The front month on the SP futures has now switched from March to June as a part of the Quad Witching Expiration. (Technically it switched last week, but for charting purposes I made the switch last night.) The June Futures have essentially the same formations as did March, it’s just that the earlier months have few trades to mark them.
This is the first serious test for US equities since mid-February, as it has been on a spectacular rally streak, no doubt fueled by excess liquidity applied to a selling exhaustion in the funds. Curiously not among corporate insiders who were selling at a rate of 57 to 1 in this latest rally, no doubt for diversification purposes.
The extent of this correction will be determined on the amount of actual selling that starts to occur. For now what we are seeing is more of a trading correction in response to an outsized rise in price, or as the Street likes to say, the market was getting ahead of itself.
Key levels to watch are 1135 and 1120. If we break those I would look for a consolidation around the 1080-1100 level.
“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows”
For those of you not keeping track, tomorrow is option expiration for the US stock exchanges. This normally precipitates an unusual amount of gaming and painting on the tape, as the writers and holders of puts and calls shove the prices around to inflict the most pain on anyone foolish enough to play their game.
Intel reports after the bell tonight and the market is expecting great things from them.
Tomorrow the US reports CPI, and then heads into a three day weekend, as Monday is Martin Luther King day in the US. Marin Luther King had a dream; and this may not be it.
The SP 500 futures have been the lead sled dog in this rally with the banks carrying the water. The daily chart has a rising wedge on it that is quite ominous, but we recall the rising trend in the 2003-7 stock reflation that never broke, and kept rising on light volumes to the bubble peak. And the of course it collapses with the other bubbles of which it was a symptom.
Here is the last reflationary bubble that the Treasury and the Fed created. Remember that one?
This is just an opinion, and it could be wrong, as all opinions may be.
To be long US equities at this point seems risky, bordering on reckless, for anything but a daytrade. And there is plenty of that going on.
The US markets in general have every mark of a maturing Ponzi scheme in the steady run ups on weakness, and the ramps into the close with the selling after hours on weak volumes.
But why?
Thursday is option expiration, a quadruple witch as we recall. September is one of the big ones, often setting up declines in the month of October. Further, we have Rosh Hoshanah beginning at sundown on Friday September 18. As the saying goes, Sell Rosh HaShana and Buy Yom Kippur.
The government is anxious to encourage ‘confidence’ to the extent of skewing the statistics to create hope in the public, the consumers. The banks are flush with liquidity, but really have no place to put it but for a minimal return at Treasury, or in some hot money trades.
Where is Goldman Sachs business revenue and profit coming from now? How much real investment banking is being done? How much M&A activity and IPOs are there to sustain it at this size, unscathed by the recent market downturns?
Obama and his team have NO credibility for reform on Wall Street after their handling of Goldman Sachs and the AIG payouts. We hear that Goldman had shopped the idea of those derivatives to them, became their biggest customer, and then managed the 100 cents on the dollar payouts from the government even as AIG became hopelessly insolvent.
Bonds, stocks, metals, sugar, cocoa, and oil are all moving higher, while the dollar sinks. Is the dollar funding a new carry trade?
The markets are increasingly the flavor of choice, and if the markets do not show a way, they will make one. Volatility is a screaming buy. Put vertical spreads are remarkably cheap.
Be careful. October looks to be the stormiest of months, if we hold out until then. The market is overdue for a correction, which can be up to 20%. Given the distance we have come on thin volume, what may make this correction shocking is the speed with which it will come.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisAGBUYAn increasingly attractive expected long term growth rate and a significantly higher projected valuation from just a few weeks ago make AGCO a company to watch.XBUYThe projected value for US Steel is still rising quickly even though past earnings have already improved significantly.FEICBUYProjected value continues to rise for FEI while long term increases in earnings growth are also becoming more widely expected.ASBCBUYMany analysts are expecting higher than previously expected long term growth from Associated Bancorp, and its near-term earnings outlook is a...
The prophetic words of Antal Fekete in his now infamous 'essay' on Gold are as relevant now (perhaps more so) as they were when he first wrote them 15 years ago - especially as the Euro-zone migrates from lossening fiat-money to quasi-money (greek pharma bonds for instance). While summarizing this must-read discussion of mainstream economic orthodoxy's mis-teachings is impractical, his initial introduction sets the stage for what is to come: "The year 1971 was a milestone in the history of money and credit. Previously, in the world's most developed countries, money (and hence cred...
Damn. Two (MJ and Whitney) of the big 4 of the 80s gone – Madonna and Prince remain. Probably the most well known Star Spangled Banner ever…
Disclosure Notice
Any securities mentioned on this page are not held by the author in his personal portfolio. Securities mentioned may or may not be held by the author in the mutual fund he manages, the Paladin Long Short Fund (PALFX). For a list of the aforementioned fund's holdings at the end of the prior quarter, visit the Paladin Funds website at http://www.paladinfunds.com/holdings/blog
Mario Draghi captured the utter ineptitude of him and every other Eurocrat out there when he said the following at today’s press conference in response to a question about a Greek exit: “To have a Plan B means defeat already. I am confident that all the pieces of this will fall in the proper places.”
Most 5-year old children in pre-school have already been told not to believe that they can always win and that “winning isn’t everything”, but Draghi & Co. still refuse to consider the possibility of failure even as it is staring them in the face. What’s really disturbing is that the stakes here are obviously much, much higher than they are o...
What with the word "next"? Also what's with the words "could be"? Without a doubt student loans are in a bubble and have been for many years. The source of the problem, as it always is with financial bubbles, is cheap money, loans to nearly anyone, and in the case of student loans, no way to discharge the debt, even in bankruptcy.
The following are the M&A deals, rumors and chatter circulating on Wall Street for Friday February 10, 2012:
Actuant Acquires Jeyco Pty
The Deal: Actuant (NYSE: ATU) announced Friday that it has acquired Jeyco Pty Ltd (“Jeyco”). Headquartered near Perth, Australia, Jeyco designs and provides specialized mooring, rigging and towing systems and services to the offshore oil & gas industry in Australia and other international markets. Additionally, its highly engineered products are used in a variety of applications for other markets including cyclone mooring and marine, defense and mining tow systems. Jeyco generates annual revenues of approximately $20 million.
Actuant shares closed at $27.33 Friday, a loss of 0.18% on average volume.
Greece was “saved” for less than 24 hours but now major ETFs around the world skid into the weekend on Greek fears
After wangling for a week or more, Greek took their new deal to the European Ministers meeting, only to have it promptly rejected and so as we go into the weekend, major global markets and ETFs have again hit the skids on Greece.
After two years of wangling, the European zone is demanding yet more and deeper cuts for Greece to qualify for the next round of bailout loans that will keep the country from going bankrupt on March 20th.
Major European and United States ETF responded negatively to the new developments:
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here
Here is a quick update of past trades and our current position.
AA Money
No trade this week as we wait for AA to settle. Phil remarked last week that AA seemed overvalued. In the meantime, it looks like we might have to roll our Feb 9 calls. Good thing we sold only 5 of them against our position.
Last week P&L - 310.00
We lost ground last week, but we still have 11 months to sell premium!
FAS Money
Very good week for FAS Money as we benefited from the large amount of premium sold the previous week. We covered most of the shorts in advance of the Fed speech, but sold another set of options on Wednesday after the speech - 2 FAS calls that expired worthless on Friday, 2 FAS put that we are still holding and 2 FAZ put that we bought back for a profit on Friday. A late stick comparable to last week's almost gave us problems at the end of the day though!
Last week P&L - $4277.00
IWM Money
A decent week in this virtual portfo...
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
Finding new and exciting Biotech companies that target novel mechanisms is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure there are many companies working on cutting edge science, but investing in those companies to reap the rewards of their work is a very dangerous game. More often than not, companies fail because the mechanism does not pan out, the compound(s) do not have pharmacokinetics (get into the body or last very long in the body), or an adverse event happens that knocks years off a development timeline. In addition, the stock can be manipulated by market makers so investors don't know which way is up. I approach investing in biotechs as a long term prospect. I continue to like our current portfolio of biotech companies (join in chat for many of those plays), and we continually add/subtract shares and sell/buy options on ...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(blogroll, archives,
more).
Contact Ilene to learn about our affiliate and
content sharing
programs.