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Daily Market Update – December 1, 2015 (8:15 AM) Even though there’s lots going on this week, there’s really nothing terribly exciting until Friday’s Employment Situation Report. At that point we may find out just how prepared traders are for what may be a new era, in that we haven’t seen an interest rate increase in nearly a decade and you have to be nearly 40 years old to even have the slightest chance of remembering what a real rising interest rate environment was like. That was the environment that made “inflation” a really nasty word, until we realized that deflation was very good, either. Up until Friday morning we may get lots of clues about what’s on just about every Federal Reserve Governor’s mind, including the all important voting members of the FOMC, who will meet next week. This week isn’t really unprecedented in terms of the number of speeches they will be giving, but it is up there and it will include some words from the most important members, Janet Yellen and Stanley Fischer. Still, with all of those potential clues, there’s not too much reason to suspect that the market will break out in either direction before Friday’s news is released. Then it just becomes an issue of whether the news is eventful or not, although it could also be tempered or fueled by OPEC’s meeting which will have started several hours before the Employment Situation Report is released. This morning’s futures trading looks as if it wants to erase yesterday’s late afternoon fade, which came after a very listless day of trading. The listlessness wasn’t unexpected and neither should that fade have been unexpected. You can probably expect some jockeying going on for the remainder of the week as we approach Friday, with hedge fund managers probably looking at the next week or so as their make it or break it days of the year, as the bar isn’t set to high this year as far as beating the indexes. With 3 new positions opened yesterday, I don’t expect to be doing much more dipping into cash or borrowing from myself in pursuit of opportunities. That borrowing, in essence, using my personal accounts as margin, have worked out reasonably well over the past few months, but I always do so with some trepidation. That would be much more the case if I was also paying interest to borrow and was on the line potentially for a margin call. No thank you. Yesterday turned out to be a fairly active trading day in addition to the new purchases. I hope that the rest of the week offers some more opportunities to either sell calls on uncovered positions or to rollover expiring positions. I even wouldn’t mind doing as was the case last week and this week and rolling over some positions that are set to expire in future weeks, in an effort to keep positions alive and continue to milk them for rental money, especially if that also includes being able to hold onto a dividend. As I mentioned yesterday, this may end up being a very quiet week, as far as personal trades will go, particularly since there were only 2 positions set to expire and lots of ex-dividend positions for the week to create the income streams that I crave. So yesterday was actually somewhat unexpected, especially since the market didn’t take a dive. It also created a situation in which there are now 5 expiring positions this week, so it may not be as quiet as I had thought. At least it will hopefully not be as quiet as I had thought. For today and maybe most of the rest of the week, it may just be a case of sitting and watching and then waiting for a crescendo, or if necessary, anticipating it. |
