to focus on what is happening.

We need a market swoon back to the DJIA’s 10,600 level or so, which was the bottom of a 2006 correction, before the market can resume its move up. I still think the market will bottom - at least temporarily - and make a new run north at the 200-week moving average.

But we first have to sort out the next few days. I look for the major market indices to fall over the next days or even couple of weeks to the lower trend line of the market’s falling range (see prior posts). We have lots of earnings reports yet to come, the news ain’t gonna be great, and we have to wonder how likely a market surge is while the drip-drip-drip of poor earnings results come in.

I am licking my lips at the prospect of the turnaround about to come. Seriously. Be looking for great companies that have sold off with the market in past weeks, which will come roaring back.

Covered Call Positions
Covered call writers, don’t despair here. See this market move for what it is - an opportunity. If you have been rolling calls down, it may well be possible to roll them down once more. But, I would close them for another profit if the market continues falling, then clear out any short calls. You don’t want to be caught in a low-strike call when the stock comes back (the assignment trap).

Right now is not the time to put on a covered call position. Wait a bit for even better prices. When the market snaps back, buy the stock but don’t sell the calls right away. Leg in, meaning to write the calls later after the stock has run up some.

I have been saying and writing for quite a while to stay away from the financials, including insurance. The reason is that (like kids diving into a murky pond for the first time), when it comes to the financials stocks we have no idea how deep the water is is or where the stumps are.

The stock index futures are down horribly this morning before the stock market’s open. The market will be slaughtered today, and the slaughter may last for much of the week.

Lehman Bros. (LEH) is gone, headed for bankruptcy. As an attorney, I understand this. Why make a deal to buy it now, when you can buy it out of bankruptcy court much cheaper and hose all the shareholders?

Bank of America is buying Merrill, Lynch. AIG, the insurance giant so beloved by Warren Buffett, is in deep doo. What do you think now of these hot-shot managers of the big financials, these smart guys with MBAs from Harvard and Wharton?

For all of you who wonder about my claims that ordinary people can - with covered calls - outperform the big boys, remember that the “big boys’” principal skill is pocketing fees, not making money. As Peter Lynch (a truly great money manager) once said, the average Joe who pays attention can achieve investment returns that beat 95% of the professional managers.

What to do today?

First of all, don’t freak out. The market is coming down hard today, as another financial shoe drops. Be prepared to close short calls as the stock falls, since it is likely that most stocks will be hammered today. Rolling the calls down may not be the best option, since the market is likely to snap back after it absorbs the newest financials fiasco.

If you are a down-day call writer, today may not be the day to write! The market could sell off for several days.

A reasonable percentage of my posts are about the market, partly because I enjoy it and partly because that is what seems to be consuming everyone these days. I noted in recent newsletter articles that the stock market agains appears to have found the bottom trendline of the channel it’s been in since October 2007. On a weekly chart, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) indeed seems to have bounced off the channel bottom. It now must test the 200-week simple moving average (SMA), which is at about 11,712:

Note first of all that the upper channel line is almost the same as the (now declining) 50-week SMA. If the market rises that far, it will be simultaneously testing that average and the upper trendline. The prospect of a breakthrough there is not great, as I have discussed. The gray circle on the upper trendline indicates a possible point of intersection for that test. But will the market even advance that far?

The INDU nudged the 200-week average not so long ago and has pulled back. I nevertheless expect a full-on test of the 200 soon, in large part because so many expect it to occur and because a convincing failure there has not yet occurred. If the INDU breaks above the 200, a further advance to test the 50-week average may reasonably be supposed.

The market may, however, pull back to again test the lower trendline, as it did in March, which is noted on the chart above by the green circle. Another leap at the upper trendline is therefore quite likely.

To date, the INDU’s intraday low of 10,827 this year represents nearly a 24% selloff from the intraday high of 14,198. Put differently, the Dow has in less than a year lost nearly a fourth off its all-time high level in October 2007.

A fair question, one on many minds: if the current market is a correction to a major uptrend, when will this correction be over? No one knows, and the technical factors - while helpful - ain’t the whole story. There’s inflation, the economy, and other factors discussed at length by me and many other commentators. I think more selloff is necessary would be necessary to convince everyone that the correction has bottomed - a clear point of capitulation needs to occur.

But truly resuming a new uptrend will require a healthier economy and stronger corporate earnings. Will they be there? If so, the question of whither the market answers itself.

I am bearish now, as most of you know, but the market will in coming months - say by the end of October - make clear whether it is merely correcting a major uptrend still in place or if more bear is to come. I think a resumption of the bull this year or early next year is quite likely, especially given the election. We’ll soon know.

Quick Historical Note:

1. The correction of 2000-02 retraced approximately 38.2%, then later hit 50%, of the rise from 1990. Both are Fibonacci retracement theory numbers. In fact, the Dow declined to previous market top (support) levels from 1998.

2. The current correction already has hit 38.2% of the rise from the bull market’s 2003 beginnings. In fact, the first week of July 2008 saw a fall to 10,827, which is a 50% retracement. The current correction has already hit 2005 support (the INDU’s 2005 top) and has almost hit the 10,752 top from early 2,000.

3. Also on a positive note, the 200-week SMA has not yet turned downward. That downturn will be negative news. should it occur.

Feel better now? I know one thing: the more bearish more people become, the better I feel.

For call writers, of course, all of this is merely an attempt to answer the question of when is best to write covered calls. Right now is good, since the market has hit a (probably) temporary bottom and is gathering for a spring at the upper trendline.

Important Note: If we get another pullback testing the lower trendline, as in March 2008, don’t panic. It is not unlikely. Today’s pullback may indicate a retest of the lower trendline or may just be noise. And don’t forget: we’re in the doldrums time of year, and a lot of traders are on vacation now or not working their hardest.

This post is a little longer than usual, but worth it for me to think things through, and - I hope - worth the read for you. Mark Hulberg, whose newsletter tracks the results of investing newsletters, recently noted that Richard Russell has now turned long-term bearish on the stock market. Russell - no spring chicken - is the editor of Dow Theory Letters, a newsletter distributed since 1958 and is the dean of stock market newsletter publishers. Hulberg interprets Russell’s analysis to be that the market’s long-term trendline has been violated and that the market is headed down until further notice.

While Mr. Russell (who is 84) is a formidable technical analyst, I tend to think this bear market is a correction to the stock market’s long-term uptrend. Let’s take a look at the Dow Jones Industrials (INDU) going back to 1994. We see a long-term uptrend that began in the late 1980s, sharply accelerating from late 1994 to the end of 1999. The bear market of 2000-2002 is clearly delineated and we can see a test of the 100-month moving average at the 2002 correction bottom; then the major uptrend resumes through October 2007.

The current market appears to be another major correction to the long-term uptrend. If so, we can reasonably expect the market to continue its oscillations within channels down to the long-term trendline, which also happens to be the 100-month moving average - right where the red circle is drawn.

Of course, when the market tested that average in 2002, the trend line could not have been drawn where it is now; since it is drawn across bottoms, the bottom must clearly have occurred in order to draw it. However, the test of the 100-month average did occur and the market passed the test.

Will the market find support again at the 100-month level (also roughly the trendline) at about the 10,500 level? The odds are good that it will, because at that point all the players except perhaps the public are ready for a reversal and help make it come about. In this view, we are not in a secular bear market, strictly speaking, but a major correction to the major trend. Ditto for the 2000-2002 bear market.

Points to ponder:

1) The market is testing the 50-month average now. While it could find support there and stage a major recovery, it seems unlikely, given the state of the economy, inflation, etc. As I recently noted in a newsletter issue, the market is at the bottom of a declining channel on a weekly chart and likely will rise to the upper channel line, a normal and expected (by me, at any rate) oscillation. Then it will almost certainly resume plumbing for the major trendline down about 10,500.

2) The 100-month average is going negative (curling over and pointing down). If the 50-month follows suit, expect a test of the 200-month.

3) If the market fails at the 100-month average, the next major INDU support level is at about 7,750, the 2002 correction bottom. That would be about a 45% selloff from the highest close at 14,164. By this I don’t mean a 45% retracement; it would mean a loss of nearly half the Dow’s value. That seems a little extreme. Possible, but not so likely.

The Retracement Perspective:

Retracement theory posits that a market, after a rise with no major correction, will correct - retrace - much of the move up. Many, including myself, rely on the Fibonacci sequence. In the early 2000s bear market, the market retraced almost a perfect 50%, as shown in the next chart.

A 50% retracement in the current bear movement (10,889) would take us almost to the 100-month average and the trendline. But heck, we almost hit that on July 15th. A trip down to the 7,750-level on the INDU would be a 100% retracement (they happen). The chart below demonstrates the Fibonacci levels for both the 1999 and 2007 peaks (the green line is the 100-month average again):

Note how much sharper the selloff has been this time than in the 2000-02 correction. The contrast is a bit unsettling. I think this market is ginning up a greater than 50% correction, since we almost touched that in July. At the very least, it will test the 100-month average. While anything could happen, there is no reason to think the correction is done. There simply is nothing to break the downtrend’s progress.

I’m in Palm Coast, Florida, for the week, though we have broadband and can get phone messages.

Financials are taking quite a beating these days, not only price-wise, but also in the esteem of stock pickers, dividend investors, the buy-and-hold crowd and pundits alike. And for good reason. The brokers, banks and insurance companies are generally quite suspect. There is no way to know if another shoe (or a bag of shoes) will drop for any one of them.

Bear Stearns was in desperate straits - though well known to the industry - long before we of the public knew. Banks are exposed on subprime, Alt-A mortages, contruction financing on projects that are going to be slooowww sellers. Many large and regional banks, if forced to value assets properly, would have to close their doors. Regulators are looking the other way, and have no choice, in order to give the banks a couple of years to raise capital and outrun their current problems. Insurance companies also have exposure to many of these things. We have a severe information deficit about the financials in general. You and I have no way to know the true extent of these companies’ woes. At this point, I view an investment in most financials the same as diving into an unknown lake - we have no clue where the stumps are, or how many.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, the market has zero tolerance for mystery or goofiness in financials. A financial will sell off on the slightest whiff of negative news - even if not about that company directly and even if not particularly applicable to it. Unless you are intimately familiar with a company, it is healthy and not cutting its dividend, tread carefully. I do have a couple of suggestions below.

While some stocks like Wells Fargo are being touted as recovery plays, I definitely would not go long the stock without SuperPut protection. If truly convinced that a financial has been knocked down to a fire-sale bargain price level, consider instead buying an OTM (cheap) call with an expiration perhaps 3 to 6 months out; or whatever time frame you envision. If the stock recovers as expected, you’ll profit immensely. If it does not, you’re not out much.

Trading Possibilities:
Perhaps it’s one of those fractal things, but every rule has its exceptions, and there are a few good financial stocks. Here are a couple, both of which recently increased the dividend and are not beset by many of the problems afflicting most financials:

Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) - This Toronto-based megabank operates well over 1,000 branches outside Canada and make a lot of money. It has seriously outperformed its peers and the S&P 500 since 2002. And since 2003, it also has increased revenues, earnings and dividends, with revenues, earnings and dividends expected to continue increasing in the future.

BNS has been falling of late, like most things. It’s no surprise that a financial would have been whacked recently with the market. Technically, the price has touched the 200-MA on a weekly chart and is clinging to the 50-wk average. If if breaks back above the 50-week average (which is also the middle of the Linear Regression channel), it’s a buy.

Banco Santander (STD) - this highly profitable Spanish bank has increased its dividend significantly since 2003, growing revenues and profits as well, and since 2004 has beaten the snot out of both the Large Bank industry and the S&P 500. Technically, it’s at the bottom of its trading channel on both daily and weekly charts…

As Yogi Berra said, you can look it up. Translation: do your own research.