It was a wishy washy day on the markets but we took the opportunity to lighten up on a few calls while entering some more oil puts (so far, so bad!).
ADI gave a good report and got the SOX in gear which kept the Nasdaq afloat: TOL had a report that was so bad it actually made their stock go down (and you thought it would never happen!). The industrials dragged everyone else down as oil climbed back to $61, ruining the party for everyone.
Like I said, if only it weren’t for the Dow:
- Dow fell 52 more points to 12,686.
- Transports held up at 2,974.
- S&P held 1,456.
- NYSE held 9,433.
- Nasdaq went up 6! Finishing at 2,524 – just one shy of my goal!
- Russell gained 2, finishing at 829.
So we will ignore the Dow for today and move on – the next move is up to Asia and Europe and we’ll see how they respond to weak industrial and rising crude prices.
We had a big drawdown in gasoline (3.1Mb) and distillates (5Mb) that offset a 3.7Mb build in crude and oil touched $61.25 during the day before falling back to $60.85. Despite the rally, I decided to peg small entry positions off our watch list in several of our target companies, perhaps we’ll get a better entry on our next rounds but I didn’t mind buying April and May puts at these prices.
In the first day of new NYMEX contract trading we’re shaping up like this:
- April Open: 340K (+5K) $60.85 (+.88)
- 244K contracts traded today.
- May Open: 127K (+18K) $62.05 (+$1.16)
- 68K contracts traded today.
- June Open: 103K (-1K) $62.84 (+$1.31)
- 29K contracts traded today.
- July Open: 36K (+1K) $63.48 (-$1.40)
- 10K contracts traded today.
Gold dropped back a touch but held $681 while the dollar actually poked back over the 50 dma at 84.5 for a minute, still teasing us…
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Lots of things happened today:
- Microsoft was ordered to pay Lucent a $1.52Bn fine for stealing MP3 tech.
- DCX did their best Rodney Dangerfield impression saying "Take my Chrysler – Please!"
- "Hedge Funds Gone Wild" will continue be seen in all major markets as the "Presidential Working Group" of the Treasury, the Fed, the SEC and the CTFC all say hedge funds are all good! "Now, "it’s an entirely different situation," Mr. Paulson (what a surprise!) said. "What we’ve emphasized is market discipline."
We had a busy, busy day as we lightened up on a few positions:
AAPL July $85s came off the board at $10.90, a bit better than even but great considering this was a roll of some tragic March positions.
AAPL Mar $90s were taken half off the table at $1.85 (up 469%), no sense in risking that!
ADBE Apr $37.50s finished at $4.30 (up 56%).
GME $55s stopped us out in the morning at $1.60 (up 7%) but we were back in at .60 later in the day.
GOOG Mar $470 puts were dumped at $5.50 (down 53%) along with a very timely DD on the $480 puts.
GOOG Mar $480 puts (one set) came off at $12 (up 105%) for balance with the $470 puts we let go.
