Consolidation & Breakouts
Consolidation and Breakouts Well, it was a short, and rather disappointing, week last week. But not unexpected; a period of consolidation would be ‘normal’ market behavior. How long it will last is, of course, not certain. What is Consolidation? Consolidation simply means that it is a time period when a stock or ETF’s price moves […]
Out of the woods?
Are we out of the woods yet? It has been a more enjoyable week, especially on Tuesday when everything went up 1.5%. We are back over support, the 10 day SMA has turned north again, and we are well above any death cross, for the moment at least. I breathed a sigh of relief, as […]
Why are options expensive?
Why are options so expensive? Expensive options a great if you are a seller – not so good if you are the buyer, and in the ITM strategy we are the buyers of options. I have been getting a lot of questions about this recently so I though that I would do a section on […]
A Dismal Week
What a dismal week! According to the press it has been the worst week since March. Between the 6th and the 10th of March, the S&P dropped 4.6% (I’ve marked it on the graph below). That was nasty. This week, the S&P dropped 2.6%, which is not quite so bad – but still painful. Let’s […]
Bear Trap?
Is It A Bear Trap? Maybe. Maybe not. As with all things in the stock market we will only know for sure after the fact. Just to refresh your memory of bear traps and bull traps: Bear traps happen in a bull market when a short term dip is mistaken for a trend reversal. (And […]
Didn’t see that coming!
Didn’t see the downgrade coming! In case you missed it, Fitch downgraded the sovereign rating of the United States, from an AAA rating down to AA+. The last time this happened was 2011 when S&P also downgraded it to AA+. If you want to see the ratings and dates here’s a link. Who is this […]