Tainted Love: Like its Stock Price, Disney’s Brand Value Has Seen Better Decades

Down with the Dow

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Investors who still track and favor the Dow can trade the value of the index Headline writers love describing the daily movement of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in melodramatic terms. Classics like “Dow surges 600 Points” and “Dow tumbles more than 1,000” dominate newspaper financial pages, scroll across the screen on cable news or … Continued

Sizing Futures and Holiday Movement

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Futures sizes? We got the hook up for you! Don’t trade without knowing the true size. That said, futures are extremely capital efficient. Black Swan Black Fridays Most traders anticipated last Friday would be a non-event given the holiday weekend and shortened market hours. However, the market surprised everyone and the S&P dropped 2.3%. We … Continued

Two-Thirds In

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The S&P 500 rallied over 20% for the first 8 months of the year, the largest such rally for the first two thirds of the year since 1997. The historical median return for the S&P 500 from September to Year End is +5.2% … time will tell if the S&P continues on this year’s upward … Continued

Sector Ignorance

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RIPE AND JUICY TRADE IDEAS Most investors own one or more of the Dow Jones, S&P 500, Nasdaq or Russell 2000 indexes. Common ways to buy into them are through exchange-traded funds, such as Dow Jones (DIA), S&P 500 (SPY), Nasdaq (QQQ) and the Russell 2000 (IWM).  But drill into those indexes and it becomes … Continued

Sizing Up Futures Contracts

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Most traders find old school futures contracts too big for their accounts  To trade futures, begin by understanding the sizes of the products, the expected moves and whether the futures product is appropriate for the size of the account (see “Follow the table” below).   Good thing you got a guy to help determine all that—me! … Continued

Inversion in Treasuries: Two Ways to Trade

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A savvy futures trader’s take on the markets Rip van Winkle slept for 20 years, but that was 200 years ago. Today, van Winkle’s smart phone would probably disturb his slumber after a mere 12 years.  So suppose the Washington Irving character nodded off back in 2007 and awoke last month. He would have been … Continued

Unresolved Macro Themes Forecast Forward Volatility

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Global directional trends lobal macro trading benefits from volatility because moving markets create opportunities to trade. It’s also true that macro themes tend to simmer in the background and then come into play suddenly, spiking volatility and creating large, directional moves in assets. In one example, U.S. equity indexes remained relatively stable in early spring … Continued