S&P 500 futures are up this morning, but we had the same thing yesterday too. With the technicals in neutral (including the weekly technicals), anything is possible, but I am not sold on a bullish move here. We may open to the upside today, but the weekly technicals are still too close to overbought to make me comfortable with the market turning bullish this soon. If the S&P 500 could drop to the 20 day moving average and then bounce, I would feel a lot more comfortable.
The S&P 500 levels to watch today:
UPSIDE: 1827-1829 (2 data points), 1837-1838 (2 data points), 1845 (January 2nd’s high), 1849 (December’s high and the all-time high), and 1860 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1826.
DOWNSIDE: 1823 (January 6th’s low), 1813 (November’s high and the 20 day moving average), 1793 (50 day moving average), 1775 (October’s high), and 1767 (December’s low and the bottom of the Bollinger Bands).
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Ed's Talking Stock 
I added a small position of SPXU at $15.38. I am looking to sell at $15.62 today.
Doubled my position in UCO at 29.09. Average cost is now 30.08. Not selling calls yet. Oil may drop ;however, based on long term support, my guess is we are close to at least a short term bottom and due for a bounce.
Solid up day for me. I am now in the green for the year (all 4 days), up about 29 basis points. I am really struggling to find ideas. I have not bought a stock since December 11th (that was my ATHM buy). I am thinking about a cigarette play, either MO or RAI. Foot Locker, C and HA are also on my short list. But I am a bit paralyzed by the recent strong run up and I keep expecting some sort of 5% correction.
Marshall, take a look at the oil etf’s. I think a position in oil is is appropriate for all portfolio’s. I will say oil plays are not buy and hold. If you look at long term charts oil will trade in a range. That range will change from time to time and you have to adjust. At the moment it looks to be trading in a range of 90ish to 100. Even a small position here would seem to have good potential for profit. A little patience and playing the range makes sense to me. And, you always have covered calls to reduce the risk.
Trader – good advice. Even Buffett is investing in this space with out sized XOM buy. I was kicking around TGA earlier today. They are very cheap, but have political risk.
You don’t hear much about this, Buffett also uses covered calls to generate income off his long term holdings.
Trader – that is interesting. I am surprised there is enough liquidity in that market for a whale like him.
He probably doesn’t sell calls on all of his shares. You could still sell a lot of calls if you did it a little (relative) at a time over different time frames and strike prices. The same way the big boys buy and sell stocks. They can’t buy or sell millions of shares at one time. I’m sure he has ways to buy and sell that aren’t available to the rest of us.
Marshall, Syna is up 8+%. What is the big news? Thanks for the tip.. Bought it at the same time as you.
Not really sure, I did notice the pop. Glad it is working for you so far.
I am going to hang onto SPXU for one more day. There wasn’t any real follow-through on this morning’s pop. I expect there will be better opportunities to sell it tomorrow.