Short Term
March 17, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Volatility |
Today’s Hot Money Moves NOW: Buy VIX Volatility Call Options. Toward the end of January, I bought VIX Call Options, hoping to make money as volatility increased in the market. I bought a VIX call with a strike of 20, and a VIX call with a strike of 26–both with May 21, 2025 expirations. Both of these buys were up about 40% before Friday’s snap-back rally. And looking at probable “events” I think volatility is going to increase in the second half of March. But this week we may see some optimism bring the VIX down and you may be able to buy more options on that future volatility at a temporarily depressed price. I would look to buy these options this week and hold for the next three weeks or so, through more tariff uncertainty in April and sell before the May 21 expiration. For more detail om my VIX options buys see the Volatility Portfolio on my subscription JubakAM.com site.
March 16, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Volatility |
Friday’s snap-back rally took a big bite out of the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX). The VIX dropped 11.72%, or 2.89, to 21.77. But the plunge in Call options on the VIX was even bigger with the VIX Call option with a strike price of 20 and an expiration of May 2025 falling 23.34% and the VIX Call option with a strike price of 26 and an expiration of May 2025 26.000 falling 31.34%. (I’m citing the action on these two options because they are the Calls that I own in my Volatility Portfolio.)
This is exactly the opportunity I flagged last week to add more volatility bets without paying too much after the run upon options prices that came to a screeching halt on Friday.
March 14, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
A day after major indexes moved into a correction, stocks bounced back like, well, like a basketball after a Lebron James dunk, like a sling shock at Halloween, like, well, like stocks after hitting over-sold technical levels. The gains in stocks were, how you say, broad-based. The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed up 2.1%. The NADAQ Composite added 2.6% and the NASDAQ 100 rose 2.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.7%. The MSCI World Index rose 1.8%. Bloomberg Magnificent 7 Total Return Index climbed 2.8%. The Russell 2000 small cap index was up 2.5%.
March 13, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 1.4% today. That took the index into correction country with a three-week rout from its high on February 219 of more than 10%–the technical definition of a correction. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index already in a correction lost 1.9% on the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.3%, bringing it 9.3% below its last record in December–and to the edge of a correction.
The 16 trading sessions it took for the S&P 500 to tumble by this magnitude from its February 19 high marks the seventh-fastest correction in records going back to 1929, according to Bloomberg. Three of the seven-fastest drawdowns of this magnitude happened under President Donald Trump–in 2018, 2020 and now.
Some technical indicators are saying that the drop has been too far, too fast. And that we could be about to see a short-term snap-back rally.
March 12, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The Trump Administration raised tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to 25% on Wednesday. And the European Union and Canada hit back Wednesday with tariffs of their own on billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. products.
March 10, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
In an interview on FOX Business on Monday Elon Musk said the U.S. DOGE Service is confident it will reach its goal of cutting $1 trillion in federal spending. And that he expected DOGE’s work will stretch another year. The next big target will be what he claims is massive fraud in Social Security.
March 4, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
President Donald Trump’s deadline passed without a deal and today 25% tariffs on U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on Chinese products–which brought the total tax on some Chinese products to 45%–went into effect. Retaliation by China and Canada was swift–Mexico opted to wait until Sunday to respond. China imposed tariffs of up to 15 percent on a raft of U.S. farm products–including soybeans, pork and chicken, and grains. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to fight and win a trade war with the United States.Canada will impose tariffs on roughly $107 billion worth of U.S. products. About $21 billion worth of those goods would be hit immediately, he said, with the rest taking effect in 21 days. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government was prepared to impose retaliatory tariffs. She told reporters that she will announce them Sunday.
February 28, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
The GDPNow model from the Federal ReserveBank of Atlanta updated on February 28 showed real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 plunging to a negative 1.5% rate. That’s down from a forecast of a positive 2.3% growth rate in the February 19 update.
February 28, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Analysts have lowered EPS estimates more than normal for Standard & Poor’s 500 companies for the first quarter, FactSet reported today. During the months of January and February, analysts lowered EPS estimates by a larger margin than average. The bottom-up EPS estimate for the first quarter decreased by 3.5% (to $60.66 from $62.89) from December 31 to February 27. Companies will begin to report first quarter earnings, which for most companies ends on March 31, in April. Analysts almost always cut their earnings estimates during the first two months of a quarter. During the past five years (20 quarters), the average decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate during the first two months of a quarter has been 2.6%. So it’s not the analysts are cutting estimates for the quarter ahead now that’s unusual. But instead it’s the larger than usual size of the cuts.
February 21, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
U.S. consumers’ expectations for long-term inflation rose to the highest rate in three decades, in February’s consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan. Consumers expect prices will climb at an annual rate of 3.5% over the next five to 10 years. The rate is the highest since 1995,
February 6, 2025 | AAPL, ACAD, AGN, ALV, AMZN, AUY, BABA, BG, BGC, BHP, BMY, CHK, CMI, CNI, COH, CSCO, CX, Daily JAM, DD, DE, DHR, DXJR, EBAY, ENB, EUM, FB, FCX, FLR, FLS, FTV, GE, GLW, GOOG, HAIN, HDB, INCY, IONS, ITUB, JCI, JO, JOY, KMI, LFL, LNG, LUX, MGM, MIDD, MON, MPC, OGXI, OKS, PEP, PFXF, POT, PXD, QCOM, RSPP, RYN, SDRL, SFTBY, SH, Short Term, SLB, SPWR, Videos, Z-SYMBOLS |
Today’s video is the Fed is between a rock and a hard place. Inflation has been stuck around 2.8% and the Fed would like to get it down to 2%. In January, the Fed paused any movement on interest rates but Wall Street remained hopeful for two cuts in 2025. The March 19 meeting will include a dot plot that will outline whether or not the central bank is thinking about any cuts for 2025. The problem is the Fed doesn’t know where the economy is going. There are too many uncertainties surrounding constantly changing Trump tariffs as well as the expected tax cut bill (which will result in higher yields and a market and economic stimulus). The budget also remains an unanswered question. These uncertainties, with the Fed also under huge political pressure from the Trump administration to make interest rate cuts, catch the Fed between a rock and a hard place and we won’t know how the Fed plans to address its dilemma until March.
January 8, 2025 | AAPL, ACAD, ADSK, AGN, ALB, ALV, AMZN, ARCO, ARGT, AUY, BABA, BG, BGC, BHP, BMY, CHK, CMI, CNI, COH, CSCO, CTRP, CX, DD, DE, DHR, DWDP, DXJR, EBAY, EEM, EFNL, ENB, EUM, EWZS, FANG, FANUY, FB, FCX, FEZ, FLR, FLS, FTV, GDXJ, GE, GGAL, GLD, GLW, GOOG, HAIN, HDB, HP, INCY, ING, IONS, ITUB, IVV, JCI, JO, JOY, KBWB, KMI, LFL, LNG, LUX, MGM, MIDD, MON, Morning Briefing, MPC, MXF, NJDCY, NKTR, Notes You Need, OGXI, OKS, PEP, PFXF, POT, PXD, PYPL, QCOM, RSPP, RYN, SDRL, SFTBY, SH, Short Term, SLB, SPWR, SQM, STO, SYNA, TCEHY, TPR, TRGP, TS, V, VALE, VEA, Videos, VMC, VZ, WBK, WES, XOM, XYL, YPF, Z-SYMBOLS |
In minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December 17-18 meeting released on Wednesday, January 8, Federal Reserve officials clearly decided to move more slowly on cutting interest rates in the quarters ahead. “Participants indicated that the committee was at or near the point at which it would be appropriate to slow the pace of policy easing,” minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee showed. “Many participants suggested that a variety of factors underlined the need for a careful approach to monetary policy decisions over coming quarters.” Please note the reference to “quarters” and not “months.”
