Arise and be free
Although the markets ticked up over the past couple of days they seem to be reaching for air as there is little to pull stocks higher–but seemingly plenty of events that could drag them lower. The result is a market with a whole lot of churn–and that's often to our benefit. The constant back and Read More …
In spite of a slight pullback today the bull is still kicking–but fortunately a lot more placidly than a couple of weeks ago. And that's good news for our out-of-the-money spread trades. Our SPX put spread expired worthless Friday almost completely offsetting an earlier close, and our AMZN put spread expired for a welcome Read More …
After a slew of good earnings before the bell the markets shot higher like a Yellowstone geyser this morning. Normally we can get out of the way of market moves, but gap-ups are pretty tough to side-step, so we were stopped out of this week's SPX and RUT trades almost immediately. To make that kind Read More …
Normally the beginning of earnings season is reliably bullish–but this market has been struggling for higher ground. That tug-o-war has caused enough volatility to blast us out of a two SPX positions last week, but this week we have reset for some nice gains. That said the market has been weak–but will it stay Read More …
Lately the markets have been going nowhere–exactly the scnenario we like for profitable spread trades. This past week we bagged an eight-day 18% profit on our SPX call spread, That was nice but we also had to close out of our PCLN spread at a loss as the stock got volatile right before expiration. Now Read More …
Today the SP-500 gapped lower at the open and faded for the rest of the day prompting some market watchers to ask whether the upside momentum we've seen for the past month is starting to fade. We'd have to see a lot more downside to make that call as the index is still Read More …
Today the SP-500 hit new all-time highs intraday indicating continuing buying pressue inspite of some daunting fundamentals. That strong upside momentum prompted us to close our call spreads this past Friday–but we still managed to come out okay on our SPX trades. As the index flattened out Friday afternoon we took in some Read More …
Today the SP-500 broke below it's long standing sideways channel prompting some market watchers to wonder if this isn't the start of the traditional late summer slide. Aside from today's action however this market has been remarkable resiliant–and it's that refusal to breakout that has created some recent short-term victories. We had two Read More …
The market has been chopping sideways on earnings news in a tight range since July 14th–a profitable pattern for out-of-the-money spread trades. For example our open SPX call spread expiring this Friday has already garnered 70% of its total available credit–and we're only half-way in trading days to its expiration. So this Read More …