Saturday, 14 March 2009

Ugly, but it's expiry week


Well the curse of Friday 13th didn't materialise, even though this was the second one this year.
My trade means that I am short 3800 calls and may well have to adjust. The one outstanding feature of the charts, is that the VIX has come down to the rising 200 Ma, and lower Bollinger band. One would expect a bounce here, but if not, this rally may have a lot more legs yet.
I am exposed to the real economy perhaps a bit too much and the debt stats are alarming for ordinary folk, who seemed to think that credit cards were easy sources of cash. I know that efforts to rein in the debts are proceeding way beyond legal acceptability and harassment is rife with collection agencies. The real toxic end of the market (what's in yer wallet type of thing) and others with names with a G in them have always misbehaved and used threats-but it serves no purpose if there is no money to be had.
Thus any rally should fizzle out based on the real world but we are talking about the stockmarket-and other people's money.
To quote P.J. O'Rourke:
You buy something for yourself with your money you are not too concerned about the cost. You buy something for someone else with your money you are cautious. You buy something for someone else with other people's money -you don't give a sh*t. thus go government and fund managers.
There will be reckless buyers at the top and desperate sellers at the bottom- they are called financial professionals. Us lowly retail players have to be a tad more cautious- I can't afford to be Warren Buffett and lose over 50% of my pot.
Meanwhile our one-eyed rabbit Barney had to have his one remaining eye removed surgically. The eye didn't work, and he was in pain-he is recovering well, and his blindness notwithstanding, his quality of life will be much improved.
We made a pledge that where costs were reasonable, we would do all we could to preserve life and eliminate suffering, and Barney and his lady Summer were our first rabbits.

No comments:

Post a Comment