Green Monday, what else is new?

It was such a low volume day I think anyone buying more than 1000 shares of a stock actually moved the market!   The ES didn’t hit 1 million contracts until after the cash close. Sure Europe was closed as was about half of the Asian markets, but still, I usually look for 2 million by 3PM EST. Trading was slower than a Christmas eve!

I digress. The indexes closed in the green but it was a very boring day. I covered half of my UNG calls for 62% and half of my DRYS calls for 23%. My VIX calls are about worthless, but I still have 9 trading days to see if they perk up. TZA is looking pretty crappy but I added a few shares near the close. In keeping with my bearish bent on the markets I also added QQQ puts and TWM calls. I’ll see how far that gets me this week. Oh, and VG which I bought about a month ago, finally turned green.

It’s reading stuff like the following that gets me shaking my head and wondering “why?”
Huge 25% hike for small businesses kills New York jobs.

Office vacancy rate hits 16-year high

Tomorrow we get FOMC minutes and find out how the Treasury’s 3-year note auction behaves. Today’s auction was pretty good, with the 10-year interest rate hopping above 4% briefly, but did not cause any consternation in the equities. Let’s see if the world returns to trading on Tuesday.