Back into oil — covered calls on USO
USO has dropped from recent highs around 41, down to the mid 36s. I did covered calls at a net debit of 35.59. Bought USO at 36.57 and sold to open Feb 37 calls ( or “-UBO100220C37” in Fidelity speak) at .98.
VIX Option and Futures Expiration Dates
Upcoming expiration dates for monthly VIX options and futures—they expire at market open on the same days can be found in this free spreadsheet. The settlement price is not the same as the VIX open price. The settlement price is listed under the VRO ticker and reflects the result of a process (HOSS) managed by the CBOE. The settlement process involves actual trade prices, not …
Greed takes a holiday
I believe the best way to understand the ebb and flow of the market is to view it as the interplay of fear and greed. Of course, economics are important, but I view human psychology as even more fundamental to the movements of the market. Tonight fear has the upper hand. US markets have been down two days in a row, the Asian markets …
S&P 500 Still Tracking 2004…
I updated my 2003-2004 compared to 2009-2010 chart for SPY/S&P500 with another week of data and adjusted the normalized volume scale so that I wasn’t chopping off the curve. While the absolute value of SPY is almost identical to what it was 6 years ago the volume is about a factor of 6 higher, so the volume curves are only significant from a shape standpoint, …
SPY — still on the trend line, just quieter
Early last December I thought the S&P 500 had shifted from an upward trend line to a sideways trading –I was wrong. Things are clearly still on the long term trend line, the only difference being that the volatility has really dropped. Volume has been low–clearly a lot of people are on the sidelines, like me, waiting for a correction.
