Were you aware that the Bureau of Labor calculates unemployment in various and sundry ways that are not shared with the press? Neither were we -- until we heard about 'U-6," which reckoned U.S. joblessness at 14.8 percent back in February. We would assume it's much higher now, but unfortunately February was the last month given. Incidentally, if 1933's rate of 24.7 […] Read More
Friday, September 4, 2009
The futures pushed slightly above a 16.265 pivot that had served as a short-term, minimum upside objective. The overshoot hints of further upside progress, presumably to the next Hidden Pivot resistance worth noting, ______.
Check out the pre-holiday special in the Diamonds if you trust Mr Market about as far as you could heave a Bosendorfer. The idea of a strong rally today, followed by a devastating collapse immediately after summer's last fling, sounded too sexy to pass up […] Read More
I usually ignore hot tips, but a pen-pal of mine, Phil C., sent me a breathless, totally out-of-the-blue alert predicting that the Dow would rally 100-150 points this morning, forming a top from which it will collapse when traders return after Labor Day. Putting aside the details, this sounds so absolutely right to me that I'm inclined to speculate modestly. Mr Market loves to spring dirty, stinking, vicious surprises whenever possible, and what could be more vicious -- or more surprising -- than a tsunami to greet us as we return from our final summer vacation, tan, rested and anything but ready? To get short, we can use the midpoint resistance at _____ shown in the chart, buying two September _____ puts if and when the Diamonds get there.
All are ducks are in line now that we've successfully legged into the December 12.50-15.00 call spread eight times for a net CREDIT of 0.15 per. The short sale of some December 15 calls for 0.45 yesterday morning clinched it, allowing us to capture premium in this series when the options were fat and juicy. Let's put in a stink bid of 0.20 to cover the December 15s, good through Wednesday. It would be worth our while to get 'em in at that price if we can do so within the next few days. Our goal would then be to re-short them on rally.
We're no fans of head-and-shoulder formations, since they are everywhere the amateur chartist might want to find them. But there is something to be said for the bullish reverse head-and-shoulders pattern that gold futures have been tracing out for the last year-and-a-half. The pattern is shown in the chart below, and it is predicting that […] Read More
The following questions about my option strategies came up in the forum, but I am republishing them here because they may be of interest to a wider audience: What is the advantage of going long one call, and then locking in a given spread via shorting another call, versus “locking-in” the spread by going long […] Read More