Again, I hate to be right when I’m pessimistic but boy did today suck!
The Dow dove right back to 11,100 and the S&P dropped down to 1,294. The Nasdaq stayed flat but not the ones I was holding so I’m out of all of it with the exception of a few small ones I picked up today.
What mostly worked today was Finance, Insurance and Dividend payers, this is not generally a very good sign! On the other hand transports went up and they usually lead the Dow.
Oil made yet another spectacular recovery for no discernible reason while gold finished at $588 but you would think it was $488 the way gold stocks dropped!
Today I bought very small amounts of GM $17.50 puts for .50 (now .35) on a possible Delphi strike, I added to my ABX $27.50s for .60 (now .65) and I should have done the same with NEM but I didn’t. I picked up a few PFE $25s for .50 (now .45) and some VIA $40s for .25 (now .30). That’s just enough to make me feel better if the market takes off on Monday.
I wasn’t too upset with today because oil dragged everything down and metals were way off but the Dow never went down more than the 41 pts it finished at even though oil was far worse off mid-day.
Hopefully we can take that and a strong Nasdaq as a good sign for next week but I still get the shivers remembering last April…
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Google ended up trading 35M shares today but CNBC was right (and they told us 4 different times and we didn’t listen) when they said that all the hedge funds would dump into the buyers in the final 15 minutes of trading – it’s exactly what happened. See the comments today for the whole sickening recap and how I ended up with a spread going into next week (but I lost 25% of my profits by staying in already).
5:50pm ($389.80) – CNBC’s Kudlow panel just said they expect Google to beat earnings on 4/20! LMOL!!! What a racket… I’m dying to hear what Cramer says now!
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GE picked up .13 but I sold it when it dipped below .20 as it doesn’t really move fast enough to miss anything and I’d rather have cash. The same went for MOT.
For Monday we will be taking a close look at CME as Wolf pointed out that they release a volume report on the first of the month and it may move the stock for us. Although they look flat for the day they actually dropped $8 from a gapped up open so we will be hoping for a gap down and then jumping on the $470 calls for $2.
Speaking of greed, I was so distracted with Google that I didn’t take a double on all my oil puts earlier today. This was a direct violation of the Valero Rule! I am more ashamed of this than I am about being too greedy on Google (but it’s close!).
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=VLO&t=1d
BIDU pulled back but stayed above yesterday’s lows, in this market that’s a good sign!
RIMM is looking like GOOG did on the way down, bought up like crazy in the after hours and early day then dumped all afternoon. The trend is still firmly down and the $75 puts are already at .70 (up 25%).
PD also gave everyone a scare today, dropping all the way to $79.50 (down 3%) before recovering half to finish at $80.53 (I’m out of this one anyway).
EBAY continues to trend down as it waits for the Supremes. The Apr $37.50 puts are back to .85 and the May $40s are back to $1.75 which is ok for a spread I guess (just a little dull).
Cramer is sticking his neck out by telling people to buy mini cap SELA ($500M) for $3.20. This will be interesting on Monday as he’s featuring it and you can’t really buy it in the AH. Where was he with this pick in 2004 when it was bankrupt at .69 or even last month at $2.30? Let’s take a look at what does happen on Monday just for fun!
That’s really it for the week as we called for a cash out Thursday and again today so it kind of makes a big review pointless.
I’ll be around this weekend so please post some ideas we can look at for next week – I’m really not sure what to make of this yet and a lot of my thoughts may be colored by the spanking I got last April!
Have a great weekend,
– Phil
