On the 20th anniversary on Black Monday, the Dow’s down about 155 points. The Dow has been negative for 5 straight days now. Personally, I was overconfident and am paying dearly for it now. The market will humble you and quickly. Updates will be coming throughout the day.
Update: Curbs are finally in but I think it’s a little too late. The damage has been done. Dow down 280 points while the Nasdaq is down 54 and the S&P down 30. Hopefully the selloff doesn’t continue the last 30 minutes or so as it sometimes has.
15:24: Dow down 315 points. Someone remind the traders to place the floor back under the Dow before it continues to fall.
Closing Bell: Down closes down 369 points. Nasdaq closed down 74 points with the S&P down almost 40 points. Curbs saved us from it getting extremely ugly. Hope you all bought some cheap scotch for the weekend.
Dow closed 4.1% down for the week with the S&P down 3.9% and the Nasdaq down 2.9% for the week.
It’s been an extremely long week trust me. 18 hours inside a car over a 72 hour period is not fun.
In any event, here’s a quick recap of the week’s events!
- 10/9: The market began reaching all time highs. The NASDAQ reached a 6.75 year new high while the Dow Jones and S&P hit new absolute highs.
- 10/11: The market began hitting new highs in the morning. Around the 14:00 EST sell block, a report was released stating Baidu (BIDU) may only meet, not exceed, expectations for this coming earnings report. That sent all of tech into a selling frenzy erasing gains within 15 minutes. The reaction appeared to stabilize toward the end of the trading day but the damage was done.
This week has quite a bit of the Dow Jones reporting coupled with options expiration week. From what I’ve learned in the past, I don’t think I’ll be investing any new funds this coming week since action is usually pinned at certain strike prices.
I’ve made an important decision regarding my portfolio. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve done well with options trading and as a result will focus more on options than common stock with my portfolio. So far the results have been promising but it could have been luck more than anything else. We’ll see what happens when the market begins to stabilize instead of lineally rise.
Although I’m focusing more on options plays, I’ve still found a need to diversify out of the tech sector. In addition to my favorite calls with EMC Corp. (EMC), I’ve included calls from Bank of America (BAC) and Ford (F). I tried to game the Alcoa (AA) earnings last week but that ended up as a wash so those options will most likely expire worthless. The same goes for the Micron Technology (MU) calls.
Yes, that percentage on my return is correct. To date, I have made a 183% return on my deposited investment. Granted, it’s not a complex calculation on ROI, but it helps set the tone for what I’ve accomplished so far. The margin in my account has helped boost some of my earnings which shows how margin can be useful if used properly.
Next week is going to be heavy on earnings. Remember that implied volatility on calls/puts for a single strike price will increase and decrease on those expectations. Play it safe!
Starting today, I’ll be taking submissions for the Twenty Something Finances blog carnival. This is the first time I’ll be hosting a blog carnival so I’d really appreciate it if you all could submit an article and show everyone that not all twenty something adults are as reckless with our paychecks as some think! We can discuss the blog carnival later this week! Good luck!
The Dow and S&P 500 have hit all time highs so far this morning. The NASDAQ has hit a new 6 and 3/4 year high as well.
My portfolio has currently run up over 120% as of 7 am EST.
Let the bulls run!