The Watcher

So I was a bystander again today. Saw DRYS pop and move up almost 10% by the end of day, many other stocks finishing at their highs for the day as well. We finished at the 1390 level, I was in class otherwise I likely would have taken down some puts. We'll see if that would have been a failed trade or a good trade, so far DRYS and FSLR rallied back up today.

Today we actually saw some good results from retailers, obviously that is good news for the market because it shows some of an indication of the health of the consumer, which in turn means the economy. I think this is a step in the right direction. Oil is still the big concern in my opinion, we may even get back to 1400, but until there significant evidence that oil could be on hold or declining I don't think we will go above that. Of course the market could see it differently and a break above 1400 would make me more bullish again.

One interesting thing was seeing bond yields increase and from a technical standpoint it seems to have broken out of a range to the upside, generally bonds increase as people move back into stocks looking for higher returns. The dollar rose and gold declined, generally all good things for the market to go up. The next couple days could be telling, I am not sure when the memorial day driving numbers(not sure the official name) come out but I think that could be a big indicator of where we are headed next. As it will confirm or deny bullish oil in the short term.

As a side note, I am not generally a conspiracy theorist but I sometimes wonder if terrorist cells get paid off under the table as they make attacks on oil refiners at seemingly opportune times to prop up oil cost with fear of speculation. The overall impact seems negligible, just like when the US stopped putting oil into the reserves it did something like free up around 200,000 barrels a day, this attack supposedly hindered output by at most 150,000 a day. By contrast we use in the US alone almost 21 million barrels a day. My point is that stopping oil into the reserve did not make prices decline, so why would this make prices go up? From a general perspective though it is not like it rallied back to highs so this could be a short term reaction up as prices start to fall back down. Only the market knows...for now I'll just sit and wait for time and good setups.