2/5 Almanac

Friday, Feb. 5, is 14 days before the February options expire, 42 days the March and 70 days the April.

Historically, it tends to be an up day of the week on an up date of the month in an up month of the year.Actually, Friday's tend to be the risingest days of the week.

In this period my rules allow trades in March iron condors, along with butterfly, calendar and vertical spreads. I'll start looking at March  covered calls and diagnals Tuesday of next week. I'll trading unhedged call and put option purchases that expire in April or later. These economic reports will be released: Unemployment at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. A trailing indicator, but a big impact of there's a surprise. Consumer credit, 3 p.m. Another way of asking if we can spend our way back to prosperity. (And isn't that a contradiction? Spend so you become poorer to help the economy do better? Sounds like a huge conflict of interests.)

My portfolio consists of:

• CVS, iron condor, p28/-p31/-c34/c36
• ERTS, iron condor, p15/-p16/-c18/c19
• MCO, covered call,  s/-c30
  
• PALM, covered call, s/-c13

Problem-child CVS closed at $31.13, just 13 cents above the level of max profit on my iron condor.

Blue chip stocks (SPY) closed the regular session at $106.44, down 3 percent from the prior day's close. The price stands between the 61.8% and 78.6% Fibonacci retracement levels. Blowing mast the 61.8% level is a significant move.

Mediawatch: As predicted in the Morningline, the news media consensus was that stocks fell because of the jobless claims report and worried about Europe. Here's the AP story.

In total, 4.3 billion shares were traded on the three major U.S. stock exchanges. That's about 26 percent more than the day before.

Good trading.

New to Private Trader? Check out the Reader's Guide.

New to private trading? Here's a look at How to Become a Private Trader.

Topics:
S&P 500, SPDR, Spiders, CVS Caremark, pharmacies, drugs, Electronic Arts games, Moodys bond rating, Palm smartphone Pixi Pri.