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Daily Market Update – April 9, 2015 (8:45 AM) Yesterday’s was another day of a failed rally, as the market squandered another triple digit gain, although it did manage to stay above water. In fact, when you consider the huge drop taken by oil prices yesterday and the portion of the S&P 500 comprised by energy positions, the market actually did fairly well for the day. This morning, as this news-free week is winding down, is looking as if it’s going to be another flat open. What has distinguished this week a little has been the occasional change in direction during the trading day, instead of simply alternating from day to day. For the most part, that’s not something that we had seen in more than a month. During that time, while we’ve seen a lot of flat openings being portended by the futures market, that hasn’t been the way the market has actually traded for much of that period. For most of that time there’s been very little reason to account for the switch in magnitude seen so often, just as there’s been very little reason to explain the switch in direction from day to day, that had really been a hallmark of March, while April continues to look for its own character. That character may get formed over the next week as earnings season got underway yesterday. AT some point we will have heard from enough companies with large interests abroad to get a feeling for just how much earnings will be depressed and just how much they may be expected to impact earnings for the coming quarter. For all of the emphasis that’s put on EPS growth from comparable periods, the suggestion that EPS growth is decelerating isn’t the sort of thing that investors are happy to hear about. They so much like to hear about accelerating EPS data, that they’re completely willing to overlook how it happened, such as through large buyback programs. So these coming weeks may be interesting. Maybe even more so than with the usual beginning of earnings season With just two days left to go for the week my eyes are set on whatever opportunities there may still be for rollovers and a hope that at least some of the positions will get a chance to be assigned. That’s pretty much the hope for every week, where it doesn’t get better than when you have a nice combination of opening positions, rollovers, assignments and sales on uncovered positions. With only one new position opened this week and only two new sales of previously uncovered positions, that leaves rollovers and assignments for this week and at least those still look like possibilities, as long as the market can stay in the game. With no real news coming today nor tomorrow, it would be easy to think that there’s nothing to know the market off of its perch, but we all know how quickly the mood can change even when there’s no apparent catalyst. Every now and then that mood becomes buoyant, but there’s been a definite lack of optimism being expressed lately. But who knows, that may be the most positive thing of all.
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