The MSM is so happy about the February Monster Employment Index!
They’ll tell you it’s up 10 points from January without mentioning that January was the worst month of the past 12 and, in reality, we are up just 2 points from last February when the shockingly poor data we were seeing sent the S&P all the way to 666 the next month. Today though, it is considered a reason to rally as people watching the MSM will believe anything the talking heads tell them because they don’t get shown the actual results and they trust their talking heads to have checked the facts carefully, rather than make them up, which is pretty much what they do.
We discussed the shenanigans of the ADP report in yesterday’s post and I did warn you that it was a fake rally based on happy headlines papering over poor data. As we expected, the market giddiness persisted until about 11:30 and then reality began to bite back. This was FANTASTIC for us as we were playing bearish into the rally but it’s very scary to hold bearish positions overnight but there’s no reason to hold options overnight when you pick up plays like our 9:54 Alert play on the DIA $103 puts, which averaged in at .77, hit $1 (up 30%) at 2:45 and finished the day at .94 (up 22%). You HAVE to learn to be satisfied with making 20% on day trades and cashing back out. Cash is flexible – overnight positions are not… In fact, since we did cash out yesterday, I was able to send out an overnight Alert to Members with a short on the oil Futures as they ran up to 80.50 which was good for a quick victory and then another this morning at $81, which is already up .30 with a .06 trailing stop (futures pay $10 per penny per contract so lots of fun for morning, pre-market trading!).
We went longer on our oil and gold shorts (in yesterday’s post it was GLL Apr $9 calls at .65) because we don’t expect them to resolve quickly but the chart on the left illustrates why we also firmly believe that this commodity rally is BS. This is a chart of the Employment to Population Ratio for Men 25-54 Years Old since WWII. Kind of puts a 2% year over year rise in the Monster Employment Index into perspective doesn’t it? 20% of the men in the United States of America between the ages…
