{"id":1695,"date":"2009-08-20T07:28:18","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T12:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1695"},"modified":"2009-08-20T07:28:18","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T12:28:18","slug":"before-the-open-aug-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=1695","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Aug 20)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Thursday.<br \/>\nOther than the first couple minutes of trading on Monday, it hasn\u2019t been a bad week. The market traded in a tight range most of Monday\u2026slowly grinded up Tuesday\u2026and moved up yesterday and closed up despite a big opening gap down. &#8230;<!--more--><br \/>\nAs the week has gone by, it\u2019s become more and more evident the put open-interest I talked about over the weekend is putting a solid layer of support under the market\u2026at least in the short term. Put OI far out-numbered call OI for Aug, and the market isn\u2019t going to let those put holders make money.<br \/>\nThe market often does exactly what the majority thinks but not in a timely manner. If indeed it\u2019s the put OI that\u2019s propping up a market that wants to fall, it would make perfect sense for the sell-off to be a few days late\u2026cause lots of pain\u2026then do as expected.<br \/>\nThe Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up including a 4.5% gain from China. Europe is currently up across the board \u2013 better than 1% gains from all the indexes. Futures here in the States suggest a small gap up open.<br \/>\nGiven the action over the last two days (grind up Tues, gap down and rally Wed), a gap up today should be sellable\u2026at least for a day trade. The market has already produced lots of pain for put holders; it doesn\u2019t have to move up more. I stated over the weekend an SPY close between 99 and 100 is sufficient to cause lots of pain (the SPY closed right at 100 yesterday).<br \/>\nSo this is what I\u2019m thinking\u2026if the market is trading as it is due to OE, then we\u2019d expect a sell-off after, but a sell-off isn\u2019t going to come in a timely manner\u2026it\u2019s not going to happen on Monday. That\u2019s too easy. It\u2019ll either start early (end of today and tomorrow or just tomorrow) or it\u2019ll happen late (late Tues or Wed next week). It would be too easy and obvious for the market to sell-off Monday.<br \/>\nHere\u2019s the 15-min chart. There are lots of traders who got spooked by Monday\u2019s gap down. They\u2019d love a chance to get out even.<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/before-the-open\/images\/spx082009.png\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nheadlines at <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/apf\/archive.html\">Yahoo Finance<\/a><br \/>\nstocks to watch from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/stocks-in-focus-for-thursday-2009-08-19\">MarketWatch<\/a><br \/>\ntoday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/briefing.com\/Investor\/Public\/Calendars\/UpgradesDowngrades.htm\">upgrades\/downgrades<\/a><br \/>\nyesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1693\">Sector Performance<\/a><br \/>\nthis week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1654\">Earnings Reports<\/a><br \/>\nthis week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1656\">Economic Numbers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Thursday. Other than the first couple minutes of trading on Monday, it hasn\u2019t been a bad week. The market traded in a tight range most of Monday\u2026slowly grinded up Tuesday\u2026and moved up yesterday and closed up despite a big opening gap down. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}