Strange doings in the volatility market
There’s certainly no visible sign of a big surge in stock market volatility. Yesterday, when the news was full of threats and counter-threats of war with North Korea and when the tech sector dropped, the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) climbed all of 12.2%. Today the VIX has retreated, falling 0.98% as of 3 p.m. New York time to 10.11. But this doesn’t mean nothing is going on in the volatility market or that big money traders aren’t placing bets on a spike in volatility.
Wait for it: Another big down day for SQM
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Tech breakdown starts to look serious
The conventional wisdom at the end of last week was that we were witnessing a rotation out of tech shares and into financials and small cap stocks. In other words, nothing to get  too concerned about. Apple (AAPL) was a special case as surveys of retail channels showed weak sales for the iPhone 8. Today, though, the concern is a bit more serious.
More saber rattling in Korean standoff leads to modest increase in market nervousness
It’s not surprising that the major U.S. stock indexes are down. So far today the North Korean foreign minister has said that President Donald Trump’s threats against his country amount to a declaration of war, and that North Korea has the right to shoot down U.S. warplanes even if they aren’t actually flying in North Korean airspace. Amazing that the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was off only 0.38% as of 3 p.m. New York time.
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
The big event this week, as far as financial markets are concerned, will be the Wednesday announcement by the “Big Six” Republican working group of a framework for the long anticipated Republican plan to cut taxes.
Keep that gold trade on: A more aggressive stance from the Fed on interest rates doesn’t produce a dollar rally
Even after the Federal Reserve said it aimed to raise interest rates once more in 2017 and then three times in 2018–and scheduled the drawn down of its balance sheet for an October start, the U.S. dollar has been unable to stage a convincing rally.Â
Swing trade on Chesapeake Energy continues to work but at lower buy/sell points
I just completed another profitable swing trade in shares of Chesapeake Energy (CHK), the second largest U.S. producer of natural gas. I've been trading Chesapeake for more than a year now, buying when temporary factors (seasonal slumps in demand, hurricanes, OPEC...
No news on extending or deepening cuts out of OPEC meeting today
The meeting of OPEC and its allies in Vienna today, September 22, ended without an extension of  production cuts (scheduled to expire in March 2018) and without an agreement to make those cuts in output deeper. The after-meeting talk was full of declarations of progress toward reducing the glut in global oil inventories. And there was nary a sign of worry that higher oil prices could bring an increased supply from U.S. oil shale producers back into the market
Sell my emerging markets short ETF on China credit downgrade today
This probably seems counter-intuitive but I'm selling my emerging markets short, the Proshares Short MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EUM), out of my Volatility and Jubak Picks portfolios on Standard & Poor's one notch downgrade of China's sovereign credit rating to A+...
China’s credit rating takes a hit from S&P
Standard & Poor’s lowered its credit rating on China’s sovereign debt by one step to A+ yesterday. The cut is the first ratings reduction since 1999. S&P cited the risks from the growing debt levels in China’s government and corporate sector as grounds for the lower rating.Â
No surprises from the Fed–for 2017 anyway
At today’s meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market committee, the central bank kept its benchmark short-term interest rate unchanged at 1% to 1.25%, and announced that it would implement its plan to shrink its $4.5 trillion balance sheet by $10 billion a month beginning in October. The balance-sheet reduction would follow the framework released in June. All of that was expected by the financial markets. But there were some mild surprises in the Fed’s outlook for 2018.
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