I almost forgot.
Voldemort's options "look" shows up sometime this afternoon.
Options expiration should play ball with the oscillator, meaning that there should be some buyers underneath and the shorts may be pressing too hard again.
But one rumor about one major bank or broker -- and there are a half-dozen around the Street -- coupled with a bad look at 2:30 p.m. (meaning that when the big trading desks find out how much there will be to buy or sell on Friday) could put some real downward pressure on the day. Of course, if we get a good look, we could ramp into the closing bell today because we are so oversold.
OK, just to review, no one knows wtf this "look" is, and I have asked numerous people on floors, derivatives desks, et. al. He did elaborate once on Stockpickr, and I discussed that
here.But this is just a throw in, in fact I'd rank it only 3rd on the inanity scale in this article. It starts with some pin thoughts.
This is such an important expiration with so much on the line in terms of puts that have been sold naked -- a dangerous strategy, one that could still come back and haunt hedge funds -- and levels for big-caps that are nowhere near strikes.
Exxon (XOM) could be $85 or $80. AIG (AIG) could be $65 or $60. Citigroup (C) could be $45 but Bank of America (BAC ) could be $50. P&G (PG) to $65?
Yes, you too can look at a screen and figure out which strike a stock may be near, lol.
My comment would be it takes 12 more seconds to look up open interests, and that sheds a little more light. But with volatility so high, pins are silly to game for this go around regardless. Think of volatility is a prediction for a daily range. The higher the volatility, the higher the daily range. The higher the daily range, the less likely something is to pin, plain and simple.
Which brings us to the point of the whole article; what to do in these scary days.
That means, to me, you have to wait, unless you are so margined that you could get hurt by a deep selloff or if you haven't raised enough cash to take advantage of any options-related dip.
Got that? Makes perfect sense, lol.