Tuesday Wrap-Up

Wow, what a day!

278 comments at the close of day and over 200 of them were about Apple. What oil? As soon as MacWorld started no one seemed to care anymore, which was a shame because it was a fun day for oil too!

There was "Just One Thing" at MacWorld and it was the IPhone – looking very cool indeed but not available until June. Jobs in on CNBC saying specifically that there are no option issues, that means it is very unlikely that there is an SEC investigation.

As I said last week when "THEY" were pulling every trick in the book to shake people out of their AAPL shares: "Unfortunately, in today's media saturated world, it is not enough to just check our sources — we also need to check the agenda of our sources!"

Even this morning, as MacWorld began, rumors were flying that Jobs' family was in attendance because he was going to announce his resignation. I've never seen such a massive PR attack mounted against a company but, then again, it wasn't the company they were aiming for – it was the retail shareholders of Apple stock who were onto a good thing and had to be "eliminated." One can only hope that all those "Apple insider sources" are discovered but, as we learned from HPQ, a company has to be very careful in its investigations.

I think it is important that people "vote with their eyeballs" so to speak and let the Financial Times know that legitimizing/sensationalizing rumors fed to them by people with a clear agenda will drop them out of the realm of legitimate financial web-sites. The timing, content and source of this story all made it very questionable yet in 3 days (over Thanksgiving) they ran 4 stories on the subject – still visible in the top right under "Editor's Choice."

In America we are taught you have freedom of speech but you can't shout "Fire" in a crowded theater and panic people – yet the Financial Times chooses to shout "Scandal" in a crowded market and cause their readers to lose how many millions needlessly dumping Apple's stock.

Meanwhile, the markets had a so-so day, holding up well as the energy sector plunged, but not doing so well when the energy sector bounced back a bit in the afternoon. As I said at 1:30 when I dumped out of my protective Q puts: "If this demonstration of everything mankind has accomplished in the 21st century all wrapped up in one cool, portable package can’t start a tech rally – then it really is time to cash out and give up."

Dow held 12,400, and bounced a bit higher than yesterday
- Transports blew 2,700 again but finished at 2,695 (a little better).
S&P held 1,412, but only after dipping down to 1,405 again!
NYSE held 9,000 – but did dip below it for the first time!
Nasdaq held 2,425 on a bounce and finished up a bit at 2,443
- The SOX held 470 again and closed right at 475 – finally!
Russell still cant break 780 same move as yesterday.

Oil – oil, oil, oil… Hmm, what to say… The low for the day was just .09 under my $54.34 target and came early, triggering a fairly perfect exit for our positions in the morning. Then the oil market was kind enough to bounce all the way back to $56.20 before settling just .06 below my $55.66 middle target.

I profusely apologize for missing the mark, I didn't think the dollar would have such a good day! 😎

It's going to be very interesting tomorrow as inventories are out a 10:30 coming off the warmest winter weeek in history and there are STILL 293M barrels of oil slated for February delivery to Cushing, OK!

As our pal Zman so aptly put it today: "If the market climbs a wall of worry, then crude oil slides on a plethora of pumping.”

The dollar, as I mentioned, popped over 84.50 and finished at 84.74, which will be a huge problem for commodities if it breaks over 85. Gold popped back up to $615 but it did little to rally gold stocks so the move is suspect to say the least.

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What an exciting day to read my own newsletter today!

The member section was on fire with play-by-play descriptions of the MacWorld conference and they oil gyrations that helped us all stay on track and make a lot of excellent trades:

The opening comment was mine, just after the bell when I took one look at the oil movement and said: "Remember NYMEX doesn’t open until 10 but it’s still all a manipulated scam so be ready for anything and there is no reason to be greedy. I’d rather get out now and spend a dime later to get back in than watch my profits erode!"

That was why I spent all morning laying out those trades, there was no way we could have done them on the fly once the market opened and I suspected that would happen (obviously as I set the targets).

We ended up channel trading the XOM $72.50s as that was just too easy, as I also pointed out at the open and scalping quarters was a fun pastime as we watched the rest of the oil saga unfold. As to the rest of the oil plays – I promised I would say this until you are haunted by it in your sleep:

Always sell into the initial excitement! Don't be greedy, take the money and think about it for a while – you can always redeploy profits but a loss is a noose around your neck!

COP Jan $65 puts opened terribly (.50) and were never taken off the table as they crept up all day to finish at .70 (down .10).
1/2 our COP Feb $65 puts came off at $1.60 (up 113%).
1/2 our CVX Mar $70 puts returned .35 ($2.70) which was subtracted from the remaining basis.
EOG Feb $60 puts stopped out at $2.40 (up 20%).
MRO Apr $85 puts recovered to where we want them again.
PTR Feb $130 puts ran up to $5.90 (up 162%) and never pulled back enough to sell.
RDS.A Jan $70 puts finished at $3.90 (up 400% avg).
RDS.A Feb $65 puts were added for $1.
SUN Jan $62.50 puts finished at $4.15 (up 124%) and didn't come back enough for a roll yet.
VTS Feb $80 puts stopped out at $3.90 (up 86%) as we lost our double.
XLE Jan $56 puts finished at $1.50 (up 25%)
XOM Jan $72.50 puts exited at $1.60 (up 220%)
XOM Jan $70 puts took a while to get out at .45 avg (up 45%)

We let go of the AAPL Feb $85s for $9 (up 64%). We added the July $100s for $7.75 and are waiting to sell the Feb $100s, currently $2.45.

RIMM had a wild ride down today and I sold the Feb $125 puts for $5.10 against the Mar $130 puts, good protection as I'm well ahead and don't want to risk what happened last week!

T Feb $35s were added for .60 as possible "pin action" off the exclusive IPhone deal. Cingular also had the exclusive on the Razor for the first year or so and it did very well for them.