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Daily Market Update – November 25, 2015 (Close)
Yesterday’s comeback by the market was an impressive one and yet another in an increasingly long series that has been demonstrating that the pre-opening futures aren’t doing a very good job of telling us where the market will be headed. One thing that used to be fairly predictable was when those futures showed a large move. In such cases you could feel reasonably certain that the same large move would continue into the regular trading session and typically characterize that session for the entire day. These days, maybe it’s because 100 points isn’t what it used to be, but the predictive value, even when those moves are on the large side, just seems lower and lower. While yesterday ended the day virtually unchanged, it had to make up significant ground to achieve that accomplishment. In hindsight, that may have represented another buying opportunity, but with this being a short trading week and really not wanting to use any extended option expirations this week due to the desire to have an opportunity to recycle assigned cash for next week, there wasn’t much drive to open any additional new positions. The greatest expectation was that today and then Friday, would both be on the quiet side, but you can never tell what kind of artifacts might show up in the event of someone with deep pockets in the face of light volume. Today, though, wasn’t going to be that day, as the market barely budged at any point of the day. For my part, my pockets aren’t very deep right now and would simply prefer to see some assignments to end the week and the chance to use that cash to open up some new replacement positions. I expected that today would be very much like yesterday, although I would have certainly welcomed any other opportunities to either sell new call positions or rollover any of those with extended week expirations and do so early, in order to capitalize on any price strength or upcoming dividends. But not today. It was just more of sitting back in the La-Z-Boy and wondering when I’ll be asked to help out in preparations for holiday guests. I don’t think many are staying over on Friday, but hopefully they will understand if I’m otherwise occupied on Friday, as I would like to be able to capitalize on potential rollovers if those assignments aren’t likely to happen. Otherwise, if you do read the afternoon version of this, then best wishes once again to all for a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving and be safe in your travels, if those are in your plans. |
