After making a new all-time high on September 2nd, $SPX has failed to add to the gains. Perhaps the sideways movement is all the correction that this market needs, similar to what we saw at the end of July. Regardless, the $SPX chart remains bullish in that it is above support and all of its major trendlines are moving higher.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on Monday, August 30th, 2021.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on Monday, August 23rd, 2021.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on Monday, August 16th, 2021.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on Monday, August 2nd, 2021.
One of the tougher choices an option trader faces is what to do with a profitable position. That’s a good choice to have, but it might not be an easy one. Our philosophy is always to let profits run. Therefore we use trailing stops, not targets. Targets only take you out of your best positions way before they have run their course. But even within the framework of using trailing stops, there are some choices to be made besides just raising the trailing stop as a long call position gains profits. Specifically, when should a profitable long call be rolled up or a profitable long put be rolled down – if at all?
As $SPX has recovered from its July 19th lows and driven to new all-time highs, not a lot has changed regarding the overall picture. It's still the big-cap tech stocks leading the way, as the NASDAQ- 100 ($NDX; QQQ) and Dow ($DJX; DIA) are near all-time highs as well. But the internals of the market are still weak as manifested in the Russell 2000 Index ($RUT; IWM).
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on Monday, July 26th, 2021.
The broad market ($SPX) has failed to convincingly break out to a new high, and now it is back below the old (early May) highs of 4238. A close below 4190 would indicate to me that the attempted upside breakout had failed.
Despite recent market weakness over the past four days, the equity-only put-call ratios remain on buy signals. The standard ratio (Figure 2) flattened out yesterday, but the weighted ratio continues to drop. These ratios will remain on buy signals as long as they are declining.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on Monday, June 14th, 2021.
