Wang's Happy Trading

Yesterday, in my article, I mentioned that we should see some profit-taking and more volatility.  This morning, the latest economic data were mostly positive with solid industrial production and benign inflation numbers.  Housing starts, however, dropped.  The market was a little soft at the open, but, pushed higher in mid-day; only to lose most of the gains in the last hour.

AAPL announced more than 600,000 pre-orders on its iPhone 4 on day 1.  AAPL shares added +2.91%.  GOOG also traded higher, closing above the $500 level.  We cashed out the rest of our June 500 calls on GOOG for gains as high as +157%:

June 16, 2010
12:06 | HappyTrading G00G ($502.40) Sold to Close 06C500 Jun 500 calls, at $5.80 +129%
09:26 | HappyTrading GOOG ($503.40) Sold to Close 06C500 Jun 500 calls, at $6.50 +157%

Miners were mostly in the red today as investors/traders locked in profits after a strong run-up, although, gold miners still made good gains:  AEM +1.8%, NEM +3.55%, GOLD +0.42%.  We did a quick trade on GOLD 90 calls, but, opted to cash them out when the market got weak late in the afternoon:

12:19 | HappyTrading GOLD ($91.80) Sold to Close 06C90 Jun 90 calls, at $2.25 +7%

When the market got weak, we jumped into some puts on FDX and rang in a +33% gain in just 30 minutes: 

12:54 | HappyTrading FDX ($78.00) Sold to Close 06P80 Jun 80 put, at $2.20 +33%
12:18 | HappyTrading FDX ($78.65) Bought to Open 06P80 Jun 80 put, at $1.65

The market pretty much ended flat with the Dow up +4.69 points, SPX down 0.62 points, and Nasdaq up 0.05 points.  Since charts were little changed, we’ll look at them on another day.

BP was once again in the news.  BP today agreed to set up a $20 billion fund for damage claims from its Gulf oil spill and suspended dividend for the next 3 quarters.  BP was trading just below $30 in the morning.  After the news was released, BP traded as high as $33, before closing at $31.85.  RIG and APC, however, both seemed to have moved with the market today; both were green in the morning, but, sank back into the red in the afternoon.  Both RIG and APC ended down more than 3%.

We’ll likely need to see a few days of consolidation on the market.  Tomorrow’s jobless claims may still provide some impetus to drive stocks on knee-jerk reactions.  Regardless, we should see more profit-taking tomorrow.

Good night and HappyTrading! ™ (click to see our Facebook Page)