Daily Market Update – October 27, 2016 (Close)

 

 

Daily Market Update –  October 27, 2016 (Close)


Yesterday wasn’t a great day for the market, but it wasn’t really bad either.

That made two consecutive days of real boring activity.

Today, the morning’s futures appeared to want to be a clone of both of those days, which were days characterized by no really great earnings news and no great guidance.

The morning’s news yesterday got off to a decent start with some optimistic news, this time not so much earnings related, but more on the buyout front.

Suddenly, that activity has heated up as maybe there is a perception that prices are cheap and cheap money is coming to an end.

You would, however, think that perhaps the end of cheap money could be a reason to drive share prices a bit lower, but if you’re spending other people’s money, why wait?

There are lots of earnings to come today, both before and after the bell.

Meanwhile, the early morning futures were again fairly flat, but they had improved from where they started trading in the earliest part of the session.

They actually ended the day higher, even though it was another boring day, except for one opportunity to sell some calls on an uncovered position. 

As has been the case since the last few months of 2015, that has meant looking at a longer dated option, though.

With that done, my eyes were and will be predominantly on oil, as both expiring positions are in that sector and earnings are coming up next week, so I would like to have a plan in hand and be able to execute over the next 2 trading days.

At the moment, the plan is to take assignment of those short puts, if necessary and the hope to sell some calls that expire during the week of the upcoming ex-dividend date, which was just announced as being on Monday, November 14th.

Otherwise, it will likely continue being a very quiet and watchful week with attention focusing on Friday morning’s GDP release.

If that number is strong and if it is accompanied by some revisions to previous months, traders could look for buyers as they seek to take profits.

However, unless the Atlanta Federal Reserve is wrong, and they haven’t been all year long, they continued recently to be dour about the GDP, so it may be instrumental to take their cue, even as employment statistics are improving and consumers are reportedly returning.

It may really take the retail earnings reports in a couple of weeks to set the record straight and maybe pave the way for whatever remains of 2016.

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