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Daily Market Update – November 21, 2016 (Close) This is an odd week. That’s because I have more money to spend than in quite a while, thanks to 2 assignments and the expiration of some short puts. It’s also a holiday shortened trading week with no positions set to expire and only one ex-dividend position. Ordinarily, that would see me wanting to create some income opportunities for the week. But my inclination at the moment is not to dip into cash reserves. Part of that is because I don’t want to dip into those hard earned cash reserves, but the other half is that the premiums just aren’t very good. Early this morning I already had my sights on the price of oil hoping that there might be an opportunity to re-open another new position in that old 2016 favorite, Marathon Oil. But it didn’t look as if the move was going to be in the right direction, so that was off the map, too and stayed that way throughout the day. Last week was a quiet one from a market movement perspective, even as I was happy with the amount of trading that I was able to do and the ability to create some income flow while also adding to cash reserves. This week could very easily also be a quiet market week, especially from my trading perspective, but it could also be a volatile one due to the anticipated low trading volume. At times like that I would rather not flip a coin if considering committing new cash, so I may just stay on the sidelines. If so, I don’t mind any outcome. A move higher takes me for a ride and a move lower may open up some buying opportunities for the cash. That cash doesn’t burn the same hole in my pockets as it used to, anyway. Today it was just a ride higher and with energy and commodities again out-performing, as they’ve done through all of 2016. That’s why I have had a smile for most of the year, but it’s also why I didn’t have one for much of 2015. We’ll see what awaits in 2017, but whatever it is, at some point markets are going to come to the realization that there wasn’t too much sense in following energy higher, nor in following it lower, until the real tenets of supply and demand kick in. . |
