3/18 Morningline

I'll be doing something different, and graphical, with the Morningline, beginning today, with the goal of making it easier to take in the state of the signals at a glance. Read on . . .

Blue chip stocks (SPY) opened in the upper half of Wednesday's range, marching in place the first half hour of the session.

Long-term Treasury bonds (TLT) did the same. So did the other indicators in my collection, except the currencies, which moved but kept the spread between the opening price and the current price within Wednesday's trading ranges.

The two blockbuster econ reports of the morning -- the consumer price index and the weekly jobless claims -- could each have come with caveat, "No blocks were busted in the making of this report."

	trend	adx	psar	pps	macd	sto
SPY $117.22
TLT $91.47

It was that kind of morning, as quiet and dreary as a small town in western Oklahoma, where dust and tumbleweeds race each other in slow-mo down the otherwise deserted main drag.

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Abbreviations: psar - Parabolic Stop and Reverse, adx - Average Directional Index, pps - Person's Proprietary Signal, ma20 - 20-day moving average, macd - Moving Average Convergence-Divergence, mfi - Money Flow Index, sto - Fast Stochastic

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The macd on GLD was just millimeters from the zero line, rising toward bull mode. The sto, also was pointed toward overbought territory.

	trend	adx	psar	pps	macd	sto
JNK $39.51
GLD $110.28
USO $40.17
EEM $41.95
EUR/USD $1.3685
USD/JPY ¥90.34

Among my options that expire after trading ends on Friday:

• AKS, iron condor (p19/-p20/-p25/p26) at $23.12 was poised  to expire worthless. No action needed.
• WFC, iron condor (p26/-p27/-c29/c30) at $30.43 has become unprofitable and must be closed today.

April options: The MCO covered call (-c29) has moved up to a high so far of $29.76. I sold the $29 strike on Wednesday. Had I waited until today, I could have sold the $30 instead, for improved profit. Dividend stocks: AOD at $9.27 is showing nearly $1 profit on my positon, with bull signals all around. The macd has declined for four days but is well above the zero line. NLY at $18.72 is up for the fourth straight day and stands about $1 below my basis.

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

Zombie:

• PALM, the remains of a covered call that expired unexercised, at $5.55 is an embarrassing $7 or so below basis. Earnings will be released at market close today. If there's a really great market surprise, it might prosper again. If not, I'll hold it against some future happy day.

About the indicators: SPY tracks the S&P 500, TLT: 20- and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds, JNK: High-yield corporate debt, GLD: gold, USO, oil, EEM: emerging markets, EUR/USD: how many dollars to buy a euro, USD/JPY: how many yen to buy a dollar.


About the glance:  The colors indicate the state of each signal.

• trend: green for up, red for down, yellow for sideways
• adx: green for above 30-up, red for 20-down, yellow for in the middle. Red is most prone to whipsaws
• psar, pps, macd: green for bull mode, red for bear
• sto: green for overbought, red for oversold, yellow for the neutral zone.

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Topics: S&P 500, SPDR, Spiders, Treasury bonds, high-yield corporate junk bonds, emerging markets, gold, precious metals, oil, petroleum, AK Steel Holding, Alpine Total Dynamic Dividend fund, Moodys bond rating, Annaly Capital Management real estate REIT mortgage-backed securities, Palm smartphone Pixi Pri,  Wells Fargo banking financial.