This is why I was reluctant to cover up at 200-201-202. It was an 'easy' thing to do, to chase it up there. The same with shorting at 193-192-191. It feels good but usually its the wrong thing to do. Now, I dont have much confidence this market will come crashing down but I got a set risk here (2010 on SPX) and the potential reward could be quite significant (its still october, a month where markets have struggled in the recent and non-recent past). So I'm going to let this one play out
Ended up buying around 7-8% in gold before the market started to run like crazy. Wont chase it up. Hopefully it will have a good pull at some point in the next few weeks
Decided to cut SPY short early at 2010 SPX here, covered all. I dont like how this is holding up and grinding higher. This gap up was supposed to have been sold. Maybe it goes lower but I think the thesis has failed. Overall I made small, gave back a ton from Sep though
SPY rallying big time, glad to be out. Don't want to fight this. who knows, maybe they will take this back to 2100. Its stupid but its their money i guess
I'm starting to think that the next surprise could come from a hawkish fed. The elements that prevented a rate hike in September were inflation and financial conditions (Fed speak for 'stocks are down'). Both these issues have reversed somewhat since then The 16% trimmed-mean and median CPI are alternative measures that the fed looks at. They negate the effects of volatile items such as oil. On the employment side, yes the last report was weak but Dudley has downplayed that report and even said 100-140K is good enough. Furthermore a 5% UR is probably good enough for the Fed to act even if the underlying growth is not all that great. I think people are understimating the Fed here. When I say people, I mean equity folks. The rates markets sold off yesterday on the CPI report. That wasn't a good report at all