Trading thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications. . .not necessarily in that order.
Just another Manic Monday! After a gap up opening, the indexes took the rest of the day to take out last week’s lows and making a new December low. And although they bounced near the close, especially the NQ, the indexes closed closer to their low of day than to their HOD.
Looking bearish, but maybe a “Turnaround Tuesday” in the making…. if volume picks up. Everybody on holiday already?
After the S&P takes a 47 point dive the first 3 days of the week, today was a mild 6 point recovery. Oh my! Actually today was a very boring market day. A very nice pop up gap open, but down from there ending up, but midway back from the open….and all on very low volume.
Friday better show some action. December’s quadruple witching options expiration has been up 21 of the last 29 years with an average 0.4% gain. And isn’t it about time for Santa Claus to show up?
Ok, so all OpEx weeks are crazy, but now we add in a FOMC meeting! This should get real wild, no?
According to the Stock Trader’s Almanac, December OpEx week, S&P up 22 of the last 27 years. Looking good.
Well the S&P eaked out a small gain even though the Eurozone is still a mess. Maybe the good news on the US economy might get top billing for a while. And maybe the techs will lead the way?
With a good retail sales and a decent PPI the markets diverged from Europe and recovered from a gap down. More news coming this week that will mix up an already crazy OpEx week….CPI, Industrial Production, Housing Starts, Philly Fed and Leading Indicators.
Volume has been light this week so far. I would think OpEx would kick it up a bit. Let’s see what happens WTF (Wed, Thu, Fri) 
Crazy days in the market…up down and all around. On Monday we closed near the highs, on Tuesday near the lows and then near the highs again today. The markets are different things to different traders…hope they’ve been good to you.
Futures are taking off in the early globex session….up up and away! The Dow and Nasdaq are flirting with their 200-day average, while the S&P and Russell are working to move up and get close. If the Eurozone makes a decision we should fly. Otherwise, up, down, up, down….
Netflix (NFLX) hits the skids tonight as they warn for the second quarter in a row about earnings, after the company’s fourth-quarter outlook was much worse than expected. Uh oh…are people going back to the movie theater? Probably not.
CEO Reed Hasting admitted the company “greatly upset many domestic Netflix members with our significant DVD-related pricing changes, and to a lesser degree, with the proposed-and-now-canceled re-branding of our DVD service.” The company said the larger-than-expected cancellations are to blame for the fourth-quarter warning.
Maybe it’s time for Hulu.
The S&P has sprung up almost 200 points since October 4th…there’s only been 4 down days since then. Do you think the markets may be getting tired? Time for pullback at least….even if it’s only a day!
A 3-day European rally…based on nothing but innuendo and blips of news. This sucks! Traders were bolstered by a possible solution in Europe…but it looked like lotsa traders were bargain hunting…as well as profit-taking.
Home prices being up helped a little, but the focus is on Europe….and the news was generally good. But about a helf hour to close, the indexes cut about half if their gains to end up in the middle of their range. Oh well, better than ending in the red!
We’ve got three day until the end of the third quarter and Rosh Hashanah on Thursday. Let’s look for selling as money managers square up their books and many traders take the rest of the week off.
Yes this market just hurts so bad! S&P futures markets came down to test 1100….and it may still not be done. There’s still the August low of 1072 to contend with. The markets are singing When Will I be Loved?
Looking like the market has created a ‘W’…but we need follow through and then breakthru that 1200 region in the S&P.
Although housing data wasn’t that good today, China’s PMI was good. Asian markets and the Eurozone lead us into a a very up day. Neither hurricanes, earthquakes nor Greenspan could stop the bulls. Volume was decent for a late summer rally.
Fat Bottomed Stocks make the world go round!
I thought the bounce would start sometime by the close, but you can’t always get what you want! And the selling in the ES futures continued into the evening. ES has sunk below 1100 last time I looked.
I did nibble on some TBT calls at a time I thought they may have bottomed, but, no such luck. I’m still sitting in them, underwater. So you can say I had a bad day.
It was an incredible day….The VIX advanced 50%, and although I was looking to short the VIX, I sat on my hands. SPY down 7.5%, yes in one day. The Russell was down almost 9% and the “winner” today was the Dow, down “only” 5.5%.
Some sector ETFs really got bruised: FAS the 3X financial bull ETF was down 30%, so the financial XLF was down over 10%. But Bank of America, BAC was down 22%…ouch! Oil and technology weren’t pretty at all.
So is it time for Turnaround Tuesday? China has some announcements overnight and those European PIIGS are still a pain in the ass. And let’s not forget, it’s time for FOMC meeting and announcement. Gee, what are the chances of a rate hike on Tuesday? 
| 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 | |||||||
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