Friday, October 09, 2009
Pay Day!!
Alcoa reported some unexpectedly great results (ie a profit!) Thursday and the markets loved it sending them yet again another leg higher. The Dow gained 61.29 points to finish on 9,786.87. The SPX added 7.90 points to 1,065.48.
Yesterday we closed our play for $0.95 and made a profit of $1.10.
We were in the green but next week sees a huge amount of big name companies in the Dow and SPX report their earnings. This will obviously be a week where the market will move and being only 25 points away from our stop loss and with 5 full trading days to go plus the opening move on the Friday morning next week where the SPX price is settled, it made no sense to risk the profits we already have and potentially take a loss!
On the economic news jobless claims for the week ending Oct. 3 fell by 33,000 to a level of 521,000, which is the lowest level for claims in nine months (note though there were still job losses and lots of them!). The four-week moving average fell slightly to 539,750. Traders are hoping that jobless claims will continue to fall, leading to an improvement in nonfarm payrolls in October. In September, payrolls fell a lot more than expected.
Retailers were a focus Thursday following reports from the nation's chain stores on sales in September. For the most part, same-store sales were much better than expected, though a majority of stores are still seeing declining sales.
Not much happening today other than the international trade release. Next week we'll see a lot of action.
Until next time.
Yesterday we closed our play for $0.95 and made a profit of $1.10.
We were in the green but next week sees a huge amount of big name companies in the Dow and SPX report their earnings. This will obviously be a week where the market will move and being only 25 points away from our stop loss and with 5 full trading days to go plus the opening move on the Friday morning next week where the SPX price is settled, it made no sense to risk the profits we already have and potentially take a loss!
On the economic news jobless claims for the week ending Oct. 3 fell by 33,000 to a level of 521,000, which is the lowest level for claims in nine months (note though there were still job losses and lots of them!). The four-week moving average fell slightly to 539,750. Traders are hoping that jobless claims will continue to fall, leading to an improvement in nonfarm payrolls in October. In September, payrolls fell a lot more than expected.
Retailers were a focus Thursday following reports from the nation's chain stores on sales in September. For the most part, same-store sales were much better than expected, though a majority of stores are still seeing declining sales.
Not much happening today other than the international trade release. Next week we'll see a lot of action.
Until next time.
# posted by Paul @ 5:54 AM 
