$2,693,308! ; That is down $315,599 (10.5%) in our paired Long-Term and Short-Term Portfolios since our April 14th review. ; That is EXACTLY where we want to be as the purpose of the STP hedges (see Tuesday's review) is to MITIGATE the damages on the way down – not completely eradicate them. ; If you try not to have any losses at all you end up trading yourself into a neutral corner and – if you are doing that – why not just be in CASH!!!? And we are mainly in CASH!!! with $1,770,488 of it in the LTP and $1,182,271 in the STP – there's actually more cash than equity in both. ; Because we sell a lot of puts, having low equity doesn't… [Read More...]

We hit all our downside goals – so now what? As you can see from our S&P 500 chart, there's been a lot of damage done since the Death Cross last month but it's only within our predicted range – nothing to shake us out of our overall strategy. ; We anticipate the 4,000 line (blue) to evenually settle down as the middle of the range between 3,680 and 4,320, where the S&P should consolidate into July earnings reports and then we'll see how they go. ; ; That means it's not likey we recover to more than 4,320 and, if I'm right, we'll see upside resistance at 4,000 and very strong resistance at 4,160 (weak bounce). ; That will bring the 200-day moving average down to 4,320 around the end… [Read More...]

4,130 – That's where we started this week. 4,127 – That's where we are this morning. ; It only SEEMS like a bad week because we had that silly rally on Wednesday that got our hopes up but, on the whole, it's been a good, solid consolidation week DESPITE some disappointing data. ; This morning, the NFP Report shows that we added 428,000 jobs – that's not what a depressed economy does and there are 11.2M jobs available – enough for anyone who doesn't like the job they have to find another one. ; ; So yes, that's driving wages higher and that's causing some inflation but transferring money from Corporations to the Workers is the good kind of Inflation in this Capitalist Hellscape we've allowed… [Read More...]

This has gone just as expected. We opened the week at 4,250 on the S&P (/ES) and we're at 4,241 this morning. ; Anything that happened in-between is just noise, which we are able to ignore by focusing on our Bonce Charts™. Back on the 19th, it was "Technical Tuesday – Indexes Stuck in a Danger Zone" and that was at 4,400 – 3.5% ago. ; ; If not for yesterday's irrational end-of-month window-dressing, we'd be starting at finishing the month at the lows and adding even more hedges than we already did. ; That's right, just like that – April is over and it's already May so we're already in the middle of Q2 and the war is still on… [Read More...]