Condor Options

Much ado about nothing today – if you were trading intraday, it was pretty easy to get stopped out if you weren’t quick. Market benchmark indexes all opened near the lows of the day, bounced up and then churned; high-volume selling at 2pm reversed at 3pm, and most indexes closed just a hair in the negative.

Bulls have nothing to be excited about yet, but there were a few small improvements today: advance/decline levels improved from Friday, and we closed above 1330 on the SPX, holding the last remaining support level above the January lows. Funny thing about that 1330 level, everybody agrees that it’s not that substantive of an area, but look how much air there is between that support and the January lows.

The poor Nasdaq never really stood a chance, with GOOG AAPL and RIMM all solidly down today. However, even the QQQQs maintained support around 42.50.

Nothing new from VIX:VXV, though volatility did move up today in VXN RVX VXD (wow! lol).

Our bias is still negative – maybe we get short-term oversold and have a few days of buying or more churn, but do the bulls honestly see any reason why we don’t test those January lows?  There’s probably support down there, but it’s too juicy a target, you know?

Last thing: the muni story hit the mainstream media over the weekend, but unlike stock news, just because you’re reading about a bond story in the Times doesn’t mean the opportunity has passed.  Even options traders like to have some safe investments on hand, you know?  Disclosure, we snapped up some more NYC municipals last week, and will be buyers for the foreseeable future, at least as long as these crazy yields last.