Intraday Commentary ~ 09/09/2009

2:46pm
I see tons of H&S on the 10 minutes of the financials here.. we might get a little bit of a breather today and maybe early tomorrow.  1029 is going to be strong support though. 

2:22pm
My belief is that we still move one shove higher  between 1046-1090 at the top of the rising wedge. With that in mind, i’ll be waiting for this short term sell off to continue and add bullish positions at the 103 , and 102.35 levels . Theses are 23.6% and 38.2% retraces of the last 4 day rally. Financials sold off a little bit, but nothing dramatic. 

2:08pm
2 pm reversal time here, and we are getting a little bit of sell off, as we form a double top area. The Nasdaq having a hard time breaking through the 50% retracement after 4 straight days of green.  Beige book..
 

1:08pm
For those who trade consantly, i really recommend using options to hedge yourself, because you can still make money when you’re wrong. For example, I’m short JPM at 41.8$, but since I bought calls to hedge myself on the upside, i’m only down 0.2%, and if you include the fact that i also sold puts at 39$ (capping my upside until september at the 39$ mark), I’m actually up 0.4%.  

11:40am
Some things to keep in mind: As most of you know, options have an expiration date, and the time value in each option decreases faster and faster as we get closer to that date. The weekends count as well, so options lose their value over the weekend. But what you may not know, is that the options actually discount for that as the week progresses (i.e. the closer you are to the end of the week, the faster the decline of time value to account for the weekend). Therefore, if you’re a seller of options, do it before thursday, if you’re a buyer of options do it either monday/tuesday or in the last few minutes on friday (if you’re okay with holding over the weekend). 
 

11:30am
With financials on top this market can rally to new highs… i have bought a nice call spread in the last 20 minutes of trading… and sold some really far out puts for september, and sold some far out calls for october.  My JPM shorts has a 44$ calls that have gained value and sold 39$ puts. With that in mind, i might think of taking profits on the calls very soon, they have helped cut my loses substantially by about 95%. 

11:15am
A little help with people with options. If you have an option that has gone bust. Say you bought SPY 100 strike puts.. and you feel that this market is going to keep going higher  and your puts are almost worthless now. Don’t just cover them. Use them as leverage, to Sell to open a 99 strike put, so you can at least make a few cents on premium and you can hedge yourself, just in case the market shoots down. 
 

11:02am
SPX60 minute channel formations:
SPX60 

 

11:00am
The market is up again, but JPM is still red… and financials are not enjoying themselves. Is today potentially another reversal day? Maybe the beige book has something to say about that.

1:21am
A lot of data comes out before market open, even though this data tends not to be market moving, any bad news will help this market form a gap lower, which means we will be forming an island gap (where yesterday’s trading day was has a gap before it and after it) and that’s very bearish. Any really good news, will send the market above the 103 SPY and then we’re due for new highs. Interesting day up ahead. We also have the beige book at 2pm (that will be a market mover).

About FocalEquity

Sun Tze is one of the founders of FocalEquity.com. After going through multiple transitions, Tze, Charlie Cheng and their new team are bringing new changes and features to the new FocalEquity.com in 2011. Tze is specialized in financial modeling and has a masters degree in Finance.