What a lame, boring trading day. This is getting to be a grind again, I’m sorry to say. The only bright spot was my (lucky/cowardly/wise) fleeing of my Sept. 16 SPY puts, which yielded me an overnight 25% profit. By day’s end, those puts were worth about HALF what I sold them at. I think I got the “short-dated options” bug out of my system. It isn’t worth the anxiety.
As I look at the SPY, the top is still firmly in place, but for cryin’ out loud, I wish the market would start crumbling again. This green arrow business is for the birds.
Weirdly, stocks went higher today in spite of interest rates continuing to soar. Below, by way of the new and improved layered charts, I’ve provided a spread chart of the 10-year yield versus the SPY. As you can see, that red spread is getting pretty thick. I remain at 25% cash in my portfolio, and I’ll deploy that when things start to make sense again.
I wandered over to /wsb, as I like to do on occasion to see what the loonies over there are up to. The big story people like to share these days are their “rags to riches to rags” stories, some of which are eye-popping. Below is actually one of the milder ones, in which a guy took a small account, grew it to almost a quarter million dollars, and then wiped it out to less than the original value.
I honestly am out of anything constructive to say about the market, since today was such a frustrating and annoying bore. I shall just leave with you this moment of Zen, ripped from today’s headlines:
