Category Archives: Daily Market Update

Daily Market Update – November 27,  2015  (7:30 AM)

The Week in Review will be posted by 76 PM tonight and the Weekend Update will be posted by Noon on Sunday.

The following trade outcomes are possible today:

Assignments:  BBY ($31), PFE

Rollovers:  STX (puts)

Expirations:  BBY ($37)

The following were ex-dividend this week:      MAT (11/23 $0.38), ANF (11/27 $0.20), KO (11/27 $0.33)

The following will be ex-dividend next week:   HAL (12/1 $0.18), MOS (12/1 $0.28), BAC (12/2 $0.05), COH (12/2 $0.34), HFC (12/2 $0.33),  WMT (12/2 $0.49)

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

Daily Market Update – November 25,  2015  (Close)

Yesterday’s comeback by the market was an impressive one and yet another in an increasingly long series that has been demonstrating that the pre-opening futures aren’t doing a very good job of telling us where the market will be headed.

One thing that used to be fairly predictable was when those futures showed a large move.

In such cases you could feel reasonably certain that the same large move would continue into the regular trading session and typically characterize that session for the entire day.

These days, maybe it’s because 100 points isn’t what it used to be, but the predictive value, even when those moves are on the large side, just seems lower and lower.

While yesterday ended the day virtually unchanged, it had to make up significant ground to achieve that accomplishment.

In hindsight, that may have represented another buying opportunity, but with this being a short trading week and really not wanting to use any extended option expirations this week due to the desire to have an opportunity to recycle assigned cash for next week, there wasn’t much drive to open any additional new positions.

The greatest expectation was that today and then Friday, would both be on the quiet side, but you can never tell what kind of artifacts might show up in the event of someone with deep pockets in the face of light volume.

Today, though, wasn’t going to be that day, as the market barely budged at any point of the day.

For my part, my pockets aren’t very deep right now and would simply prefer to see some assignments to end the week and the chance to use that cash to open up some new replacement positions.

I expected that today would be very much like yesterday, although I would have certainly welcomed any other opportunities to either sell new call positions or rollover any of those with extended week expirations and do so early, in order to capitalize on any price strength or upcoming dividends.

But not today.

It was just more of sitting back in the La-Z-Boy and wondering when I’ll be asked to help out in preparations for holiday guests.

I don’t think many are staying over on Friday, but hopefully they will understand if I’m otherwise occupied on Friday, as I would like to be able to capitalize on potential rollovers if those assignments aren’t likely to happen.

Otherwise, if you do read the afternoon version of this, then best wishes once again to all for a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving and be safe in your travels, if those are in your plans.

Daily Market Update – November 25,  2015  (7:30 AM)

Yesterday’s comeback by the market was an impressive one and yet another in an increasingly long series that has been demonstrating that the pre-opening futures aren’t doing a very good job of telling us where the market will be headed.

One thing that used to be fairly predictable was when those futures showed a large move.

In such cases you could feel reasonably certain that the same large move would continue into the regular trading session and typically characterize that session for the entire day.

These days, maybe it’s because 100 points isn’t what it used to be, but the predictive value, even when those moves are on the large side, just seems lower and lower.

While yesterday ended the day virtually unchanged, it had to make up significant ground to achieve that accomplishment.

In hindsight, that may have represented another buying opportunity, but with this being a short trading week and really not wanting to use any extended option expirations this week due to the desire to have an opportunity to recycle assigned cash for next week, there wasn’t much drive to open any additional new positions.

The greatest expectation is that today and then Friday, should both be on the quiet side, but you can never tell what kind of artifacts might show up in the event of someone with deep pockets in the face of light volume.

For my part, my pockets aren’t very deep right now and would simply prefer to see some assignments to end the week and the chance to use that cash to open up some new replacement positions.

I expect that today will be very much like yesterday, although I would certainly welcome any other opportunities to either sell new call positions or rollover any of those with extended week expirations and do so early, in order to capitalize on any price strength or upcoming dividends.

Otherwise, it will be more of sitting back in the La-Z-Boy and wondering when I’ll be asked to help out in preparations for holiday guests.

I don’t think many are staying over on Friday, but hopefully they will understand if I’m otherwise occupied on Friday, as I would like to be able to capitalize on potential rollovers if those assignments aren’t likely to happen.

Otherwise, if you don’t read the afternoon version of this, then best wishes to all for a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving and be safe in your travels, if those are in your plans.

Daily Market Update – November 24,  2015  (Close)

Yesterday was another flat day. Lately, those have been coming in-between big days up or big days down, as past weeks have been anything but flat.

What past weeks have done is to demonstrate just how confused everyone has been as the FOMC has been sending all kinds of messages and not really following through with anything. If you cast the FOMC in the role of a wise parent, you know that consistency would be the least you might expect from those who know just how important that is to those prone to infantile behavior.

You can understand why the market would then be very hesitant, especially since it had gotten very used to and comfortable with the FOMC having long given every indication that interest rates would stay low, all while the Federal reserve was helping to depress the competition by buying bonds.

This morning the futures were trading moderately lower as we awaited the GDP release for the 3rd Quarter and any revisions to previous months.

If there are upward revisions, you might have thought that markets would be consistent and then react positively, as their latest position has been to finally accept an impending interest rate increase.

But consistency hasn’t been much of a characteristic displayed by anyone.

If the FOMC can’t be consistent, why would you expect emotion charged investors to be so, even as their trading algorithms are supposed to dispense with those kind of human frailties? Even though software driven, those human written algorithms have to have some component of either fear or greed, or most likely both, contained within them. They may be tempered and relatively reasoned, but they’re still there, somewhere in that code.

So as it would turn out, just prior to the release, the futures started moving more strongly downward in advance of what would turn out to be a stronger than anticipated GDP revision, but the market did the right thing.

It did the adult thing.

It pretty much stayed the course until it decided that the news was really good news and could easily be the sort of thing that would get the FOMC to do the right thing, as well.

With 2 new positions opened yesterday and expiring this week, I would have really preferred that the market moved much higher and not take today’s step backward. But at least it held its ground today.

I would have much preferred a step backward to have happened yesterday, but there still appeared to have been some short term bargains, despite the market not giving back any of last week’s large gains.

With little cash remaining, although I’m willing to dip into my excess reserves and essentially borrow from myself, as had been the case in the past few months on several occasions, now with just 3 days left to the trading week, the returns on weekly options are really going to be smaller and likely too small to be attractive.

So the likelihood is that I’ll be a watcher and be hopeful that there may be some opportunity to either sell calls on uncovered positions or even rollover positions not scheduled for expiration this week, such as was the case yesterday with Holly Frontier, which has become a nice cash cow as it bobs up and down amidst all of the energy sector craziness.

With that kind of a backdrop, there may not be much to do until we get to Friday.

At that point, I hope that some of the expiring positions are in contention for assignment, but as is usually the case, I would also be happy with rollovers, especially if they can be done again and again, as has been the case with Holly Frontier for the past year.

So instead of being an active participant today, my expectation is that I’ll be sitting back tomorrow and watching, just as today, as we saw what kind of lessons investors have learned as the GDP was released and we all can continue to get a better idea of just what the health of the consumer may be, even as some retailers have painted a pessimistic picture for us.

I suppose that the inconsistency of the data can take some of the blame, too.

Daily Market Update – November 24,  2015  (7:30 AM)

Yesterday was another flat day. Lately, those have been coming in-between big days up or big days down, as past weeks have been anything but flat.

What past weeks have done is to demonstrate just how confused everyone has been as the FOMC has been sending all kinds of messages and not really following through with anything. If you cast the FOMC in the role of a wise parent, you know that consistency would be the least you might expect from those who know just how important that is to those prone to infantile behavior.

You can understand why the market would then be very hesitant, especially since it had gotten very used to and comfortable with the FOMC having long given every indication that interest rates would stay low, all while the Federal reserve was helping to depress the competition by buying bonds.

This morning the futures are trading moderately lower as we await the GDP release for the 3rd Quarter and any revisions to previous months.

If there are upward revisions, you might think that markets would be consistent and then react positively, as their latest position has been to finally accept an impending interest rate increase.

But consistency hasn’t been much of a characteristic displayed by anyone.

If the FOMC can’t be consistent, why would you expect emotion charged investors to be so, even as their trading algorithms are supposed to dispense with those kind of human frailties? Even though software driven, those human written algorithms have to have some component of either fear or greed, or most likely both, contained within them. They may be tempered and relatively reasoned, but they’re still there, somewhere in that code.

With 2 new positions opened yesterday and expiring this week, I would really prefer that the market move higher and not take today’s step backward.

I would have much preferred a step backward to have happened yesterday, but there still appeared to have been some short term bargains, despite the market not giving back any of last week’s large gains.

With little cash remaining, although I’m willing to dip into my excess reserves and essentially borrow from myself, as had been the case in the past few months on several occasions, now with just 3 days left to the trading week, the returns on weekly options are really going to be smaller and likely too small to be attractive.

So the likelihood is that I’ll be a watcher and be hopeful that there may be some opportunity to either sell calls on uncovered positions or even rollover positions not scheduled for expiration this week, such as was the case yesterday with Holly Frontier, which has become a nice cash cow as it bobs up and down amidst all of the energy sector craziness.

With that kind of a backdrop, there may not be much to do until we get to Friday.

At that point, I hope that some of the expiring positions are in contention for assignment, but as is usually the case, I would also be happy with rollovers, especially if they can be done again and again, as has been the case with Holly Frontier for the past year.

So instead of being an active participant today, my expectation is that I’ll be sitting back and watching just what kind of lessons investors have learned as the GDP is released and we all may get a better idea of just what the health of the consumer may be, even as some retailers have painted a pessimistic picture for us.

I suppose that the inconsistency of the data can take some of the blame, too.

Daily Market Update – November 23,  2015  (Close)

After a gain last week of about 3.5%, almost erasing the entirety of the loss in the previous week, this week gots off to a start that had lots of news behind it.

Lots of news, but no real action.

China has doubled its stock margin requirements and a $150 Billion proposed buyout in the pharmaceutical sector are enough to get this trade shortened week started, as earnings are coming to a trickle, at least for systemically important companies.

Ordinarily, we know what the impact is of tightening margin requirements in speculative markets turns out to be and it typically puts lots of additional downward pressure on stocks or commodities, even after the downward slide in price has already been long underway.

But that doesn’t seem to be the story coming out of China as the week begins, as we may have to get used to paradigms not necessarily being paradigms, anymore.

Instead, that market started the week flat, just as our futures market appeared to be doing the same thing, after having come off of that 3.5% gain.

Over the last few weeks the pre-opening numbers have had little to no relationship to what has ended up happening once the day got started for real, but today the range was fairly tight and the market ended up virtually unchanged.

What we haven’t seen over the past few weeks in the pre-opening sessions is the kind of large moves, in either direction, that have been so frequent lately in the regular trading sessions.

With that being the case and with this likely to be a volume deprived week, you can not be excused for believing that just about anything could happen this week.

With a little bit of extra cash to spend, but only two expiring positions for the week, if I do let go of some of the money in the cash reserve, I’d like to think in terms of a weekly option expiration.

The problem is that as a trade shortened week, the option premiums are going to be somewhat less than they would be during the course of a regular week.

The ideal day to make a trade, as far as those premiums would go, is always on a Monday, but even more so this week.

While I was willing to make some trades, my preference, as it almost always is, would be to see some decline to start the day, but I could also be enticed if there is a sense of boredom in the markets, as well.

Since there’s no really big economic news planned for the week. there probably won’t be much to test the market’s seeming support of the FOMC’s recent hawkish tone, so if there are any big moves, and those have been the norm lately, there’s not too much reason to suspect that there would be a rational basis for whatever it is that we see this week, unless what we see is exactly what the futures are suggesting.

I wouldn’t mind a quiet week of consolidation, but I would like to have some opportunity to generate some income, so I was hopeful that some pessimism or profit taking would set in and do so early in the week, but that wasn’t the case today.

Instead, it was the latter of the 2 acceptable scenarios and that was good enough.

Now the hope is that the decline that I would have liked today can wait until next week.

Daily Market Update – November 23,  2015  (9:15 AM)

After a gain last week of about 3.5%, almost erasing the entirety of the loss in the previous week, this week gets off to a start that has lots of news behind it.

China has doubled its stock margin requirements and a $150 Billion proposed buyout in the pharmaceutical sector are enough to get this trade shortened week started, as earnings are coming to a trickle, at least for systemically important companies.

Ordinarily, we know what the impact is of tightening margin requirements in speculative markets turns out to be and it typically puts lots of additional downward pressure on stocks or commodities, even after the downward slide in price has already been long underway.

But that doesn’t seem to be the story coming out of China as the week begins, as we may have to get used to paradigms not necessarily being paradigms, anymore.

Instead, that market started the week flat, just as our futures market appears to be doing the same thing, after having come off of that 3.5% gain.

Over the last few weeks the pre-opening numbers have had little to no relationship to what has ended up happening once the day got started for real.

What we haven’t seen over the past few weeks in the pre-opening sessions is the kind of large moves, in either direction, that have been so frequent lately.

With that being the case and with this likely to be a volume deprived week, you can not be excused for believing that just about anything could happen this week.

With a little bit of extra cash to spend, but only two expiring positions for the week, if I do let go of some of the money in the cash reserve, I’d like to think in terms of a weekly option expiration.

The problem is that as a trade shortened week, the option premiums are going to be somewhat less than they would be during the course of a regular week.

The ideal day to make a trade, as far as those premiums would go, is always on a Monday, but even more so this week.

While I am willing to make some trades, my preference, as it almost always is, would be to see some decline to start the day, but I could also be enticed if there is a sense of boredom in the markets, as well.

Since there’s no really big economic news planned for the week. there probably won’t be much to test the market’s seeming support of the FOMC’s recent hawkish tone, so if there are any big moves, and those have been the norm lately, there’s not too much reason to suspect that there would be a rational basis for whatever it is that we see this week, unless what we see is exactly what the futures are suggesting.

I wouldn’t mind a quiet week of consolidation, but I would like to have some opportunity to generate some income, so I’m hopeful that some pessimism or profit taking sets in, but does so early in the week.

Daily Market Update – November 20,  2015  (7:30 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:   MS

Rollovers:   CY, STX (puts)

Expirations:  CSCO, F

The following were ex-dividend this week:

The following will be ex-dividend next week:  MAT (11/23 $0.38), KO (11/27 $0.33)

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

Daily Market Update – November 19,  2015  (Close)

Yesterday was a big surprise.

There were 2 things that happened that made it an impressive day.

The first was the manner in which the market reacted to the release of last month’s FOMC minutes, which indicated a much more hawkish tone and one that made it pretty clear that the intent was to raise interest rates soon.

That the market didn’t run away in terror was a good sign.

There was already some word that would be the news in the minutes and that may have been the reason that the market had opened with some strength heading into the official release at 2 PM.

It was, however, at 2:04 PM that the market really took off and moved higher and higher.

While it may have been the official release of the minutes that was the proximal cause of the further rally, perhaps coincidentally, it occurred just as the DJIA had fallen to and successfully tested the 17600 level, which proved to be a resistance point on Tuesday.

Yesterday, after testing that point for just a moment, and again, perhaps coincidentally, the market turned a decent gain into a really nice one.

With some decent earnings for the week and a more mature look at what interest rate increases might mean at such an early stage, there was some hope that the market would be able to maintain this forward momentum as the monthly option cycle was getting ready to come to its end.

At least things didn’t go downhill today and stay there.

The market finished virtually unchanged and didn’t spend too much time traveling about, either.

With earnings reports for this week and for this current cycle now near the end of the ones that really matter for the broader market, we may begin to fall into that more quiet time of the year when most talk starts centering on retailers and their holiday sales.

Using the past as a guide, that typically means considering adding retailers in advance of the official start of the season and holding on through the end of that season, as the script is usually fairly consistent.

Expectations are usually low and results are usually better than expected.

That tends to be a good formula for buying and selling.

But that might be easier to do if the market maintains its strength this week and allows for some assignments of some existing positions and creating some freed up cash to recycle into that sector, where appropriate.

For today it was just a case of sitting back and taking the time to see where the opportunities might arise.

Tomorrow will hopefully bring those opportunities to life.

Daily Market Update – November 19,  2015  (7:30 PM)

Yesterday was a big surprise.

There were 2 things that happened that made it an impressive day.

The first was the manner in which the market reacted to the release of last month’s FOMC minutes, which indicated a much more hawkish tone and one that made it pretty clear that the intent was to raise interest rates soon.

That the market didn’t run away in terror was a good sign.

There was already some word that would be the news in the minutes and that may have been the reason that the market had opened with some strength heading into the official release at 2 PM.

It was, however, at 2:04 PM that the market really took off and moved higher and higher.

While it may have been the official release of the minutes that was the proximal cause of the further rally, perhaps coincidentally, it occurred just as the DJIA had fallen to and successfully tested the 17600 level, which proved to be a resistance point on Tuesday.

Yesterday, after testing that point for just a moment, and again, perhaps coincidentally, the market turned a decent gain into a really nice one.

With some decent earnings for the week and a more mature look at what interest rate increases might mean at such an early stage, there’s some hope that the market will be able to maintain this forward momentum as the monthly option cycle is getting ready to come to its end.

There are some more earnings reports for this week and for this current cycle, but we are now near the end of the ones that really matter for the broader market and so we may begin to fall into that more quiet time of the year when most talk starts centering on retailers and their holiday sales.

Using the past as a guide, that typically means considering adding retailers in advance of the official start of the season and holding on through the end of that season, as the script is usually fairly consistent.

Expectations are usually low and results are usually better than expected.

That tends to be a good formula for buying and selling.

But that might be easier to do if the market maintains its strength this week and allows for some assignments of some existing positions and creating some freed up cash to recycle into that sector, where appropriate.

For now, it may just be a case of sitting back for these last two days of the cycle and see where the opportunities arise.

Daily Market Update – November 18,  2015  (Close)

Yesterday was a disappointing day, as it looked as if the market was building nicely on the surprising gains from Monday.

As has been the case on a number of occassions over the past month, the market just seemed to stop dead in its tracks and then headed the other way.

In this case there really was no news, nor were there any of the technical factors that people like to point toward when explaining sudden changes in behavior.

The third reason so frequently given, and is most likely the one that has some validity, is that programmatic selling took hold.

That’s the same as saying “I don’t really know what happened, so we’ll blame it on something unseen.”

But it makes sense and a single large sell order could be the trigger for others looking closely at price movements and trading volume,

This morning, maybe not too surprisingly, showed a somewhat confused futures market. It really didn’t seem to know what it wanted to do and there wasn’t likely to be very much news coming today, at least not planned news to help the market decide.

When that’s the case it can be a situation of “follow the leader” as yesterday’s turnaround may have been and fear and greed become more important than facts and fundamentals.

But if you recall yesterday, the turnaround on a dime occurred at the DJIA 17600 level.

Today, the market actually started a slow climb higher from the open, as the futures showed some late improvement.

Then the DJIA passed the 17600 mark and promptly fell back toward it in a test.

But as it did, it really found some support there and then just went off like a rocket, again the big move started right around 2 PM.

The earlier move higher, starting prior to the opening, came as the FOMC minutes from last month were released and the talk was all hawkish.

Now it seems as if traders have again come to their good senses and realize that a small rate increase can’t be a bad thing.

With some more earnings coming this week, there’s some hope that the news from Home Depot and Wal-Mart will be more reflective of what’s going on than has been the case with Macy’s and Nordstroms, although you do have to wonder what the meaning may be if the lower end of retail is picking up and the middle and higher ends are struggling.

Generally, in the past, increases in employment statistics and wages have seen relative decreases at Wal-Mart and the dollar stores and more shopping at the aspirational kind of stores, like Target and Kohls.

But maybe in a really protracted period of poor job numbers, Wal-Mart may be aspirational for those that haven’t had employment for far too long of a time.

That both Home Depot and Lowes reported good earnings is at least a positive bit of news, but there still has to be validation from others that there is truly something at hand pointing toward an expansion of the economy at the level of housing.

For the rest of the week, I don’t think I’ll be spending any more money. I did enjoy watching shares just move higher and erase some of the real unwarranted declines of last week

I’m hopeful that the final days of the week will see some support for those positions expiring on Friday. So far, this week does give that hope,

My preference would be to see assignments, but as always, I wouldn’t turn my back on any rollovers.

Daily Market Update – November 18,  2015  (7:30 AM)

Yesterday was a disappointing day, as it looked as if the market was building niceley on the surprising gains from Monday.

As has been the case on a number of occassions over the past month, the market just seemed to stop dead in its tracks and then headed the other way.

In this case there really was no news, nor were there any of the technical factors that people like to point toward when explaining sudden changes in behavior.

The third reason so frequently given, and is most likely the one that has some validity, is that programmatic selling took hold.

That’s the same as saying “I don’t really know what happened, so we’ll blame it on something unseen.”

But it makes sense and a single large sell order could be the trigger for others looking closely at price movements and trading volume,

This morning, maybe not too surprisingly, shows a somewhat confused futures market. It really doesn’t know what it wants to do and there isn’t likely to be very much news coming today, at least not planned news to help the market decide.

When that’s the case it can be a situation of “follow the leader” as yesterday’s turnaround may have been and fear and greed become more important than facts and fundamentals.

With some more earnings coming this week, there’s some hope that the news from Home Depot and Wal-Mart will be more reflective of what’s going on than has been the case with Macy’s and Nordstroms, although you do have to wonder what the meaning may be if the lower end of retail is picking up and the middle and higher ends are struggling.

Generally, in the past, increases in employment statistics and wages have seen relative decreases at Wal-Mart and the dollar stores and more shopping at the aspirational kind of stores, like Target and Kohls.

But maybe in a really protracted period of poor job numbers, Wal-Mart may be aspirational for those that haven’t had employment for far too long of a time.

That both Home Depot and Lowes reported good earnings is at least a positive bit of news, but there still has to be validation from others that there is truly something at hand pointing toward an expansion of the economy at the level of housing.

For the rest of the week, I don’t think I’ll be spending any more money.

I’m hopeful that the final days of the week will see some support for those positions expiring on Friday.

My preference would be to see assignments, but as always, I wouldn’t turn my back on any rollovers.

Daily Market Update – November 17,  2015  (Close)

Yesterday was a surprise, but for a change it was the good kind.

It’s really hard to understand much when it comes to these recent moves. You’re not even seeing people who ordinarily are very quick to come up with reasons for whatever it is that’s happening coming forward with explanations.

Normally, they’re more than happy to do so, right or wrong, because it brings greater TV exposure and that’s pretty priceless when you’re in the business of gaining customers (or subscribers).

Yesterday, there was a pretty clear association between the price of oil and the market.

What this past year has been, when it comes to that association is an anomaly.

We were always used to seeing markets move in the direction opposite to that of oil’s movement, even when energy made up a larger portion of the S&P 500 and the DJIA.

Now, good news for energy companies is taken as good news for the market.

Continuing on yesterday’s closing theme; “Go Figure.”

What was a little interesting this morning was that the pre-opening futures were very strong, but weakened after DJIA components Wal-Mart and Home Depot reported earnings.

The unusual part is that both reported better than expected earnings numbers, you know, the kind that can easily be manipulated and their shares went considerably higher in the pre-opening session. So that could only mean that the broader markets were deteriorating more than those 2 were adding to that early rally.

No matter, the futures haven’t been reflective of very much lately, anyway.

Today the futures could have gone wither way and depending on your perspective they could have been wrong or right, as the day finished flat after having gone up really nicely until about 2:16, when the DJIA may have hit against one of those pesky points at 17600, although that didn’t really represent much in the way of resistance.

The same was true for the S&P 500.

With a single purchase yesterday, that may have been luckily timed to have occurred at that point that the market hadn’t yet decided to move higher, I remain cautious on the week and am not necessarily going to go with very much confidence into my cash reserve.

What I would like is to simply see some positive action with those positions set to expire this week as the monthly contracts expire.

My initial thoughts were that this week would be one of looking for more dividend yielders and selecting extended option expiration dates.

Yesterday’s purchase was anything but.

However, it represented what i actually enjoy doing the most, when it comes to stocks.

That is to buy the same stock over and over again, as often as possible, week after week or expiration after expiration.

Morgan Stanley is the latest to fill that bill, but up until recently, there haven’t been many of those the past 2 years.

What sometimes occurs, especially as volatility climbs, is that there may also be advantage to not taking assignment on positions, but instead rolling them over, especially if there’s also a dividend to be captured.

That’s more the case when you have adequate cash reserves, but it’s also a way to alter a portfolio a bit more to a buy and hold mentality and not have to continually hunt for new positions.

This most recent market, and by that, I mean all of 2015, has been one where down beaten stocks, or those that seemed like bargains, took or have taken so very long to rebound.

With that in mind, it’s nice if you can simply do the same stocks over and over again.

To do so, it would be nice to also see another volatility spike, but then to simply see an increased volatility level maintained in a tight, but higher range.

That used to be fairly common and reasonable to expect.

Lately, not so much, but you don’t stop hoping.

Daily Market Update – November 17,  2015  (8:30 AM)

Yesterday was a surprise, but for a change it was the good kind.

It’s really hard to understand much when it comes to these recent moves. You’re not even seeing people who ordinarily are very quick to come up with reasons for whatever it is that’s happening coming forward with explanations.

Normally, they’re more than happy to do so, right or wrong, because it brings greater TV exposure and that’s pretty priceless when you’re in the business of gaining customers (or subscribers).

Yesterday, there was a pretty clear association between the price of oil and the market.

What this past year has been, when it comes to that association is an anomaly.

We were always used to seeing markets move in the direction opposite to that of oil’s movement, even when energy made up a larger portion of the S&P 500 and the DJIA.

Now, good news for energy companies is taken as good news for the market.

Continuing on yesterday’s closing theme; “Go Figure.”

What was a little interesting this morning was that the pre-opening futures were very strong, but weakened after DJIA components Wal-Mart and Home Depot reported earnings.

The unusual part is that both reported better than expected earnings numbers, you know, the kind that can easily be manipulated and their shares went considerably higher in the pre-opening session. So that could only mean that the broader markets were deteriorating more than those 2 were adding to that early rally.

No matter, the futures haven’t been reflective of very much lately, anyway.

With a single purchase yesterday, that may have been luckily timed to have occurred at that point that the market hadn’t yet decided to move higher, I remain cautious on the week and am not necessarily going to go with very much confidence into my cash reserve.

What I would like is to simply see some positive action with those positions set to expire this week as the monthly contracts expire.

My initial thoughts were that this week would be one of looking for more dividend yielders and selecting extended option expiration dates.

Yesterday’s purchase was anything but.

However, it represented what i actually enjoy doing the most, when it comes to stocks.

That is to buy the same stock over and over again, as often as possible, week after week or expiration after expiration.

Morgan Stanley is the latest to fill that bill, but up until recently, there haven’t been many of those the past 2 years.

What sometimes occurs, especially as volatility climbs, is that there may also be advantage to not taking assignment on positions, but instead rolling them over, especially if there’s also a dividend to be captured.

That’s more the case when you have adequate cash reserves, but it’s also a way to alter a portfolio a bit more to a buy and hold mentality and not have to continually hunt for new positions.

This most recent market, and by that, I mean all of 2015, has been one where down beaten stocks, or those that seemed like bargains, took or have taken so very long to rebound.

With that in mind, it’s nice if you can simply do the same stocks over and over again.

To do so, it would be nice to also see another volatility spike, but then to simply see an increased volatility level maintained in a tight, but higher range.

That used to be fairly common and reasonable to expect.

Lately, not so much, but you don’t stop hoping.

Daily Market Update – November 16,  2015  (Close)

After last week’s terrible showing, the market needs some kind of positive news.

The weekend didn’t bring any happiness on the worldwide front that could spill over to begin the week and only injected more uncertainty into international affairs.

There is lots that could happen this week that hasn’t been discounted by investors and could be market disruptive.

With continuing earnings reports from national retailers this week, there isn’t very much reason to believe that what comes this week will be very different from the disappointments of last week that added onto the disappointment that came from the hawkish tones coming from FOMC members.

Both of last week’s major events were somewhat surprising.

While you could argue that retailer earnings , being backward looking, wouldn’t yet reflect recent improvements in the economy, it’s what came after earnings were reported that brought surprise. The real surprise was that forward guidance continued to be sour, with no suggestion that discretionary spending would pick up.

That didn’t seem to be a likely thing to be heard.

The FOMC, on the other hand, while it obviously will raise interest rates sometime in the future, surprisingly continued its hawkish comments, even will events on the ground didn’t seem to justify those comments.

Whatever wonders the market perceived in October came under assault as soon as November began and the market opens this week almost 6% below its all time high, after having mounted a recovery that brought it back to within about 1.5% of that level.

With such a sharp decline last week you could understand why there might be some kind of recovery this week, but based on the pre-opening futures it appeared to be a fairly feeble attempt.

The only positive you might get from this morning’s open was that the futures did a terrible job last week in predicting market direction and magnitude.

Today turned out to be a great example of that as the market got off to a stumble and for a brief time looked as if it might just continue from where Friday left off, but within about 5 minutes of trading it turned around and then got real and sustained strength 2 hours into trading.

Go figure.

There was no real reason for anything seen today.

With little expectation that the remaining earnings reports are going to buoy the market, the only reasonable possibilities for a rally into the end of the year would likely come from some FOMC decision, rather than continuing indecision.

The market could just as easily climb higher if and when the FOMC raises interest rates or climb higher if the FOMC announces it is delaying that increase until an improvement in the economy sufficient to warrant such an increase would finally occur.

Simply announcing that rates will remain unchanged without indicating a more dovish stance would not mollify investors and would keep them unnecessarily nervous.

The latter of those two FOMC actions might bring some happiness for traders, but it won’t last very long.

Meanwhile, with a number of positions set to expire this week, but with lots of uncertainty from last week, I may not be rushing in to make any new purchases.

I’d be very happy to have some chance to rollover existing positions expiring this week or see them assigned.

I had planned to be watchful this morning, but as has been the recent case, and thought that I might look more at ex-dividend trades and consider expirations of more than a week’s duration, particularly if it looks as if there could be some assignments this week.

Funny how that worked out to.

One new position. Not on the week’s list. No dividend and expiring this week.

Go figure.