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Daily Market Update – January 13, 2016 (Close) Yesterday looked like it might have ended up being just another in a series of disappointments that have so far characterized 2016. The futures started strongly, then weakened, but then rebounded and the trading session got off to a strong start only to reverse course to a fairly large loss by the late morning, The surprise is that with about 2 hours left to go in the trading session, the market turned around again. It did so in a nice fashion, too. While that happened twice last week, what didn’t happen was seeing any follow through on the following day and the week ended up with about a 6% loss to start the week. Today, the early futures were actually showing a small gain. It’s wasn’t much, but it was better than the alternative that we’ve come to know so far this year. With some potential for nervousness over Iran’s capture of 2 small US Navy vessels and 10 US sailors yesterday, just days before about $100 Billion of their assets are unfrozen, there was certainly lots of potential for this morning to reflect lots of unease about what was going on in that part of the world. Considering how 2016 has so far been almost exclusively shaped by international events, it definitely would not have been surprising to have seen fear and uncertainty showing up in the futures market this morning. So far? Nothing. With 3 days left to the week, i couldn’t really envision buying anything else. My aspiration was to simply see some opportunity to generate some cash by being able to roll over anything from the list expiring this week. There are plenty of positions set to expire, but not necessarily plenty of opportunities. Those opportunities became even fewer today after a real plunge that took the market nearly 400 points lower and closing right near its lows. With those opportunities likely vanished there was the tiniest bit of solace by having been able to sell some calls on an uncovered position, but that was too little to make up for what we witnessed today. Maybe there’s some hope of a turnaround surprise coming from earnings as those releases are going to start to speed up over the next 2 weeks. It wouldn’t take too much of a positive surprise to send markets up sharply, considering that no one is expecting anything good to happen over the next few weeks, but the hole is getting bigger and bigger. I rarely give up hope and have to think that our current levels a lot of disappointment is already factored into those prices we’re seeing and that only further international uncertainty is going to really depress prices any further in a meaningful way. As with lots of cycles, the ability to hold your breath really helps. |
