Once upon a time long, long ago, in a mystical land of non-central bank planning, economic data used to matter. Much like today, economic reports were released nearly every day. The difference between then and now, however, is that in the mystical land of "semi-free markets" the data mattered. Today it is of no matter whatsoever. Now, all that counts is what size will the next global QE be.
Let's take a look at this week's data and search for a trend.
Monday - Markets were closed for President's Day.
Tuesday - Empire State Mfg Index was worse than expected. Housing Market Index (HMI) was worse than expected. E-Commerce retail sales report was even worse than expected.
Wednesday - MBA Purchase Applications were expected to be bad, but it was actually even worse than that (-9.0% vs. -13.2%). PPI (inflation) data was worse than expected, from the Fed's point of view. Industrial Production data was 50% worse than expected.
Thursday - Weekly Jobless Claims were better than expected. The Philly Fed Survey was worse than expected. Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) were worse than expected.
Friday - Will it really matter?
One wonders why Friday's data will matter, or any economic reports for that matter, because the whole time that nearly every data point was worse than expected, the S&P500 rallied: New highs, new highs...bad data?..."meh" new highs.
Apparently the oil market was feeling left out. Oil traders tore a page out of the equity trader playbook when they got today's DOE data: much higher (worse) supply...and it rallied like a scalded cat running up a tree.
Isn't it awesome?
Trade well and follow the trend, not the perma-bull OR perma-bear "experts."
Behold the age of infinite moral hazard! On April 2nd, 2009 CONgress forced FASB to suspend rule 157 in favor of deceitful accounting for the TBTF banking mafia.
The markets had another slow trading session, and there was a bit of divergence between the moving averages. The COMP rallied throughout the day, while the DJI and SPX struggled to make gains. The SPX continues to find resistance at the 2100 level, and the DJI has struggled to stay above the 18,000 mark. It should lead into a seesaw type of day, as we are facing options expiration today. I suspect we could push higher early on, and fall back later in the day. Now we could just slingshot up and race higher all day, as that has been the recent ramp and camp type of conditions that has led us to new all time highs in the SPX. I suspect though we could see profit taking later in the day, and that could lead us lower. With Crude and Greece being the ones to watch these days, they will ultimately help sway the market direction.
Buy low...sell high. That's the key to trading right? It's not that easy in reality though. This is especially true with options trading specifically when you are trading implied volatility. Our students often ask if we should sell high implied volatility and buy low implied volatility. Our answer is: how do you know what is high IV and what is low IV. If a stock trades with IV of 20% is that "cheaper" than a stock that trades at a 75% IV? Maybe or maybe not. What if I told you that over the past two years, the stock with the IV of 25% had a historical volatility of 15%. Now paying 25% for something that realizes itself at only a 15% pace. We would consider these options "rich". Then what if I told you that the second stock over the past two years was realizing at a 100% clip? Now paying 75% vol doesn't sound to expensive does it? It's all relative. Buying a Yugo for $20,000 is a much worse proposition than buying a new Porche 911 for $50,000. Because if we allocated the same amount of money towards the business venture, let's say we are going to invest $100k, then having 5 Yugos vs. 2 911's, you are much better off with the two Porches.
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