JPM

Commodities are a TAX. They are the worst kind of tax because they flatly (not progressively) charge every man woman and child in this country more money for the same food, fuel, shelter and clothing that they had to have last week in order to live.

The markets continue to move higher as I had predicted, after the bottoming tail on February 5th, 2010, I start to look for new leadership. That leadership may come from financial stocks that have b

Total System Services is one of the largest providers of electronic payment processing services to banks and retailers worldwide. New contract wins overseas are helping to offset customer losses stemming from consolidation in the financial industry, but there are few near-term catalysts for growth.

Markets around the world have declined in January. In the U S, the large-cap S&P 500 and the small-cap Russell 2000 benchmarks are down 3.6% and 3.7%%, respectively.

The decline in overseas stock investments has been larger. The MSCI EAFE and MSCI EM indexes commonly used to measure the performance of developed and emerging markets are down 5.1% and 7.8% respectively.

Read the weekly reviews of Philstockworld Member picks rarely available to the public!

An in-depth review of the week's trading and the news that made it happen along with links to more analysis as well as a detailed discussion of how we take advantage of day-trading index options during expiration week - something we are able to do every month of the year!

he subjects covered in my last post, namely sector rotation and imploding volatility, received some face time in Friday night's Options Action. What insight did the gurus have to add?

Well, none really.

As to whether or not the rotation out of tech and into financials is here to stay, the best two points made were:

Since the March low when the SPX traded at 666 the market has had a rally beyond comparison. The SPX is currently trading at 1125 and this is a 460 point move in ten short months. It is important to realize since this bull run began that the market has not experienced a single 10 percent correction. This is not healthy action.

Is "extortion" too strong a word for what's being done to us?

One can only wonder if Charles Manson is due to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, or tiger woods receiving the Husband of the year award.

US foreclosure filings will hit 3.9M in 2009, bringing the 3-year total to 10% of all US homes.

Judging by a discussion on CNBC's Fast Money program on Tuesday, it's time to sell JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

Joe Terranova, a regular panelist on the show, extolled the virtues of the megabank, but it rang hollow to my ears. After initially observing how the shares are technically challenged because they've slipped below the 100-day moving average, Terranova gushed:

In a previous OptionMaestro.com post, I outlined 30 stocks which I wouldn't mind going long at these levels. I wrote about getting long the stocks by using the buy-write option strategy. This is an updated post to that one, adjusting the strikes and prices accordingly for options expiration today.

With the November options expiration approaching us Friday, I thought I would outline some trade ideas on stocks I wouldn't mind going long on, that would return good percentages by Friday (as of market close Friday November 13, 2009). When using the buy/write option strategy, it is important that you are willing to hold the security in case it is below the strike price at options expiration.

As of today the top ten most active stock option contracts traded were:

1. BP (BP) November 55 Call Options
2. BP January 50 Call Options
3. BP January 40 Call Options
4. Eli Lilly (LLY) January 30 Call Options
5. S&P 500 SPDR (SPY) November 107 Put Options
6. BP January 45 Call Options
7. Bank of America (BAC) November 16 Call Options

While S&P 500 companies are having no trouble reporting positive earnings surprises, performance on the revenue metric is a different story. Read more on S&P 500 stocks and earnings.