3/18 Almanac

Thursday, March 18, is 2 days before the last trading day of March options, 30 the April and 65 the May.

Friday is a quadruple witching day, when stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and stock futures all expire. It's definitely not as much fun as drinking green beer on St. Patrick's day.

Blue chip stocks (SPY) closed the latest regular session at $117.10, up 0.6% from the prior close.

In total, 3.2 billion shares were traded on the three major U.S. stock exchanges, up 3.2% from the day before.

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

Mediawatch: Reuters gave the narrative to the producer price index and energy. AP repeated yesterday's narrative about the Fed pledging not to raise interest rates. Reuters got it right. The Fed pledge was old news on Tuesday, and is even older news today. A big day for econ reports. The consumer price index is out at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, telling whether the Fed was right to pledge not to clamp down on looming inflation (if any would have the nerve to loom). Simultaneously, weekly jobless claims will tell the tale of the wish-I-had-a-job segment of the workforce, which seems to be a sadly lagging indicator for the recovery.

New this week, from the author of Liar's Poker, a look inside the Doomsday Machine.

• My favorite econ indicator, the leading indicators, will be released at 10 a.m. Eastern. The leadings have been looking up for months, and I want to know, if things are so good, why do I feel so awful.
• Natural gas inventories at 10:30 a.m., with main impact on the energy sector.
• The Federal Reserve releases its balance sheet at 4:30 p.m. This report has become more important to the markets since the Fed lower interest rates to near zero. It tracks injections of liquidity into the veins of finance (who are becoming federal liquidity junkies in desperate need of tough love).
• And once popular but now neglected and overgrown with vines, the money supply report, also at 4:30 p.m. It used to be the main way of tracking the Fed's monetary policy. And now, no one cares. So sad.

My rules allow trades in April covered calls, iron condors and butterfly, calendar, diagonal and vertical spreads.  I allow myself to trade unhedged call and put option purchases that expire in May or later.

My portfolio consists of . . .

March expiry:

• AKS, iron condor, p19/-p20/-p25/p26
• WFC, iron condor, p26/-p27/-c29/c30

April expiry:

• MCO, covered call, -c29

Shares for dividends: AOD, NLY.

Zombie shares: PALM.

Good trading!

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Topics: S&P 500, SPDR, Spiders, AK Steel Holdings, Alpine Dynamic Dividend closed-end fund, Moodys bond rating, Annaly Capital Management, Palm smartphone Pixi Pri, Wells Fargo bank financial.