Daily Market Update – October 18, 2016 (Close)

 

 

Daily Market Update –  October 18, 2016 (Close)


Last night’s earnings reports were mixed after the market closed.

Too bad Netflix and some others like it, such as Facebook, even Google, are not what the economy is really all about.

Even when the financial sector is strong, that doesn’t necessarily translate into something good going on in the economy.

Technology does. Retail and housing, do.

So far, IBM got technology off and reported its 18th consecutive quarter of decreasing revenues.

Fortunately, IBM isn’t the market leader it used to be.

Yesterday saw the market with a small loss on the day, after having been asleep for the final 2 hours of trading.

This morning’s early futures appeared to be making up that loss as earnings kept pouring in. The gain was able to be maintained, even though some of it dissipated, but it was still a good day, especially with an opportunity to sell some calls on an uncovered position.

I’ll take that as a small victory, even though I had to go all the way out to march 2017 to get something resembling an acceptable return compared to the S&P 500.

Assuming that the S&P 500 doesn’t do too much from here until March 2017, that is.

With that out of the way, there isn’t too much otherwise to pay much attention to besides earnings this week.

After having opened a new position yesterday and having made an unexpected rollover, I don’t think there will be much more trading on the week, although I would definitely welcome any chance to roll over any of the remaining positions, but I’m not holding my breath.

However, I wasn’t going to hold my breath for the chance of being able to sell any calls on uncovered positions either and that seemed to work out.

So…

After hearing Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer yesterday, I have no idea where the economy stands, especially after the Atlanta Federal reserve again lowered its GDP estimates.

What that means for a December rate hike is unclear and how investors will now react either to a hike or to a delay in the rate, is really unclear.

That’s encouraging, I suppose.

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