Trading thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications. . .not necessarily in that order.
I’m talking about the weather outside…60 MPH winds and lotsa rain here…it even rained sideways at times!
The markets on the other hand just waddled around breakeven all day, green red green red …make up your mind! So far, nothing happening this week.
Maybe Germany’s CPI report overnight or US Durable Goods Order Wednesday morning might juice up this market. Or maybe the dollar gaining some strength! Only 3 more trading days in October. Let’s make it a bit more exciting! 
We had a dramatic gap up today, but after that…nothing. The Dow popped 115 points but ended at a +31 points…green but well off its highs. Of course it reacted this morning to a very weak dollar and then went down in the afternoon reacting again to the dollar’s strength.
I hated to see the premarket and open, but it wasn’t enough to stop out my shorts. And then, the subsequent drop was not enough to stop out my longs. So I’m sitting right where I was Friday!
Tomorrow we have Home Prices and Consumer Confidence. Also overnight we’ve get some news on Great Britain’s GDP. Be careful out there…and remember, “Don’t fight the Fed!” 
An ugly, messy market on Friday with low volume! And it even continued after the cash close as the dollar had a flash crash losing $3 in seconds and recovering just as fast. Several trades were cancelled. Flash Crash of the Day: Dollar Index.
Gold had its first down week in six and the U.S. dollar had its best week in the same timeframe. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? The Dow and S&P are flirting with their 200 week moving averages. And although the Russell and Nazdaq had a decent Friday, the weekly shows them both in a doji. The coming week will tell us how this resolves, but they all are looking toppy to me.
We’ve got a jam-packed week of news coming up with Home Sales, Consumer Confidence and Sentiment, Durable Goods Orders, Chicago PMI and GDP….oh yeah, and the usual Jobless CLaims. The G20 meeting will probably be a non-event.
From the Stock Trader’s Almanac: “Late October is time to buy depressed stocks, especially Tech and small caps.” On the other hand, the last 3 months have not acted at all like their seasonality would predict. Oh well.
Thanks for reading and good luck this week! Happy trading.
Well my October puts didn’t do so well by expiration day so I rolled them into November….QQQQ and VXX….and I’ve still got some FXI puts from way back. So I guess I wasn’t wrong, just early! 
GOOG brought the Q’s up big on Friday…helped along with AMZN and AAPL. But besides these big caps, the smaller techs really didn’t do so good. And if the rest of the market isn’t so happy, we may be just experiencing a bit of that irrational exhuberence. Tomorrow’s reports from AAPL as well as IBM will give us a hint.
S&P futures are down this evening as the US dollar shows some strength….short futures so far so good and puts looking good too. Let’s see what morning brings.
Today was a strange day in the market. The S&P went down to the 200ma bounced up to the August highs and then ended where it began the day….stuck in a range.
This will give you an idea of what the charts looked like today…Strange Brew.
Oil, gold and the dollar went wacky today…the dollar dove and gold soared. This evening, the Bank of Japan began intervening in the currency markets making the dollar soar and the yen dive. Dramamine anyone? Japan Intervenes in Forex Market for First Time in 6 Years.
Looks like September options expiration week is going to be a wild one!
Yes, it’s all about the employment numbers on Friday. Are we overbought?….but is it a good overbought? The kind of overbought we got into in mid-March 2009? Friday’s reports will tell us.
All the news has been “not bad” the past 2 days…and if we can get another day’s worth, boy oh boy, we may go into the Labor Day weekend over 1100 S&P. Got to admit, that would be nice!
My moneymakers today were QTM AEZS USO and XLE. Friday’s pick’s will have to wait for the Non-Farm payroll report to get a feel for the trend. I would like to see oil try for $76 and the US dollar to rest in the $82 area. What the hell, the market never does what I want it to do.
The stock market is the biggest junkie in the world. The Fed says that we don’t need no stinkin’ quantitative easing, which should be good news, but the market quickly goes into DT’s and trembles all the way down. “But every junkie is like a setting sun.”
No QE means a strong economy, it means a recovery is in process! Oh, but it also means a strong dollar…and at the present the stock market does NOT like a strong dollar. So today, everytime the dollar shot up, the stock market, along with the oil market, moved down. And it seemed to happen about 20 times today!
Volume doubled yesterday’s totals and I think it should continue throughout the week, even though we are leading up to a holiday weekend. Too much news going on which will stir up the pot. Tonight I was waiting for China’s PMI, which has come out at 51.7, up from last months 51.2. And by morning we should have heard some GDP’s from European countries. We’ve also got ADP payroll report Wednesday morning, along with Construction Spending and oil inventories and more.
So much going on, Australia GDP up along with China PMI so futures are moving up strong also. Let’s hope it lasts until US markets open….and through the day tomorrow! 
Ok, it’s not what I would call a follow-through day, but it was a decent reaction to yesterday’s up move. Neither day had any volume, but today’s consolidation was on lower volume than yesterday’s explosion. So far, we’ll still sitting good for a continuing up move.
Asian markets are opening soft with the Nikkei down almost 2%, but S&P futures are still hanging around breakeven. Gold is trying to move up and oil is moving down.
Wednesday brings us the ADP Employment report at 8:15AM…..the predecessor to Friday’s big show. We’ll see if the markets deserve to continue its up move. Maybe oil inventories will help. The US$ levels are getting low enough that if it goes any lower, stocks may begin to worry. I’d actually like the $ to stabilize.
So much analysis, so little time.
So wasn’t there some news this morning about bad earnings from GS? And weren’t C BAC GE still bad? Isn’t everyone worried about the bank stress test in Europe? So why are all the traders happy today?
Funny that the US dollar did not matter, or at least there is not that strong correlation between the US$ and the markets. Oil still seems to be correlated, as oil went up so did the indexes.
Lots and lots of earnings on Wednesday…and even more on Thursday! I’m interested in MS WFC KO QCOM and NFLX. That should give me an idea of how the world is doing. And if the markets can’t rally on this evening’s AAPL report, then we’re in real trouble!
I apologize for some short blog entries, but I’m having technical difficulties with my hardware this week. I have tracked the problem(s) down, but new parts will take 7-10 days. In the mean time I’ve fired up a backup PC and getting it ready for trading tomorrow.
See you on the playing field.
Futures markets, along with Asia markets, are starting off in happy mode. We may just get back to the upper channel on my S&P charts at about 1106. Of course it’s early evening and we still have to have Europe open up, but so far if “feels” good!
Oil is moving up also and will help my UCO position. I’m looking hard at adding some other commodity ETFs this week: DYY DAG GRU DBA. A lot will depend on the US dollar and the euro of course.
And don’t forget it’s options expiration week. According to the Stock Trader’s Almanac, the Dow was down big in 2008 after being up 5 years in a row 2003-2007 for June expiration week.
Hang on, we’re in for another ride.
| INDU | 0.00 | |||||||
| NASDAQ | 2778.79 | |||||||
| S&P 500 | 1295.22 | |||||||
| ^RUT | 747.21 | |||||||
| QID | 36.77 | |||||||
| QQQ | 60.81 | |||||||
| QLD | 47.97 | |||||||
| TZA | 23.3101 | |||||||
| SSO | 49.32 | |||||||
| SDS | 17.5687 | |||||||
| BGZ | 25.33 | |||||||
| BGU | 66.43 | |||||||
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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