Daily Market Update – September 9, 2014

 

  

 

Daily Market Update – September 9, 2014 (8:15 AM)

In a week when there’s not much planned economic news and where it appears as if the geo-political news may be muted, today will stand out.

Instead of anything really important, the driver of news will be coming out of Apple’s product releases presentation that begins early in the afternoon.

There was a time, just a few years ago that the market’s daily performance was essentially determined by Apple’s performance. You could have done away with the other 499 companies and just tracked Apple’s share performance day in and day out and you would have had a great idea of how the market performed that day, at least in direction.

Those days are gone, so it’s not too likely that anything coming out of today’s meeting will have much of an impact on the rest of the market.

After a mildly negative day yesterday, but without any real sign of  building sentiment, the pre-open trading looks like it will be another day beginning with some degree of indecision.

After a reasonably busy week of trading last week, I  think that yesterday’s activity in adding new positions may mark the week’s high point, at a time when my cash reserves have gone to a recent low point. In the face of any continuing indecision I would prefer to keep some funds back for the ability to be an opportunist and wouldn’t bemoan missing any unforeseen sudden spike higher in the broader market, as long as it also takes me along for the ride and also brings some of this week’s expiring positions in better shape to either get rolled over or be assigned, preferably the latter.

Additionally, going along for that kind of a ride would also hopefully offer an opportunity to be opportunistic with other members of the portfolio that have been waiting for their chance to contribute to the generation of income.

So while expecting a slow day today, like many others I’ll still be keeping an eye on potential opportunities that may stay pop up, but will probably also fall into the trap of getting sucked in by the Apple event and will watch the countdown clock that is being featured on CNBC.

Of course that event then brings derivative events, as people smash open the products to determine what’s inside and try to figure out who the derivative winners and losers are, which can include hardware and software makers and this time around, possibly even a service provider, such as PayPal, eBay’s very profitable division.

While I’m not a very active consumer, I do hope that Apple introduces some kind of new product that gets people excited and digging into their pockets, although it’s not really clear that if they do it would be with anything other than money that may have otherwise been earmarked elsewhere, as opposed to introducing additional spending into the system.

Just as with the stock market and all of the talk about money on the sidelines that may drive shares higher, the retail market needs the same thing as a spur and that could be the sort of thing that would drive sideline investment back to work.

It’s now be
en a while since I’ve been fully invested and would love to be so, once again. Who knows, maybe today begins that day when the retail sector expands as all of those people getting back to work start getting back on track for the discretionary spending that really drives everything and can be just the fuel to get this market even higher.

If that’s the case, thank you Apple.