We generally restrict iron condor trades in our paid newsletter and managed accounts to index products. For those who prefer ETFs, we look at SPY, DIA, IWM, QQQQ; otherwise, SPX, RUT, NDX, DJX are bigger proxies, or on the futures side of things we’ll look at the Emini S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 (ES and NQ). The reason we trade index products is that diversification reduces the impact of company-level surprises: an iron condor on, say, RIMM will get punished if…
Forgive us a short rant this evening. This country is sick. When the three main engines of growth – consumer spending, real estate, and financial services – are broken, it’s just not possible to make any economic progress. And for just a moment, let’s think about how pathetic those key sectors really are.
Cogent analysis of our per capita consumption requires some historical knowledge, since no contemporary people compares with our particular level of decadence. At least the Romans had some…
Maybe it’s just us, but markets seem really boring and indecisive this week. There’s not much to talk about unless you want to talk oil or bonds. We’re beyond sick of hearing and talking about oil (though we’re dipping a toe into some short positions here), and although bonds are always more exciting than people give them credit for (we’re still in love with munis this year), well, meh.
We’re in the mood to do another newsletter takedown, so if you…
The Dow shed one hundred points in the last hour and a half of trading. The Dow and S&P held onto some gains, but the Russell 2000 and the Nasdaq 100 actually closed the morning gap and ended the day in the red. The late day selling seemed to be led down by large cap tech, as GOOG AAPL RIMM BIDU all moved lower.
Volume was a bit higher – back toward average levels at least, though most of that came…
Monday, August 31, 2009
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