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Daily Market Update – October 6, 2016 (Close)
Yesterday saw a nice rally that was led by oil, not that that really makes any more sense than it had made through much of 2016. Nonetheless, it gave another opportunity to sell some calls on a non-performing position, but once again, the expiration date was measured in months and not in weeks. While I do like trading and enjoy the activity, ultimately, it’s the bottom line and comparative performance that counts. I suppose that if I can get to that bottom line objective it may not matter that I got there in a less enjoyable way, but it will matter to me. Still, an opportunity is an opportunity and I don’t mind seeing the projected returns in the event of an assignment, even if it is still 3 or 4 months away. For some reason, I still like looking at those nice percentage returns, especially when the stock hasn’t really moved very much. For me, that never gets old, although waiting for assignments is both getting old and seeing me getting older and older. That I could do without. This morning, the day before the Employment Situation report was to be released, you would expect that markets would be cautious. You may not have known it by the way the market ended, but there were times during today’s trading that it looked as if some caution was going to be thrown into the wind and that traders were inclined to not stand in the way of whatever might be unleashed tomorrow. But that changed and the market recovered its losses to finish mixed on the day.. What the market has done the past couple of days is to once again take its cues from the oil market, despite the complete lack of sense in doing so. Tomorrow may signal a return to an interest rate focus and I can’t imagine how anything would be greeted well, unless the employment numbers are weak. At this point, it seems that anything that looks as if it could be justification for an interest rate increase is being scorned and then results in selling. The expectations for tomorrow are fairly low. Only 170,000 new jobs are expected when getting numbers in the 200,000 range have been pretty commonplace. I hope to be able to get some more trades in, but only if they can put some laggards to work. I don’t want to spend down cash, especially having done so this week and having so poorly timed that purchase. That may be the theme for a while.
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