ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
On Friday, Federal Reserve Governor wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Fed’s Job Is Only Half Over.” In this piece, he suggested that while “…longer-term inflation expectations are stable, and economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal-funds rate for an extended period…prudent risk management indicates … Read more
I suggested on Friday that old mercantile forces would start to gripe if the Japanese yen continued to rise too far. Sure enough, Reuters reports this morning that the Japanese Finance Minister, Hirohisa Fujii, is backing away from earlier remarks he has made essentially welcoming a stronger currency. Fuji even went so far as to … Read more
Today has been a wild day in the financial markets, and I almost hesitate to jot down my thoughts before the close of trading. However, I will be shutting things down to get the weekend started as soon as possible, so I am writing now while thoughts remain fresh. There is no one theme I … Read more
When everyone is a contrarian, no one is a contrarian. I consider this a corollary to the famous quote from Humphrey Neill: “When everyone thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong” (from a book I really enjoy but inconsistently apply “
“That rebalancing of the UK economy that I have been talking about for about 10 years, is very necessary. I think the fall in the exchange rate that we have seen will be helpful to that process but there’s no doubt that what we need to see now is a shift of resources into net … Read more
The VXX is an ETF that “offers exposure to a daily rolling long position in the first and second month VIX futures contracts and reflects the implied volatility of the S&P 500 index at various points along the volatility forward curve” (from Yahoo!Finance). This means it offers a method for placing bets on the direction … Read more
I added ReneSola (SOL) to my solar portfolio for the first time as a speculative play based on heavy call volume at the October 7.5 strike. I do not know what those call buyers expected, but certainly today’s news is typically not conducive to bullish feelings in the next month or so: an acquisition, issuance … Read more
This morning, the Bank of England released its minutes from the September meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee. From my reading, it contained no new news on the prospects for negative interest rates. The “relief” from the minutes has so far lifted the pound against the euro, the U.S. dollar, and even the yen. I … Read more
Casino stocks have soared since the July market lows. September in particular has featured some near parabolic moves as shorts get squeezed and risk-seeking behavior has accelerated. Wynn Resorts Ltd. (WYNN) has caught my attention the past two months because its large swings in stock price have made option strangles quite profitable. In a strangle, … Read more
September has been very kind to solar stocks as most have awakened from summer doldrums and slumber to rise with the rest of the soaring stock market. This new raging fire has motivated me to get more active in trading solar stocks as well, even as it has sometimes been very difficult to keep up … Read more