Category Archives: Daily Market Update

Daily Market Update -January 11, 2016 (Close)

Last week it was a story of Saudi Arabia and Iran not playing too nicely with one another.

It was also a story of North Korea perhaps setting off a Hydrogen bomb.

But mostly it was the same old story that we had first started seeing and hearing about the Chinese stock markets back in June and July of last year.

Eventually, the meltdown of the Shanghai market about 6 months ago probably led to our precipitous decline and first real market 10% correction in years.

This week, the second week of 2016, begins with a continuation of weakness in China, but after two 7% declines last week, last night’s 5% decline seems fairly trivial.

Maybe that’s what our early futures traders thought, as well, but that early strength was really muted, as oil also continued its steep decline.

Without any real hint of a bounce last week, other than a little final hour buying on two of those trading days, the market fell about 6% and is actually fairly close to another of those 10% corrections from the high reached just barely a month ago, at which point the market had nearly recovered everything lost in August 2015.

With the dual punch of China and continued weakness in oil, it’s hard to imagine what could take markets meaningfully higher, other than some really spectacular earnings news.

Since no one is really expecting that, if it does occur, especially if the banking sector gets things started nicely, the move higher could be very swift.

It’s still probably not too likely, though.

With this being the final week of the January 2016 option and having a lot of positions set to expire that were knocked down hard last week along with everyone else, I would love to have the opportunity to roll those over.

But, that may be difficult.

With volatility high, however, there may be reason to then look at capitalizing at that phenomenon by again considering some longer term expiration dates.

Ultimately, any additional income is better than no additional income, even if it may mean waiting and waiting.

It’s a little bit easier to do that if there are dividends while waiting, as most of this week’s scheduled expiring stocks have, but still, it’s a frustrating predicament.

With a little bit of cash to spend, I don’t feel any particular need to make the pile even smaller, unless something really looks spectacular, but there have been many head fakes along the way over the past 6 months.

Today was mostly a day of nothingness. At least in terms of net gain.

To its credit the market did bounce well off of its lows and did finish near its highs.

So that’s good.

But not good enough to do much other than to watch.

The likelihood is that if doing anything, at all,  will focus on either dividends or the same recurrent trades in companies that have been the case for the past 4 months or so, as they are also, buy and large, lower from where their most recent sequence of purchases began.

In a market like this I don’t mind serial purchasing of the same positions, but sometimes the market takes those stocks more than ever imagined down a path that you never imagined.

Almost, but still not the case today, but let’s see what tomorrow brings

Daily Market Update -January 11, 2016 (9:00 AM)

Last week it was a story of Saudi Arabia and Iran not playing too nicely with one another.

It was also a story of North Korea perhaps setting off a Hydrogen bomb.

But mostly it was the same old story that we had first started seeing and hearing about the Chinese stock markets back in June and July of last year.

Eventually, the meltdown of the Shanghai market about 6 months ago probably led to our precipitous decline and first real market 10% correction in years.

This week, the second week of 2016, begins with a continuation of weakness in China, but after two 7% declines last week, last night’s 5% decline seems fairly trivial.

Maybe that’s what our early futures traders thought, as well, but that early strength was really muted, as oil also continued its steep decline.

Without any real hint of a bounce last week, other than a little final hour buying on two of those trading days, the market fell about 6% and is actually fairly close to another of those 10% corrections from the high reached just barely a month ago, at which point the market had nearly recovered everything lost in August 2015.

With the dual punch of China and continued weakness in oil, it’s hard to imagine what could take markets meaningfully higher, other than some really spectacular earnings news.

Since no one is really expecting that, if it does occur, especially if the banking sector gets things started nicely, the move higher could be very swift.

It’s still probably not too likely, though.

With this being the final week of the January 2016 option and having a lot of positions set to expire that were knocked down hard last week along with everyone else, I would love to have the opportunity to roll those over.

But, that may be difficult.

With volatility high, however, there may be reason to then look at capitalizing at that phenomenon by again considering some longer term expiration dates.

Ultimately, any additional income is better than no additional income, even if it may mean waiting and waiting.

It’s a little bit easier to do that if there are dividends while waiting, as most of this week’s scheduled expiring stocks have, but still, it’s a frustrating predicament.

With a little bit of cash to spend, I don’t feel any particular need to make the pile even smaller, unless something really looks spectacular, but there have been many head fakes along the way over the past 6 months.

The likelihood is that I will focus on either dividends or the same recurrent trades in companies that have been the case for the past 4 months or so, as they are also, buy and large, lower from where their most recent sequence of purchases began.

In a market like this I don’t mind serial purchasing of the same positions, but sometimes the market takes those stocks more than ever imagined down a path that you never imagined.

Daily Market Update -January 8, 2016 (7:00 AM)

The Week in Review will be posted by 10 PM and the Weekend Update will be posted by Noon on Sunday.

The following trade outcomes are possible today:

Assignments:  none

Rollovers:   none

Expirations:  BAC, BBBY, DOW, MS

The following were ex-dividend this week:  CSCO (1/4 $0.21), GPS (1/4 $0.23)

The following will be ex-dividend next week: WFM (1/13 $0.135)

Trades, if any, will be attempted to be made prior to 3:30 PM EST

Daily Market Update -January 7, 2015 (Close)

Looking at the futures this morning in yet another free fall, this may be the worst start to a new year that I can recall.

I’m certain that if someone hasn’t already looked back at the data, they will do so by the end of the week.

With China down another 7% overnight and closing the market after just 29 minutes of trading and oil futures plummeting some more this morning, as well, it’s a double hit on our market, as the S&P futures are down more than 2% and just adding to their abysmal state for the week.

They ended up the day down 2.4%, although there was an attempt in the late morning to make things right. It was valiant, but a failure.

To add to worries, there’s now second guessing about the FOMC’s decision to increase interest rates and what could they possibly do in the event of a sudden turn down in the US, at this point.

There’s not too much doubt that some serious economic expansion would have been necessary to give the FOMC the chance to reload its tools and keep their inventory at high enough levels to use, if needed.

It’s not necessarily a good idea to project a crisis on the basis of just a few days of trading, but the situation in China was bound to happen, as the strict restrictions they put on trading was coming to its end and you can bottle up and contain things for only so long.

When China went through its market crisis back in July and August of 2015, we definitely felt it here and finally went into our own first real correction in more than 3 years.

With China again seeming to be in a position to wag the US, we may be held hostage to some degree by what policy decisions they may make.

Just like the FOMC, they may be running out of tools on their side of the Pacific, as well.

At this point we are probably going to be wondering what the Chinese government will do next and how much it may attempt to actually throttle free markets.

While prices are looking better and better, there hasn’t been too much of a rush to pick up seeming bargains. The buying seen during the final hour of trading on Monday and Wednesday may have been very poorly timed, so it’s not too likely that there will be eager people looking to commit to what they think is a bargain, only to find it much more of one the following day.

That includes me.

While I like to buy on market weakness, I’ve had a somewhat uneasy feeling for about a month and haven’t jumped in at some signs of early in the week weakness as often as I might have previously.

For now, there has to be some evidence of stability creeping in and some demonstration that perhaps a bottom has been made.

That certainly didn’t come today.

With what may be another big drop in the DJIA and S&P 500 the chartists will be furiously looking for where the next level of support may be, as one after another gets obliterated.

I’m just going to stay tuned for now.

Tomorrow will sadly be a day to watch positions expire and very little chance of being able to do much to milk some more premiums out of the system.

Daily Market Update -January 7, 2015 (7:30 AM)

Looking at the futures this morning in yet another free fall, this may be the worst start to a new year that I can recall.

I’m certain that if someone hasn’t already looked back at the data, they will do so by the end of the week.

With China down another 7% overnight and closing the market after just 29 minutes of trading and oil futures plummeting some more this morning, as well, it’s a double hit on our market, as the S&P futures are down more than 2% and just adding to their abysmal state for the week.

To add to worries, there’s now second guessing about the FOMC’s decision to increase interest rates and what could they possibly do in the event of a sudden turn down in the US, at this point.

There’s not too much doubt that some serious economic expansion would have been necessary to give the FOMC the chance to reload its tools and keep their inventory at high enough levels to use, if needed.

It’s not necessarily a good idea to project a crisis on the basis of just a few days of trading, but the situation in China was bound to happen, as the strict restrictions they put on trading was coming to its end and you can bottle up and contain things for only so long.

When China went through its market crisis back in July and August of 2015, we definitely felt it here and finally went into our own first real correction in more than 3 years.

With China again seeming to be in a position to wag the US, we may be held hostage to some degree by what policy decisions they may make.

Just like the FOMC, they may be running out of tools on their side of the Pacific, as well.

At this point we are probably going to be wondering what the Chinese government will do next and how much it may attempt to actually throttle free markets.

While prices are looking better and better, there hasn’t been too much of a rush to pick up seeming bargains. The buying seen during the final hour of trading on Monday and Wednesday may have been very poorly timed, so it’s not too likely that there will be eager people looking to commit to what they think is a bargain, only to find it much more of one the following day.

That includes me.

While I like to buy on market weakness, I’ve had a somewhat uneasy feeling for about a month and haven’t jumped in at some signs of early in the week weakness as often as I might have previously.

For now, there has to be some evidence of stability creeping in and some demonstration that perhaps a bottom has been made.

With what may be another big drop in the DJIA and S&P 500 the chartists will be furiously looking for where the next level of support may be, as one after another gets obliterated.

I’m just going to stay tuned for now.