Quadruple Witching

When Churchyards yawne, and Hell it selfe breaths out Contagion to this world” (Hamlet).

(the above quote links to a cool vid of Courtney Love and Hole doing a cover of Donovans Season of the Witch, something to get the blood pumping on this busy day)

The above description above could aptly describe the trading environment of the past 18 months. More closely I chose it to refer to Quadruple witching. Today sports fans we have contracts for stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single stock futures (SSF) all expiring. Traders delight or despair, depending how your performance has been YTD! Personally i would love to just phone it in and rock out to a scantily clad grunge queen, but this is not to be.

As noted earlier Chairman Ben Bernanke left interest rates unchanged, yet launched an aggressive asset buy back program. In a nut shell he is going to inflate the currency, in an attempt to jump start the economy one more time. This seems like a page taken from a South American Banana republic, and most likely will also lead to inflation ramping up dramatically. For the average investor this is a good chance to refinance the old ranch one more time, and put a few more dollars in your pocket every month. The major indexes lurched upwards on the news, failed at serious overhead resistance, and sold off rather briskly yesterday. Cant say as I have had too many shower celebration moments lately. I faded this rally earlier than would have been perfect and am now positioned rather bearishly, and uncomfortably so. I don't like hoping the market bails me out. A healthy correction to around 710 on the S&P on LOWER volume, would set the stage for a more healthy resumption the recent upward move. As it stands currently, this has all the halmarks of a suckers rally. Led by broken financials, and empty comments out of disgraced CEO's, a lack of real volume, a pullback is needed to get me on board for any further advance.

I generally pen these missives early in the morning, sort of as a traders journal for myself before the open . The other morning I was interrupted by one of the little gladiator twins. Seems he had a tooth desperateley in need of removal, but was somewhat hesitant to deliver the coup de grace to the wobbly fang. What a scene! Despite my extortions of Virtus et Honor! much wailing ensued. The fairy did deliver a pair of nice Susan B Anthony's however.