Blue chip stocks (SPY) closed the latest regular session at $116.58, down 0.06% from the prior close.
SPY closed within today's DeMark pivot points, trading above by 1¢ during the day. The next DeMark pivots are $115.70/$117.00.
In total, 3.3 billion shares were traded on the three major U.S. stock exchanges
On the jump, mediawatch, rules, econ reports, portfolio and a good book...
Mediawatch: So many amusing headlines today. Melinda Peer at TheStreet.com: "Stocks recover as South Korea ship [attack] news softens". Yes! As South Korea goes, so goes the world. We now know which country is the seoul Master of the Markets. Elizabeth Stanton at Bloomberg: "U.S. stocks fluctuate as Korean tension offsets upgrades". It's the Koreans again. I miss the Greeks. The problem is, stocks always fluctuate. Tension or no. And today's fluctuation, 1.1% high to low, is not a lot, certainly too small to be attributed to anything but the normal jitterbugging of the agora. And my profoundest admiration to Reuters, and even more, to my former employer, the AP. Reuters couldn't resist the temptation to toss in the Koreans, but at least Ryan Vlastelica had the good sense to call the market flat and to not pretend there was much movement today. Stephen Bernard at AP got it right. Stocks were up a bit, and then they were down. They didn't move much, and nobody really knows why. Well done. Kudos and a gold star to AP this day. | What would it be like to open your accounts and never have any ugly surprises. Financial strategist Pamela Yellen tells how to get your money on the good news track. |
Econ reports:
- Personal income and outlays at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. This is an indicator of how much Americans are saving; the conventional wisdom is, since capitalism ceased to work well, we're saving a lot more than we used to. Such is the power of fear.
This puts stock and option traders in an awkward situation. What if there's a major employment surprise? No one can act on that knowledge for three long days.
On Wednesday, ADP, which does advisory work in macroeconomics, will put out it's own employment report, and it will no doubt take on added significance because of the Friday situation.
Anyhow, Private Trader will be filing on Friday. Good Friday or not, we are obsessive about this stuff.
April options trading is over, and May is still aborning. My rules allow trades in unhedged call and put option purchases that expire in June or later. No option spreads or anything fancy.
My portfolio consists of . . .
April expiry:
Dividend shares: AOD, JNK, NLY
Good trading!
New to private trading? Here's a look at How to Become a Private Trader.
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