Author Archives: TheAcsMan

I don’t know what it is about 2017, but whatever it is, I want to be dealt in on it.

While a 1.3% increase YTD on the S&P 500 isn’t necessarily the kind of thing that legends are built upon, it’s far, far better than the first 10 days in 2016.

I don’t like to project very much, especially if that means counting and spending money that you don’t really have, but 2016 ended being up such a nice year when compared to the already good S&P p500 performance, that I am beginning to salivate about the prospects for 2017.

That’s probably not a really good idea.

What I especially like is that I’ve had a trade in each of the 6 trading days to date.

That’s a pattern that I would really love to continue.

Today’s early rollover of the Cliffs Natural Resources puts in the face of commodity strength is something that I hope to be doing a lot of, much as was the case with Marathon Oil in the latter half of 2016. read more

I wasn’t really expecting to spend much money this week.

What I really wanted was to replicate last week and to do that for the remaining 51 weeks of 2017.

Back in the days when I did initiate lots of new positions, if you go all the way back to 2015, it always seemed as if money was burning a hole in my pockets or that maybe I believed that cash was only good to wipe one’s butt.

That’s pretty far from the truth, but that’s what it looked like and that’s what it felt like, even though I know myself pretty well.

So no one was more surprised than me, after having toiled hard to raise cash reserves for about a year and finally getting to a point that I felt was good enough to be prepared for whatever awaited, that within 30 minutes of the opening bell I had already opened 2 new positions.

I’m still of the mindset that I would like to see my existing positions get used on a much more frequent and regular basis through the sale of calls, but I just couldn’t resist this morning. read more

There’s really no reason to be surprised, but I woke up this morning realizing that earnings season has to be starting soon.

As if it ever really ended.

What really makes things different this quarter is that Alcoa, even though it has now been out of the DJIA for a little while, is no longer the official/unofficial start to earnings season.

The official start of earnings season honors went to JP Morgan after Alcoa left the DJIA, but Alcoa still came first.

No more.

This week, earnings start for real on Friday morning, with JP Morgan getting things started and Alcoa doesn’t announce  until a full 11 days later.

It’s a whole new world order.

 I was greeted this fine snowy Sunday morning with a very nice Tweet.

What was also very nice was not having to write an article in a rush to meet an unclear deadline in order to get potentially time sensitive material posted.

Or, for that matter, writing it at all.

My response to the Tweet was that 300 of those articles was enough and so I then did what was the only seemingly natural thing. read more