Which Way Wednesday – Fed Minutes Pending
by phil - July 9th, 2014 8:29 am
Fed day (again).
Yesterday was TERRIBLE, with volume finally coming back – and it was all downhill, with 3x more declining volume than advancing. Still, as you can see from Dave Fry's SPY chart, the fix was in and the failure to hold $196.50 during trading hours was corrected at the bell by the powers that be, forcing the Market-on-Close suckers (401K, IRA, ETFs) to pay an extra 0.2% for their fills.
There's something strangely comforting about playing a rigged game like this. I yesterday's live webcast, we were able to make a quick $150 per contract playing a very predictable bounce in the Russell Futures (you can see the Webinar Replay HERE).
Of course that was small potoatoes compared to the trade ideas we gave you in yesterday's morning post (which you can have delivered to you every day by subscribing here) as the TZA Aug $14 calls shot up from 0.91 to $1.20 - up 32% for the day.
The QQQ calls I mentioned were the July $97 puts and we closed those out at $2.30, up 47% in less than a full day.
With returns like that, we could compound $1,000 into $1M in no time at all!
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Though they were, in fact, small positions, our entire Short-Term Portfolio jumped up 2% on the day – as it's positioned bearish to protect our much larger and still bullish ($500K) Long-Term Portfolio, which is weathering this little storm quite nicely as we wisely moved it to mainly cash when we thought the market was toppy.
Now we anxiously anticipate earnings and the potential to bargain-hunt some more.
As you can see from our Big Chart, the Nasdaq and Russell were saved by their 5% lines (2.5% on the RUT) but the NYSE failed their critical 11,000 line and now we are 3 of 5 bearish and that means we lean bearish until one of our 3 lagging indices gets back over their line.
SP 500 September Futures Daily Chart
by Chart School - July 13th, 2010 5:54 pm
SP 500 September Futures Daily Chart
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Stocks were rallying today on optimism about earnings based on last night’s results from Alcoa and CSX.
After hours tonight Intel announced better than expected earnings and raised its forecasts. This caused the futures to gap open when they resumed trading. Here is what they look like now, after hours.
This has been a wicked rally off the lows. It *might* be getting towards a short term top, possibly tomorrow, but I would not want to get in front of it. Wait and see how the rally progresses.
ALCOA REPORTS IN-LINE EPS, MISSES REVENUES
by ilene - July 12th, 2010 7:57 pm
ALCOA REPORTS IN-LINE EPS, MISSES REVENUES
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
I don’t want to place too much emphasis on the Alcoa earnings, but their report highlights some of the potential risks that have been baked into equity prices. Alcoa reported a solid quarter by almost any measure. Sales were up 17.8% year over year and Klaus Kleinfeld, Alcoa President and Chief Executive Officer says the environment is in fact improving:
“Our markets are gradually improving and both policy trends and consumer sentiment bode well for aluminum demand.”
Despite the clear improvement, equity investors are now pricing in a nearly flawless quarter for Q1 earnings. Alcoa’s bottom line of 10 cents EPS was in-line with expectations and the revenue line was shy of the $5.24B estimates. Alcoa’s EPS are notoriously lumpy, but this was the first time in 11 quarters that they have missed revenue estimates. Analysts are clearly pricing in robust revenue growth. “In-line” and revenue misses simply won’t cut it after a 16% rally in equities. Alcoa is by no means a fair measure of the entire market, but it does highlight some of the potential risks that have been baked into equities.