Trading thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications. . .not necessarily in that order.
The indexes continued their up and down action…and for the second day in a row, a run up into the close…closing near the HOD both days!
How so very sad to hear of the passing of Steve Jobs…a young man that has touch the lives of almost everyone! Thank you Steve for such a wonderful life. Rest in peace and may your family find comfort in the world you improved.
Earlier this evening, news broke that Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of AAPL. It looks like he’ll stay on as chairman, but the stock sold off hard afterhours. It will be interesting to watch this over the next couple of days.
Indexes had a lacksidasical opening and chopped around breakeven until the last hour, when a push put them solidly in the plus column. Volume was less than impressive.
Gold bugs were squashed as margin calls went out on the biggest gold drop since 2008, sending the gold bugs scurrying for cash. Buyers of gold last week or even yesterday, are hurting today…bitch-slapped more like it!
Is it Friday yet? With only 2 days remaining until the highly anticipated Jackson Hole speech, it seems that investors have grown weary of waiting. Is everyone expecting a QE3 type speech?
Appletinis all around! Woot, woot! Smash that glass against the markets…what a killer report AAPL came out with afterhours on Tuesday. Will today’s climb continue on Wednesday?
The markets ignored lousy reports from GS and BAC. The bulls wanted to run and nothing was going to stop them. They were fueled not only from IBM’s good report last night, but also very encouraging housing data this morning. And there’s more Home Sales news on Wednesday morning. Gold did sneak back under 1600…maybe a little farther down? And don’t forget silver.
Thinking it’s time for some slow grinding up…or maybe some down…or maybe just some consolidation. We are getting into the “meat” of the summer season. Got to get those vacations done before the kids have to get back to school. Everyday an adventure. That’s why we trade!
Gold finally makes it over $1600 mark…now to see if it continues up from here. The markets went in the other direction with gusto. The NYSE Advance/Decline volume was over -10:1 for the bears. The S&P and the Dow, did recover half of its morning losses by the end of the day. The Nasdaq looked strong in the afternoon…maybe in anticipation of IBM earnings…but there was no stopping AAPL! Wow if really took off.
Still a very crazy market…up and down. Remember,
Better to be in cash wishing you were in the market than to be in the market wishing you were in cash!
Be careful out there.
What a morning dive! Ugly….but hope springs eternal….and the techs and semis came through in the afternoon, dragging the rest of the markets behind them. Let’s give them applause: RIMM AAPL QCOM SMH USD. Good job gang!
Oh yeah, we also got help from the Greece’rs as they came to term with the EU and IMF. Oil took a beating but helped the markets by giving airlines and other transports a boost.
Europe should be happy in the morning and maybe we can keep it going.
Wow! Those were some blowout earnings reports…both from AAPL and QCOM. The tech sector should do well on Thursday, the last day of trading this week.
Thursday has the usual reports with Jobless Claims included, but also a boatload of earnings repports including GE HON PCX NUE NOK and several airlines. Wondering if we have some low volume in the afternoon as traders start the long weekend.
Oil, gold and silver are in takeoff mode this evening! And the U.S.Dollar, well it’s crap while the Euro also takes off …another big wow! It’s a long time until the European open and even longer for the US open, so all this will change. But trading overnight is where all the action is in futures 
And it was a dull market. It looked good in the premarket with GS’s good report. And GS took off, but it, along with most of the bank/financials turned around and went down. For much of the day the market hung around unchanged, but in the afternoon began a steady climb up and closed near the high of the day.
I got out of the USO puts first thing in the morning, but re-entered and re-exited twice during the day. F didn’t do much but C was strong. AAPL also was strong and popped afterhours. Don’t forget they report on Wednesday.
After hours we had some strong earnings reports from IBM INTC YHOO JNPR which bodes well for the markets tomorrow. Seasonally it’s looking good also. According to the Stock Trader’s Almanac, The Nasdaq is up 14 of 16 the day before Good Friday and up 10 straight since 2001. Should be an interesting couple of days.
I thought yesterday was choppy….today was a sausage maker. Up, down, up, down, and ending breakeven. It was all about oil, just as it has been the past week. Same old shit, different day! 
A notable pop during the day came from seeing Steve Jobs walk on stage at the iPad show. AAPL moved up fast and dragged the rest of the market with it. After the joy wore off, oil moved up and sent the market back down.
The jobs reports had a positive affect in the pre-market but were forgotten as the cash open drew near. Jobless Claims tomorrow and the biggie on Friday. Maybe we’ll move off oil and get back to jobs, jobs, jobs…..not like today, which was about Jobs, Steve! 
Did the markets move up with all the good news today? Let’s see…inflation in the U.S. with the PPI report today. Will it leak into the CPI? We’ll see on Thursday. Or how about all those Middle East protests? Or maybe Ivory Coast rush to withdraw bank cash? A good old-fashioned bank run….all good news to take markets higher! Yep, that’ll do it. 
So tomorrow the market will really run with the Steve Jobs health rumors….AAPL took a dump afterhours. Or maybe the CPI will show inflation? Don’t forget we get Jobless Claims also. And many of the Fed governors are speaking on Thursday.
I’m a little less short now since several of my SPY put options and SDS call options got stopped out. Still have some, but not as many.
And let’s not forget it’s Options Expiration Week! According to the Stock Trader’s Almanac, February Expiration Day, Dow Down 7 of last 11. But this OpEx is also the Day before President’s Day Weekend, which finds the S&P down 16 of last 19. We live in interesting times!
We had a great bear start to the day with the markets heading down fast from the get-go. But, the HoseMe Mubarack announcement reversed the sentiment. As it turns out, by the end of the day, all HoseMe said was, “Fuck you Egypt!” I await to see what happens, but I don’t think it will be good.
Opposition Leader Mohammed ElBaradei on Twitter:
‘Egypt will explode. Army must save the country now’
Many stocks actually made new all time highs today….BIDU was one. E-mini futures were pretty wild today going up and down…volatility was great for trading in both directions. AAPL went crazy on rumors.
“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” -– William O’Neil
| INDU | 0.00 | |||||||
| NASDAQ | 2905.66 | |||||||
| S&P 500 | 1344.90 | |||||||
| ^RUT | 831.11 | |||||||
| QID | 36.382 | |||||||
| QQQ | 62.05 | |||||||
| QLD | 100.36 | |||||||
| TZA | 18.3401 | |||||||
| SSO | 53.15 | |||||||
| SDS | 16.758 | |||||||
| BGZ | 23.5037 | |||||||
| BGU | 75.50 | |||||||
Sometimes, entranced by the screens, watching equities, options and futures change colors, charts moving in a wave, and indicators pointing in every direction, I just have to scream....
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