Throughout late November and most of December, I've been rocking out a massive tour with my band ABL (Christmas time is our busiest season). I haven't been trading much at all in December.

December trading sort of sucks anyways, markets are thin and full of retail chumps like myself and pros who take my money away, so I went on tour instead.

This week I finally started dipping my toe in trading again, but nothing too serious. One stock I picked up was MCK, sort of a nice chart I think. Not hell bent on going long here, be even less so going short right now. I sort of like this chart though.

Last night I came down with a horrible flu (update it's pneumonia), and I think I'm close to death right now. Don't expect much from me in the near future, I also have some sort of ponzi-football pool scheme I got wrapped up into to deal with.

(Captialisa, Sweet princess of forex, good call on short eur and aud the other night)

God bless everyone, I'm about to puke my pancreas out……..

The $VIX, or the CBOE Volatility Index measures the market expectations of the near-term volatility conveyed by the S&P500 stock index option prices.  Most investors look to this benchmark when talking about the amount of fear priced into the market.  A more accurate way to describe this however is to say that the $VIX is the price paid for the current volatility in the market.  That price can change based on how aggressive or complacent investors are.

Let me put that another way …. Is AAPL at $334.00 more expensive than SHZ at $10.24?  Well, at first blush it looks that way because the absolute price is much higher.  But the reality is that when you look at each company's near term earnings potential, you will draw a different conclusion.

(more…)