Quote from kalikahuna:
back to the main topic at hand. BTC the 1470 position for .15 debit about 15-20 min. ago when SPX was down 1.4 or so.
Well I elected to stay through expiration. This SPX CALL 1470/1480 spread position is now looking almost as good as locked down and successful. We will see for sure around noon tomorrow on the new SET.
There are only a statistical few historical cases of a massive (greater than 12) SET gap up. To reach me it would have to gap up over 13 points - so I think I am pretty safe. During the day I monitored trading volume at the short strike and noted that 20% of the open contracts slowly bailed out over the day for between .1 to .15 debit. The majority held tight though even when we had a few gap ups. But toward the end of the trading day volume thinned out so badly that the spreads opened up to a .7 debit asking (7 total contracts offered lol). That apparently rattled a few traders and shook out out a little more volume near the close for .15 and .20 debit. It was an interesting study in trader physchology but it looked to me like most writers seem to have pretty good nerves or are well hedged veterans (probably marker makers fully neutral hedged). No one panicked even when we had a slightly trending bull run at a positive rate/slope regression of about .5 points/hr and a few gap ups now and then.
Unfortunately we have some key housing data and other economic reports coming out just before Friday's open. If we get 1 or 2 really good unexpected positive news events on the housing data this market could explode at the open to the upside. That would be a bummer for me since that
could pump SET way up to get into my shorts.
Here are tomorrow's news events:
Date ET Economic Report For Estimate Actual Prior Impact
Fri. February 16 08:30 Housing Starts Jan 1610K 1642K Moderate
Fri. February 16 08:30 Building Permits Jan 1590K 1613K Moderate
Fri. February 16 08:30 Producer Price Index (PPI) Jan -0.6% 0.9% Moderate
Fri. February 16 08:30 Core Producer Price Index (PPI) Jan 0.2% 0.2% Moderate
Fri. February 16 10:00 Consumer Sentiment Index (UoM) Feb 97.0 96.9 Moderate
This month's trading action convinced me that this bull is still very very real and ready to run some more. The new economic reports coming out today were almost a complete reversal in economic expansion expectation (factory slow downs etc.) - but the market still continued to want to run. I love this bull market since I am long in a lot of very good equities. But I wish it would cool its jets a little so it can consolidate and pull in more new money for the next leg. Even a dip now and then to stir up VIX would be nice since its getting very hard to get short premium to the upside.
Happy Trading,
TS