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Daily Market Update – December 15, 2016 (Close) It was the morning after the annual FOMC increase in interest rates and all was calm. Yesterday the FOMC sowed quite a bit of confusion and it wasn’t helped too much by Janet Yellen during her press conference. Still, the decline was orderly and fairly inconsequential, especially when you consider the trajectory since the election. What you can be certain of is that the FOMC and its members didn’t gain any new fans who are going to become our next President. This morning, though, the futures were fairly flat and there wasn’t too much excitement. Commodities continued to be weak, as bond yields have moved higher. After all, why take risk when you can start getting a reasonably good rate of return on paper products? We’ll see how long that lasts. Today, what lasted was the return to buying stocks, even though the close was well off of the day’s highs. I was happy to be able to roll over a couple of positions yesterday and am now hoping to see some assignments tomorrow as we end the December 2016 option cycle. I still have cash to spend and am stilling willing to do so this week, even tomorrow, but would be stunned if I did, although some of those commodity declines are looking appealing. What I did do, and that continues a recent trend, has been to finally start putting some of those still well below cost commodity positions to work through the sale of calls. As I mentioned last week, sometimes a little too much maintenance and watching necessary to recommend to subscribers, but I’ve had a hard time resisting these bounces in commodities. As good as 2016 has been, I could easily spend 2017 making these kind of very lucrative trades all day long. . |
