On the night of Nov. 9, the S&P 500 E-mini futures were halted after dropping 5% on the news that Trump had won the election. Gold was up 4.3% and the Nikkei was down 5.3%. Markets are more comfortable with the status quo and Hillary Clinton representative it in this election. The panic subsided and SPY actually closed up 0.54 from the previous day’s close.
We’ll take a big picture look at the gold market this week and the interplay between the market’s players and price before finishing with an option play that could capitalize on multiple factors leading to increased volatility in the December gold futures contract. Finally, this piece will be short on words and long on charts as we distill the action from monthly down to daily resolution.
In the past five years, there has been a return to the futures market by retail traders, who have grown to have virtually the same market presence as elite traders.
Netflix Inc. is one of the FANG stocks, which are all relatively new and have a history of volatility and plenty of liquidity in both the underlying and options.
Options writing is viewed as one of the more risky trading strategies, but Max Ansbacher has found a way to survive and thrive in the options niche for more than 39 years — 19 of those as principal at Ansbacher Investment Management, where his strategy has produced a compound annual return of 11.52% since 1996 and is up 22.24% year-to-date through July.
Implied volatility came screaming off as the stock market rallied on Tuesday. The catalyst was a warm and fuzzy feeling flowing from China after the central bank slashed interest rates in an effort to help stem the tide of selling.
Shares in U.S. Steel are bucking the broader market Thursday, adding 1.05% to stand at $20.26 and off an earlier-in-the-week low of $15.68. The move follows a midweek rally on heavy share volume after a two-month malaise for the stock.
Roughly one month ago, the price of a gold futures contract expiring in December was trading at just above $1,200 per ounce. In the past few days a so-called “bear raid” on the gold market in general has driven its price down close to $1,080.
