Don’t Believe What You Hear About the Strait of Hormuz
Yo Pit Crazies, Day 2 of the Ice Report. A big chunk of ice broke free and is headed toward my neighbor, the oyster fisherman. I hope my big iceberg does not mess up his situation over their grabbing oyster gold out of his floating beds. It happens every year but this ice pack is […]
The Ice is Breaking
Yo Pit Crazies, It is that time of year when I think about Spring and Summer. Winter has less than 2 weeks to run and I start looking at my cove to see when the ice will break. Right now it is a big ice cube but I can see blue water just outside the […]
VIX Saw the Iran Strike Coming
Yo Pit Crazies, If my Option Volatility Jargon is vexing, tap our Glossary here. AG's alter-ego Vol Man here with my weekly analysis. As usual, I start with my last forecast. Last Week’s Big call for Feb 27 If stocks aren't selling off, they're going higher. Right now that's the case. Congress could take some […]
Livin La Vida Loca
Yo pit crazies, I just got back from the fairyland that is West Palm Beach and I got to meet a bunch of my students and a few of Voz's. Some I have seen coming for a few years and it was nice to reconnect with them. I think students who can connect at these […]
The VIX Is Sending Three Signals (You Only Need Two)
Yo Pit Crazies, I had a volatility trade that should have worked. The VIX dropped. The futures curve, which tells you whether traders expect volatility to rise or fall over the next few months, flipped into a shape called contango, meaning near-term fear fell below longer-term fear. That’s usually a green light. I still couldn’t […]
This indicator is saying the market is cooling a bunch
Welcome from West Palm Beach! We are chilling in the shadows of Mar-a-Lago and the breezy tropical winds are making it quite pleasant and 70 degrees warmer than at home. What also is chilling is the VIX curve. There is a remarkable lack of information on what is going on in Iran. Some news snippets […]
Why I Hedge: VIX at 26 and Counting
Yo pit crazies, I was dead wrong yesterday. The news was out, but Iran isn't giving up the ghost. What looked like a quick operation, regime change, call it what you will, is dragging on. As Frank Gregory said, Iran is like a dying dog nipping at anything. And now it's biting hard. Iran launched […]
The peace dividend is back
Yo pit crazies, It's funny that I thought about this, but since I started in the options business, I've only known a world after the Cold War. Meaning after Nov 9th, 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I did start six months before that, but for the most part we had the peace […]
The AI Scare Is Fading and So Is Volatility
Yo Pit Crazies, If my Option Volatility Jargon is vexing, tap our Glossary here. AG's alter-ego Vol Man here with my weekly analysis. As usual, I start with my last forecast. Last Week’s Big call for Feb 27 If stocks aren't selling off, they're going higher. Right now that's the case. Congress could take some […]
The Bleach Maker Nobody’s Watching
Yo Pit Crazies, Welcome to Stocks to Watch, a new weekly column where I highlight stocks that are close to green light status on my Fingerprint system. Here's the quick version of what Fingerprint does. It scans for stocks trading near their lows that are also seeing fresh institutional buying. Big money moving into beaten-down […]