Ouch, oooh, bif, pow…
That was so not pretty! I want to thank the Nasdaq for opening so low it triggered me to dump everything at the bell and kept me from buying all day with a woeful performance although even that was enough to outperform the Dow and the S&P today:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1d&s=%5EIXIC&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=&c=%5EGSPC&c=%5EDJI
It was so sad today that I even got out of my oil puts as I just can’t stand it anymore – I just wanted to take my cash and go! I started mulling over articles like this and I knew it was time to get away for a little while:
http://www.gusmorino.com/pag3/greatdepression/
Yes the similarities are scary aren’t they? I see the reaction to the CPI as an excuse but not the reason the market went down as we have an out of control budget (so more tax cuts are the solution), rising rates, a mess of a war, runaway commodities, falling dollar, rising rates, falling home prices, lower housing starts… take your pick, so inflation was just the last straw today.
I spoke to several suicidal traders today, big city guys who lost millions this week and if we don’t get a turn up soon I think things could get very ugly… The Dow is right on the bottom of a rising line that formed in October and has arrested 4 drops so far but below this place (11,200) we will be looking at something more like last March – April when we lost 900 points in 6 weeks.
It would be remarkable if we stage a turnaround tomorrow. Asia is opening straight down already so we will see in the morning but the charts don’t look pretty:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EIXIC&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=%5EGSPC,%5EDJI
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There’s nothing to review – this is the first time since last October we have had no positions worth holding. I think decliners outpaced advances by more than 5:1 today, truly hopeless! At least volume was huge and leaders sold off so it qualifies as a distribution day – that’s the kind of day where they distribute your money into oblivion!
All the oil puts made amazing amounts of money but again, it’s just monkeys and dartboards in this kind of market so I’m not all that proud of myself…
Even HPQ didn’t have much of a day but it was amazing just to be positive (the only Dow component that was).
Google started strong but backed off half its gains by the afternoon and, like I said, you really shouldn’t be buying anything in this mess anyway!
I’d like to say GM was a brilliant call with the Jun $22.50 puts already at .85 (up 25%) but a monkey with a dartboard could have made 25% today shorting stocks. Actually, with a 4% drop on the day, those overpriced $25 puts would have done better…
There is a concerted effort by American traders to take gold down – you can see them attack in the morning and then making a great push as the European markets close at 10 and 11. It makes no sense whatsoever for gold to go down on the same day that inflation fears tank the market so, like I said, other forces are at work here.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5d&l=on&z=m&q=l&p=&a=&c=&s=gld
There were little signs of life, like Apple’s strong finish and ADSK’s refusal to go down. SIRI is back down to the pre-Howard level of $4, costing Mr. Stern some $100M in stock value.
I’m off that PEIX trade also as the stock is now down $5 so I took that profit and bought out the put holder for $5.10 and pocketed the $3 he paid for the put as pure profit on a 2 day trade. Thanks to Daniel for that one!
The FDX $115 puts from Monday paid off today but I sold those too at $5.20 (up 400%) as I have just lost interest in watching this carnage play out! Deep inside I am really hoping for at least a pathetic little bounce tomorrow but I’m not even sure that’s going to happen.
Now MRK goes down! I got stopped out yesterday – I was just a little early with Monday’s call:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5d&l=on&z=m&q=l&p=&a=&c=&s=mrk
