Taiwan is one of the only Asian markets open and they had a nice 1.5% gain this morning. Europe is also bouncing back nicely and we should do the same, at least in the morning.
Commodities are calming (but by no means dropping) on a lack of action against Iran as the US and its allies (a fragile alliance) can get no security council agreement with Russia and China. Most disturbing is Condoleezza Rice’s referal yesterday to forming a “coalition of the willing,” a phrase that was used just prior to the Iraq war. I haven’t seen this get a lot of attention yet but if it does expect gold and oil to rally again.
I find it hard to believe that Bush really intends to start another war (with what troops?) unless he is determined to see if his popularity can really get lower than Nixon’s at the height of Watergate. Perhaps they really think Iran will give them another cause to rally the people behind (it worked last time) but there’s that old “Fool me twice” proverb…
Gold is slow this week due to a lack of Asian buyers which is also keeping rates up and the dollar down against the Yen so we are setting up for something big next week when all this pent-up action comes to play.
There are oil companies who know how to make money, much like the auto industry you have to go to Europe to find them. TOT had a 15% rise in net profit despite being directly affected by Nigerian disruptions and it’s actually up 24% if you take out some miscellaneous items.
Crude prices are dropping fast and I still like my XOM $62.50 puts for .70 from yesterday’s comments.
Today is a day we should go up, I don’t see any potential economic news that should derail a rally today (tomorrow we have jobs) so any index drop would be a very big concern today.
I’m staying out of the markets today until I see some direction which probably won’t come until the jobs numbers come out tomorrow.
Good luck to all you traders!
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MSFT is rolling out AdCenter, an attempt to catch the Google wave by copying their ad auction system. This makes it look like they’re not buying Yahoo which should reverse yesterday’s drop as people regain their sanity. The momentum is way against them but I like the $22.50s for .80 as a day trade, looking for just .20 with a .05 stop.
MOT faces huge resistance at $22.25 as the 50 and 200 dmas are crossing there. We need them to make a firm announcement of a close shipping date for the Q phone to push over, otherwise there may be a pullback from there.
ERTS had such bad numbers they should drag down the whole sector. GME $45 puts are just .35 and ATVI $12.50 puts are .20.
