The day's P&L rolled from -$500 to $0 to +$400 to $0 to -$500 several times. Turning 2-lots CL and 2-4 lots ES, trying to ride anything going anywhere. Typical dead-wedge nonfarm Friday inaction. They commonly do this, just like FOMC sessions of the past few years. It was no surprise, called it for potential in the premarket. Would have preferred to be pleasantly surprised, instead. Overall, intraday stock-index price action has completely sucked for range or movement in the new year so far. Most of the sessions have been gap & wedge. Won't be like this forever... normal ranges and price expansion will return sooner than later
Mildly up. VIX curve steepened considerably, which for what I do constitutes friction. So even though VIX and the futures fell, the curve steepening cost me some. Redid TGT short via shorting 15 call spreads at 63.5/64.5 in Feb1 series - expires in 28 days. .37 premium, so I'm good up to 63.87. They announced 110 million records affected by the breach altogether, with some overlap between the 40 announced earlier and the 70 announced today. All kinds of bad news. Stock barely moved, relative to how awe-inspiringly bad this news is. Below shows you just how frustrating this has been, and just how mgmt used the breach to absolve themselves of any blame for bad sales. That press release on Dec 18 which announced good sales, right before announcing the breach, reeks to high heaven (See! We were doing good before this all happened! Really! ... as if they didn't know about the breach on that day. Sheesh). Still, thing closed today at 62.62 (not shown on this chart), nearly a buck higher than its close on Dec 17, before either that press release or all the bad news.
Sooooo, you're the guy on the other side eh? Is that a strategy, as in something you always do that you've found pays off, or a tactical timing decision? The first wouldn't concern me much, but the second would make me think. And get scared a little.
well, i find it tough to sell vol after months of rallies..that all. if you like selling it and are making money...kudos!
Yeah, I can definitely understand that feeling. Last week when it didn't go up before the employment report made me very nervous. Still holding on to a fistful of SDS (double short SP ETF) just in case. OTOH, that curve steepening did put a small cushion in under the futures, although that'll go fast if VIX spikes.
+29 Net It was an up and down day for me. I was looking good with some longs in the morning, but then ended up getting hurt on all of them. Fortunately, I caught one short that made up for all the losses and a little more.
13th day of the 13th year, of course. Could have been a lot worse had I not held on to that SDS. That TGT short came through a bit too, which was nice.