Last weekend, in my Market Forecast, I said,
"For the new week, more earnings are piling in… Tuesday and Wednesday will be very important for techs, as GOOG, IBM, and AAPL report. GOOG and AAPL options have really high premiums right now. They might not be worth playing. STX has already raised its guidance; this makes WDC an interesting one to watch. SNDK has been running up fast. We’ll have to see how it trades before Wednesday’s close. The market still looks strong. We could see SPX 1500 tested this week."
Things pretty much went as forecasted. Stocks stayed strong and the market broader market moved higher to test SPX 1500. Earnings, on the whole, have been pretty encouraging, so far. Things kept crawling higher basically every day! On Wednesday, AAPL’s earnings disappointed the investors in the evening. But, on Thursday, the jobless claims fell again, and the market was able to keep its levels although things were weaker on the tech side. We locked in our profits on Thursday, including a +190% profit on GMCR.
For the week, we did really well, with most closed trades on the plus side, again; we even traded some puts:
- 07:50 | HappyTrading GS ($143.50) Sold to Close 0201P145 Feb 145 put, at $2.30 +28%
- 07:13 | HappyTrading GLD ($160.50) Sold to Close 0201P161 Feb 161 put, at $1.31 +75%
- 07:07 | Ecstatic Plays NFLX ($161.30) Sold to Close 0201C160 Feb 160 calls, at $8.10 +35%
- 12:32 | Ecstatic Plays GOOG ($754.00) Sold to Close 0125P750 Jan 750 put, at $1.30 -63
- 08:01 | Ecstatic Plays GMCR ($44.00) Sold to Close 0125C40 Jan 40 calls, at $4.00 +190%
- 07:33 | HappyTrading ROST ($60.65) Sold to Close 02C57.5 Feb 58 calls, at $3.50 +100%
- 07:30 | Ecstatic Plays GMCR ($43.20) Sold to Close 0125C40 Jan 40 calls, at $3.35 +143%
- 07:23 | Ecstatic Plays FFIV ($105.40) Sold to Close 0125C97.5 Jan 98 calls, at $8.00 +70%
- 12:45 | Ecstatic Plays FFIV ($98.50) Sold to Close 0125C97.5 Jan 98 calls, at $4.90 +4%
- 09:08 | HappyTrading ROST ($58.90) Sold to Close 02C57.5 Feb 58 calls, at $2.13 +22%
- 08:56 | Ecstatic Plays WLP ($65.50) Sold to Close 02C65 Feb 65 calls, at $1.00 +14%
- 07:12 | HappyTrading FB ($31.45) Sold to Close 02C30 Feb 30 calls, at $2.71 +20%
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The Dow was up +246.28 points; SPX added +16.98 points; Nasdaq gained +15 points. Gold fell back to $1660/ounce, while oil was little changed. At the time of this writing, Asian markets were mostly higher, but Japan was lower. Here’s how the US markets closed on Friday:
SPX
SPX added +8.14 points to close at 1502.96, just above 1500. Its daily MAs and MACD went slightly higher.
Nasdaq
Nasdaq gained +19.33 points to close at 3149.71, just below 3150. Its daily MAs went up and MACD stayed flat.
Both SPX and Nasdaq ended last week basically at their respective resistance levels. For the new week…
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