Todd Harrison
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This post was written by Minyanville contributor Lance Lewis

The consensus seems to be blowing off the G20 as a nonevent for the dollar, but then again the consensus didn't anticipate the Fed announcing that it would begin to monetize Treasury debt a couple weeks ago either. And it was that Fed decision that brought us to where we are today.

My trading-experiences have shown me that the strong usually do not fall without putting up a good fight. In that spirit, I am looking for a long position in Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), that we had let go in the vicinity of $42.

Now that NFLX has rewound some of its dramatic ascend and come to the 20-day moving average and is trading just around $39.30, it might re-attempt to scale higher. I would have really liked if my entry had been closer to the lateral trendline (around $38.20), but one can only react to the moves of the market, not predict them.

This post was written by Minyanville contributor Sean Udall. Sean holds position in RIMM, VMW, SUPX.

• Goldman Sachs upgraded Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM)saying to buy in front of EPS. I couldn't agree more and in fact was going to say that today. Be that as it may, I doubled my RIMM long into yesterday's weakness and plan to hold into/through EPS report. My quick take is that RIMM could have one of the better reports relative to all the negative analyst actions and commentary in tech and the overall market.
  
  
• One of my themes for this upcoming EPS season is to look for stocks that have had the most negative analyst commentary coming into the quarter, as no one these days is looking at things like Price/Sales, Price/Book or Price to normalized earnings.
  
  

There is smoke but no fire in the Potash(NYSE:POT) options activity today.

There has been recent rumors that fertilizer industry is due for some consolidation so companies such as Potash, Mosaic(NYSE:MOS)and Monsanto (NYSE:MON)can get some pricing power back. This has led to some takeover speculation that has helped the shares trend higher and caused an increase in the options' volume of late.

This morning there was a big option transaction in POT in which 11,000 of the April $90 calls traded in one slug. But don't let that lead you into thinking someone is making a big buy-out bet. The trade was executed at at the offer price of $2.70 a contract. Actually the price was a small "discount" to the theoretical fair value. This suggests the initiating party was selling the calls. Most likely it is an overwrite against long stock to take in some premium.

It still leaves someone with a bullish position, they have a potential upside of about $12.60 or 15% over the next month. But it doesn't appear anyone is betting the farm on a $95 plus takeover.

This post was written by Minyanville contributor Bennet Sedacca.

My main reason for being long equities was purely a technical/sentiment call. But many of those that were asking me if they should liquidate their portfolios just 10 days ago were asking me what to buy and how long I thought the rally would last. I must confess that my honest to goodness answer is/was 'no idea.' But the change in sentiment was what quickly caught my attention.

Further, TV commentators and others turned bullish awfully quickly.

But the REAL reason is that MACRO TRUMPS TECHNICALS.

I just saw the latest Credit Market Debt/GDP number as of 12/31 (and this is before GDP was going to drop and before all of the recent issuance) and it was a stunning 370%. A record high by a long shot.

So much for de-leveraging. In fact the economy is getting MORE leveraged.

Pharmaceuticals have been alive and merging. The most recent deal is this morning's news that Gilead (NASDAQ:GILD) wants CV Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CVTX), which comes on the heals Roche's purchase of Genentech(NYSE:DNA) and Merck's (NYSE:MRK) proposed merger with Schering Plough(NYSE:SGP).

To highlight defense names in the face of the current spending priorities feels like soaking in gasoline and walking around smoking a cigarette. With that visual as a backdrop, it is also fair to say that Obama is probably just as focused on protecting the motherland as Bush was, and, much as he may dislike it, that will force continued if not increased spending in certain areas of defense. The one name I have been drooling over for years and which is finally coming together in many respects is L-3 Communication (NYSE: LLL).

This post was written by Minyanville contributor Jason Goepfert.

Regarding an observation I saw on the Dow's six straight losses, I show it's happened roughly every 20 years since 1896.

The last occurrence wasn't that long ago, September 2002, though a couple of those months were just barely negative and may actually show a positive return depending on who your data vendor is.

Anyway, what I think is interesting is that the Dow's performance after the others was mixed when looking out one to three months -- sometimes up, sometimes down. After six months, only two of the six were positive and the average risk during those six months was -11%, compared to an average reward of +8%.