Tufar on Finance and Economy

GDP for 2009 grew 5.7% But neither this nor other numerous good new were not enough for the markets. They continuing sliding down.

I am out of free cash. Somehow I can never manage my cash to last until the last day of sell off. I always come up short. I would want to buy IBM, MSFT, HD, ORCL, AAPL but I have no money to do it.

This pullback was the shaking off the people who jumped into the market starting January 1st. poor souls. They were individual investors and now they will be scared off markets for a long time.

I see what they are doing there. They are trying to push Dow Jones Industrial Average below 10,000.  Win of Scott Brown? Did not help. Nice state of the Union Address by Obama? Nada. Reconfirmation of Bernanke? Did not move the market at all. Market just ignored it. Everyone is talking about Greece debt problems. Now it is getting ridiculous. They are desperate for bad news to push Dow below 10,000. And we are just in the end of January. And we have very bearish months February and March ahead of us.

And all those clowns in Davos talking how the economy went wrong because of somebody else’s faults. They don’t help either.

Timothy Geithner is holding very well in the senate. He is defending his decisions during AIG bailout and he is very convincing. These accusations on Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner were getting more and more ridiculous lately. I am glad that Geithner took a very strong stance. This is going to be good for the markets.

Next today, State of the Union Address and Apple tablet announcements. Let’s see how they fare.

Update 1: Next Hank Paulson testified. He was not as confident and outgoing and markets went down a little bit.

Update 2: Next Apple unveiled iPad. It is thin and light but I did not like the thickness of the frame. Price is not disclosed yet. Price is disclosed and made everyone excited: $499 starting price. This is going to be revolutionary. I will buy it to read books, watch videos and trade.

Update 3: Fed leaves rates unchanged at 0-0.25%. Markets responded positively

Update 4: Waiting for Obama’s State of the Union Address. Obama made the address. His style. Good talking, reconciliatory tone, markets moved up.

At the closing bought JOYG and helped myself to a big chunk of C that I could not pass at a very attractive price of $3.17. Meanwhile almost all of my free cash is spent and if tomorrow for some reason -Obama I am looking at you- take a plunge I will have to hastily unwind my positions. I keep my fingers crossed.

Expecting that Obama would not dare to scare business any more I expect tomorrow’s State of the Union address to be very pro-business, pro-job growth, anti-government spending. For this, I am buying some V and GS calls spreads as they pulled back nicely and will take no time to get back to the level they have been just one week before.

Obama, talking about new tax on banks to recover TARP funds lost on car firms, new regulation on banks aimed ad separating banks trading with its own capital and customer’s capital, and doubt about whether Ben Bernanke will be approved as Fed Chairman caused a sizable sell-off in the markets. I expected a sell-off in February and was not prepared for this one.

I had some free capital but I was putting it to work into Greek bank stocks as they were beaten down by Greek governmental debt speculations. So, when the sell off happened last week it caught me with my pants down. Thankfully Greek banks rallied on Friday and I sold some for a small profit. I sold more of them on Monday and now have a sizable position in cash to withstand another 5-6% sell off. I don’t believe it will sell off any lower. The lowest it could go is to the 200-day moving average.

During the sell off last week I sold RHT and RIMM that were to expire in February, sold part of NBG.

In the same time I opened new positions in AMTD, CSX, HPQ, JPM, KFT, WDC. I also have an order to open a position in JOYG if it pulls back low enough.

P.S. Just for the record, On January 15th BUCY, F, IP, JOYG, JPM, ORCL, TKC and V short puts expired worthless.

DELL, C, RHT and RIMM were expiring in the money and I had to roll them to February.