Daily Market Update – April 10, 2015

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – April 10, 2015  (8:00 AM)

 

The Week in Review will be posted by 6:00 PM and the Weekend Update will be posted by Noon on Sunday:

The following trade outcomes are possible today:

 

Assignments: Halliburton

Rollovers:  Coca Cola, The Gap

Expirations:  Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, Whole Foods

 

The following positions were ex-dividend this week:  The Gap (4/6 $0.23), Whole Foods (4/8 $0.13)

The following positions will be ex-dividend next week:  AbbVie (4/13 $0.51), Chesapeake Energy (4/13 $0.09), Freeport McMoRan (4/13 $0.05)

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

 

 

Daily Market Update – April 9, 2015 (Close)

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – April 9, 2015  (Close)

Yesterday’s was another day of a failed rally, as the market squandered another triple digit gain, although it did manage to stay above water. In fact, when you consider the huge drop taken by oil prices yesterday and the portion of the S&P 500 comprised by energy positions, the market actually did fairly well for the day.

This morning, as this news-free week was winding down, is looked as if it’s going to be another flat open, but when the day came to its end, nothing was squandered. It wasn’t a terribly exciting day, but it worked for me. It was a day that was different from those recently preceding it in that it stayed on the same mellow course all through the session.

What had distinguished this week a little has been the occasional change in direction during the trading day, instead of simply alternating from day to day. For the most part, that’s not something that we had seen in more than a month. During that time, while we’ve seen a lot of flat openings being portended by the futures market, that hasn’t been the way the market has actually traded for much of that period.

For most of that time there’s been very little reason to account for the switch in magnitude seen so often, just as there’s been very little reason to explain the switch in direction from day to day, that had really been a hallmark of March, while April continues to look for its own character.

That character may get formed over the next week as earnings season got underway yesterday. At some point we will have heard from enough companies with large interests abroad to get a feeling for just how much earnings will be depressed and just how much they may be expected to impact earnings for the coming quarter.

For all of the emphasis that’s put on EPS growth from comparable periods, the suggestion that EPS growth is decelerating isn’t the sort of thing that investors are happy to hear about. They so much like to hear about accelerating EPS data, that they’re completely willing to overlook how it happened, such as through large buyback programs.

So these coming weeks may be interesting. Maybe even more so than with the usual beginning of earnings season

With just two days left to go for the week my eyes are set on whatever opportunities there may still be for rollovers and a hope that at least some of the positions will get a chance to be assigned.

That’s pretty much the hope for every week, where it doesn’t get better than when you have a nice combination of opening positions, rollovers, assignments and sales on uncovered positions.

With only one new position opened this week and only two new sales of previously uncovered positions, that leaves rollovers and assignments for this week and at least those still look like possibilities, as long as the market can stay in the game. With no real news today and none due tomorrow, it would be easy to think that there’s nothing to know the market off of its perch, but we all know how quickly the mood can change even when there’s no apparent catalyst.

Every now and then that mood becomes buoyant, but there’s been a definite lack of optimism being expressed lately.

But who knows, that may be the most positive thing of all.

Maybe the more people warn of calamity or pulling your wagons together, the better things may be in the coming week as things ma
y end up not being as bad as we’ve been coming to expect.

 

Daily Market Update – April 9, 2015

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – April 9, 2015  (8:45 AM)

Yesterday’s was another day of a failed rally, as the market squandered another triple digit gain, although it did manage to stay above water. In fact, when you consider the huge drop taken by oil prices yesterday and the portion of the S&P 500 comprised by energy positions, the market actually did fairly well for the day.

This morning, as this news-free week is winding down, is looking as if it’s going to be another flat open.

What has distinguished this week a little has been the occasional change in direction during the trading day, instead of simply alternating from day to day. For the most part, that’s not something that we had seen in more than a month. During that time, while we’ve seen a lot of flat openings being portended by the futures market, that hasn’t been the way the market has actually traded for much of that period.

For most of that time there’s been very little reason to account for the switch in magnitude seen so often, just as there’s been very little reason to explain the switch in direction from day to day, that had really been a hallmark of March, while April continues to look for its own character.

That character may get formed over the next week as earnings season got underway yesterday. AT some point we will have heard from enough companies with large interests abroad to get a feeling for just how much earnings will be depressed and just how much they may be expected to impact earnings for the coming quarter.

For all of the emphasis that’s put on EPS growth from comparable periods, the suggestion that EPS growth is decelerating isn’t the sort of thing that investors are happy to hear about. They so much like to hear about accelerating EPS data, that they’re completely willing to overlook how it happened, such as through large buyback programs.

So these coming weeks may be interesting. Maybe even more so than with the usual beginning of earnings season

With just two days left to go for the week my eyes are set on whatever opportunities there may still be for rollovers and a hope that at least some of the positions will get a chance to be assigned.

That’s pretty much the hope for every week, where it doesn’t get better than when you have a nice combination of opening positions, rollovers, assignments and sales on uncovered positions.

With only one new position opened this week and only two new sales of previously uncovered positions, that leaves rollovers and assignments for this week and at least those still look like possibilities, as long as the market can stay in the game. With no real news coming today nor tomorrow, it would be easy to think that there’s nothing to know the market off of its perch, but we all know how quickly the mood can change even when there’s no apparent catalyst.

Every now and then that mood becomes buoyant, but there’s been a definite lack of optimism being expressed lately.

But who knows, that may be the most positive thing of all.

 

 

 

 

 

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Daily Market Update – April 8, 2015 (Close)

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – April 8, 2015  (Close)

Yesterday’s late sell-off prevented a repeat of two consecutive higher closes, so they continue to remain elusive in 2015, but at least this morning wasn’t an assured loser, as the futures were trading flatly to begin the day.

Also on the bright side is that the close yesterday gives the market a chance to digest Monday’s unexpectedly large gains following the turnaround from the morning’s sell-off.

Otherwise, there isn’t too much news for the rest of the week, although the minutes from last month’s FOMC meeting will be released and you can be certain that each and every word will be dissected by lots of people with very different lenses.

There shouldn’t be anything shocking in there, although it could offer some insight into just how concerned the FOMC may be about the strengthening US Dollar and how that may be acting to slow the growth of the economy.

They may also be caught discussing how the drop in energy prices hasn’t yet seem to materialize into the kind of increased consumer activity that just about every economist projected and resulted in a significant upward change to the projected 2015 GDP.

Instead, however, most all attention ended up being diverted by the news of a verdict in the Boston Marathon Bombing trial.

All of that came on the day that earnings season begins after today’s market close.

The only question as we head into the second quarter of earnings, the one in which we were all expecting to hear about increased consumer driven revenues and decreased energy related prices, is how much have we prepared ourselves for currency related issues.

For companies that have lots of exports it may be difficult to deal with the stronger dollar that ends up making those goods more expensive to overseas buyers. However, for those companies that make lots of sales from their direct activities abroad the strengthening US dollar’s impact may only be as much as their currency hedging activities failed to offset.

Companies like Apple, Microsoft and others likely will report decreased earnings from currency shifts, but likely to a much lesser degree because of their hedges, just as some airlines hedged the price of fuel for years to their advantage.

There will still be earnings surprises, but we may be better prepared for the upcoming quarter than expected, as the expectation for currency related charges has now been in the air for quite some time.

However the season begins this afternoon, it will be an interesting few weeks.

For a while it has been hard to identify a possible upside catalyst. Earnings, even if below analysts expectations, may end up being that surprise catalyst.

For the rest of the week I think it will just be a case of sitting back and waiting, while hoping for those opportunities to sell options, rollover or cash out of positions may come along.

Today ended up with a pretty flat close,
although if looking to be very critical you could point to a second consecutive day of a failed rally, as the market was up by triple digits early in the day. Given the very strong downward move by energy stocks today the DJIA and S&P 500 did reasonably well, as the latter is about 20% energy.

So what today may mean, whether in the big picture or just for the day is dubious.

Just more of the same tomorrow and one step closer to seeing this week come to an end, still within striking range of decent outcomes on those positions set to expire.

 

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Daily Market Update – April 8, 2015

 

 

 

Daily Market Update – April 8, 2015  (8:45 AM)

Yesterday’s late sell-off prevented a repeat of two consecutive higher closes, so they continue to remain elusive in 2015, but at least this morning isn’t an assured loser, as the futures are trading flatly to begin the day.

Also on the bright side is that the close yesterday gives the market a chance to digest Monday’s unexpectedly large gains following the turnaround from the morning’s sell-off.

Otherwise, there isn’t too much news for the rest of the week, although the minutes from last month’s FOMC meeting will be released and you can be certain that each and every word will be dissected by lots of people with very different lenses.

There shouldn’t be anything shocking in there, although it could offer some insight into just how concerned the FOMC may be about the strengthening US Dollar and how that may be acting to slow the growth of the economy.

They may also be caught discussing how the drop in energy prices hasn’t yet seem to materialize into the kind of increased consumer activity that just about every economist projected and resulted in a significant upward change to the projected 2015 GDP.

All of that comes on the day that earnings season begins after today’s market close.

The only question as we head into the second quarter of earnings, the one in which we were all expecting to hear about increased consumer driven revenues and decreased energy related prices, is how much have we prepared ourselves for currency related issues.

For companies that have lots of exports it may be difficult to deal with the stronger dollar that ends up making those goods more expensive to overseas buyers. However, for those companies that make lots of sales from their direct activities abroad the strengthening US dollar’s impact may only be as much as their currency hedging activities failed to offset.

Companies like Apple, Microsoft and others likely will report decreased earnings from currency shifts, but likely to a much lesser degree because of their hedges, just as some airliines hedged the price of fuel for years to their advantage.

There will still be earnings surprises, but we may be better prepared for the upcoming quarter than expected, as the expectation for currency related charges has now been in the air for quite some time.

However the season begins this afternoon, it will be an interesting few weeks.

For a while it has been hard to identify a possible upside catalyst. Earnings, even if below analysts expectations, may end up being that surprise catalyst.

For the rest of the week I think it will just be a case of sitting back and waiting, while hoping for those opportunities to sell options, rollover or cash out of positions may come along.

 

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