Volatile Day

by Larry Levin


The market seems to be getting back to "normal." And by "normal" I mean anything but 6.00 TOTAL daily ranges that we suffered through for weeks. Today's range, for example, was a nifty 22.50 points wide which makes for great trading. Let's hope this continues!

This morning's GDP report was - once again - much worse than expected. Economist consensus was for a +1.6% gain but was just +0.3%; a horrible miss indeed.

But that's not all. Did you hear about the prior month's MASSIVE "error?" Or was it, and still is, spoke of in hushed tones. Asked another way, if there was a massive "error" that revised the prior month's GDP by a staggering amount, do you believe it would be all over the lame stream media? I sure do!

Here was the "correction" that came from the government on January 15th: durable goods orders fell a revised 0.7% in November, compared to the original estimate of a 0.2% increase. WHAT?!!? The +0.2% was actually an ass-kickingly lower print of -0.7%?!?? Yeah, no wonder little if anything is mentioned of the truth.

The weekly jobless claims were a little better and a little worse than hoped for. In the week ending Jan. 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 470,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 478,000. The 4-week moving average was 456,250, an increase of 9,500 from the previous week's revised average of 446,750.

From the report, there are 5,350,477 workers on emergency benefits, and another 4,669,250 workers on regular benefits. Thus 10 million people are out of a job who want to work, and that does not count the number of people who have exhausted regular and emergency benefits.

Volatile indeed.




Previous Day's Trading Room Results:

Trade Date: 1/27/10

E-Mini S&P Trades*
(before fees and commissions):


1) VA buy @ 8:49am at 1090.75 = +1.00 (1 lot)

2) Algorithm positions (6)

3) "Reading the Tape" positions (8) ...combined Secret's, Algo, & "Reading the Tape" total...+10.50



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