That Was The Week Ending 29June

When The Market Goes Nowhere

We’ve  dropped  some 40 points on the week but the uppy/downy allowed this trader to enter more positions. The more important value though is the VFTSE. For each of us the criteria may be different but on the whole, we sell more options than we buy when Vol is high. What is high? This is an oft repeated question. There is no right answer-anything in double digits, relative to the past 3 months I would say. VFTSE hit 16 this week, which was a nice little uplift in option prices.

So, What’s Going On?

We had some ‘almost’ green days, when literally every stock is up. One or two exceptions were in evidence,but Monday was a big downer. The media of course had their own pet theories, all after the fact. Blaming the impending tariffs would seem counter to reason. Purchasers were eager to make those big buys before the charges kicked in. https://www.facebook.com/estherthewonderpig/ 

The big ticket item- a scanner https://www.theestherscanner.com

Weirdly, perhaps this is a good outcome, in the short term.We like animals and avoid eating them.

Worse,Far Worse Than 2007

From my inbox this week https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-28/credit-derivatives-bring-people-together

What really put me into a frenzy is the following:They bet that it wouldn’t be able to pay off its debts, and now they are paying off its debts for it, to preserve the possibility that it won’t be able to pay off its debts. To me,this is precisely the kind of muddleheaded creative accounting that gave us the credit crunch. I suggest reading and re-reading. Confusion hardly describes my thoughts, I would not have thought this legal. There are losers here, nothing comes without a price tag in the finance world. I’d be happy for someone to explain the ethics of this.

Next Week

In the week ended on Wednesday, investors withdrew nearly $30 billion from global equity funds, which was the second largest weekly outflow on record, the BAML analysts said in a Friday note.

And this:

Here are stats on the most bullish S&P 500 Index trading day of the year since the beginning of the new century:

• When: First trading day of July (in 2018, that’s July 2)

• Average return: 0.35%

• Win rate: 83.33%

I like Marketwatch who claim both the above gems