Thursday, February 14, 2008

Four in a Row?!

I'm knocking on wood, crossing my fingers, and picking four-leaf clovers as I write that title... I don't want to do anything to jinx an unbelievable four-day rally that it looks like we'll continue today.

The US markets look set to move after good earnings from here and abroad. Toyko markets moved up 3+%, the most since 2002, after Japan's economy grew much more than expected. The rest of Asia followed upward.

Europe is up more moderately, but that's fine with me... UBS reported a huge, terrible loss because of subprime writedowns. For them to report that and for the market to still be up.... I like that.

US futures are trending higher for all three major indexes. Comcast just released excellent earnings, and the NASDAQ should have some positive reaction after (so-called) good earnings from Baidu.com (BIDU) after the bell yesterday. (On a side note, I think that BIDU is a high-PE "pig" that needs to be slaughtered... but if it's gonna pull up my tech stocks today, i'll be ok with that.)

A nice move today will be very beneficial to my trading account here and my longer-term Ameritrade account... between the two accounts, I have February ATVI and SNDK calls that, as of yesterdays close, were about $.30 away from the strike price.... if the positive market momentum can push them above the strike prices in early trading, then I'll be able to break even (or maybe even sell profitably!) in trades I had written off as losses.

Looking forward, the MSFT options that I wrote a trade note about buying look like they'll work out well (still knocking on wood). MSFT closed a tad under $29 yesterday (the option's strike price) with an entire month left. As I stated before, as clarity increases concerning the Yahoo deal (and just as the market goes up), MSFT has a lot of ground to make up towards its high of $37. I also bought some $30 SNDK calls yesterday as the stock appears to be picking up some momentum.

So, if the market opens up big, I plan on profit taking on a few trades, just because I'm not sure about the sustainability of a weeklong rally. But the market is still dirt cheap, and if economic conditions continue to stabilize/improve, this could prove to be the beginning of the end of the best buying opportunity for years to come.



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