A hard down week in US equities close this option cycle. Other subject lines to describe the action include, Tech Wreck, I’m Melting (Wizard of Oz), as QQQ gives up most of its 2024 gains. Tesla, Apple are among the losers. I lose about 2% in my trading account, which sounds bad, but SPY, QQQ did worse.
Here are some ETFs 2024 calendar stats:
SLV silver 20.3%
GLD gold 15.6%
SPY SP500 4.2%
QQQ Nasdaq 100 1.3%
EEM emerging mkt -1.2%
IWM Russell 2000 -3.8%
TLT US20 yr -9.8%
My trading account +5.4 for 2024, so I am holding my own. The correction feels worse than that because there were higher highs. In fantasy land, I buy the low, and sell the high. Real life trading tends to be a lot harder for most of us. Precious metals had a good month, and now lead the pack, after years of underperformance.
Bonds continue to lead lower. If yields go up over 5 percent, they start to be a significant headwind for equities. My big picture plan has been and continues to be to add to SPY and QQQ longs on significant dips. We are at 5% from the highs, and I added a smidge. At 10% off the highs and maybe 20 percent off the highs, opportunities look better. No one knows when the short term bottom is, and how big a bounce we might get from there.
I close positions in CRM, NFLX, reduced longs in AMD. I also went net short for a brief while on TSLA. The TSLA play was debit put spreads, which I closed at 30% profit on the tiny position. After several down days and earnings next week. I decided to book one of the few winners. NVDA saw a vicious correction. I remain overweight long NVDA. It is difficult to stomach the 20% decline off the 964 highs. I delta hedge shares by selling way out of the money calls, but am still overweight long.
Tough week for bulls. Good luck to all. Several big tech names report earnings next week. I have small long positions in META MSFT and other big cap techs, along with QQQ.
