4/9 Almanac

On Friday, April 9: Wholesale trade -- a yawner. In The Narrative:  Ode on a Grecian Bond: "Thou still unravish'd debt of quietness, Thou foster-child of Euro and slow Time . . ." (With apologies to John Keats.)


There are eight trading days left before April options expire, 43 the May and 71 the June.

On the jump, market stats, mediawatch, rules, econ reports, portfolio and a good book...

Blue chip stocks (SPY) closed the latest regular session up 0.4% from the prior close. During the day SPY traversed 1.2% low to high in a net move up.

Today's extremes: Open $117.95, high $118.97, low  $117.60, close $118.77.

SPY closed above and below the DeMark pivot points. The next DeMark pivots are $118.10/$119.55.

In total, 3.4 billion shares were traded on the three major U.S. stock exchanges, down 600 million from the prior day.

Mediawatch: The Narrative looked to retailers sales reports and projections to account for the rise in stocks. Not unreasonable. However, Stephen Bernard and Tim Paradis, writing for AP, had the market looking past the Greek debt problems in order to rise based on retails sales. It's as though the AP writers were saying, "Well, you should have been worried about the Greeks. What are we to do with the likes you?" Leah Schnurr, writing for Reuters, stuck with retail. Nary to a Greek in site. A wise choice. Kate Gibson at MarketWatch echoed AP: Retail + Greeks = Greetail? Whitney Kisling and Jeff Kearns at Bloomberg limited stock motivation to retail and reserved the Greek worries for the euro, which is where they belong. By the way, did I mention that stocks rose throughout the day, right out of the gate? If there was Grecian worry, it was well hidden.

Market analyst Kenneth Posner creates a new framework for managing extreme risk based on lessons learned in the recent collapse of capitalist finance.

Econ reports:

Wholesale trade numbers will be released at 10 a.m. Eastern. This is not a market mover, but it's the only player in the econ game on Friday, so it may loom large. Or not.

My rules allow trades in vertical and calendar spreads that expire in May, and in unhedged call and put option purchases that expire in June or later. No diagonals or iron condors yet.

My portfolio consists of . . .

April expiry:

• MCO, covered call, -c29

May expiry:

• BBY, bull call spread, c44/-c45

Dividend shares: AOD, JNK, NLY
 
Zombie shares: PALM.

Good trading!

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