Counting with Doug: Financing a trip to Lake Tahoe solely with blackjack winnings?

Archive for April 2011

Jumping in to calm waters

This may come back to bite me, but I sold 10 VIX April 20 calls at $0.65 this morning, intending to cover my April call spread, which is heading for a loss of $640 if the markets stay in their torpid state My reasoning is that I already have a much larger May position on […]

Getting repetitive!

You know what I think about this market! Let’s put it this way, hope you have nice weather, its been a good week for outdoor activities. But I may have some close to expiration trades to do soon. Stay tuned.

Third most boring day in stock market history?

. . . and the beat goes on. I know, I know, the market is being “coiled like a spring,” to jump higher and make us all rich . . .

The second most boring day in stock market history

If you thought trading yesterday was a snore, hope you really got jacked up by the market action today: Well, this has to be the ultimate definition of lack of volatility, so the VIX did fall to about 16.69 at noontime, so I took advantage and “tightened up” my May VIX call spread, selling the […]

The most boring day in the stock market, ever

Today was my candidate for the most boring day for the stock market I can remember. Boring days are best put to use making plans for the future. About the worst thing you could do is to start day-trading out of boredom.

After the first quarter, is a 2011 a guaranteed winner?

The Standard and Poor’s 500 index rose about 5.4% in the first quarter, a good sign for the whole year if you are a follower of recent trends. As the Global Macro Monitor site astutely points out, only once in the past twenty years has the market declined for the year after the S&P rose […]

All eyes on a double top

In the upcoming stock market week, all eyes will be on whether the bulls can power prices through the year’s previous top at S&P 500 1343: Failure to do this might result in the dreaded double top, one of technical analysis’ most ominous signs. Of course reading charts to predict the course of the entire […]

Things are just too calm out there!

Everything is going so well in the stock market, that new highs for the year are even in sight: When the calm peaceful feeling sets in, I like to bet that it wont last forever. And so I did, stepping out with a larger VIX options trade this time. This morning, with the VIX at […]

The first quarter of 2011 is in the bag

The first quarter of 2011 is now history, and it was one of the best three month periods in recent history for the stock market, with the S & P 500 posting a 5.4% gain: It was an even better quarter for my trading account. Right after the start of the year, I started moving […]

After →