Overview Tuesday 14 July...

Today was a relatively lifeless day in the markets. It was one of those days where bulls and bears just kind of stood back and let the market drift for the most part. It was like neither really wanted to do much ahead of earnings reports. Plus, it's expiration week. INTC seems to be perking the market up in the after hours, so we could be looking at an up day tomorrow. I'll still give the edge to the bulls in the short term, but I feel like they're running out of juice.

Short-term bias: bullish (I think the oversold rally has a bit more juice, but not too much more)

Intermediate-term bias: bearish (I still think this correction will take us lower, perhaps to 800 on the $SPX)

Long-term bias: bullish (I believe we put in meaningful, long-term bottoms in March, and would use the aforementioned correction to increase long exposure)

Pick updates:

I got filled on some PALM calls today. I took some November $12.50's. My intention is to turn these into some call spreads as I sell nearer-dated calls against my purchased calls. The fun thing is, if properly constructed, the stock doesn't have to rally huge over the duration in order to make money. Whether you put on a spread or not, PALM is still a very worthwhile stock to be in. Lovely chart if you're a bull.

DFS continues to drift higher. I still think this stock will turn lower soon, but I've not added any further to my puts. This is another position I may turn into a spread, but in order to do that, I'll have to roll out my present puts into a later strike.

BNI rallied today off of CSX's quarter, like I was expecting. Also like I expected, it brought up MDR, SGR, FCX, and RIG. These are all economically-sensitive stocks and all hedge-fund favourites, so they tend to rise and fall together most days, barring something sector-specific. All of these are creeping higher, but RIG is looking like the most promising short, as it continues to rise on weak and weakening volume. It could probably get to $73 before reversing lower, but a move up to $77 is possible, so entry in stages is the way to go here.

ALVR didn't do much today. It broke that resistance line yesterday on weak volume, but drifted about today. Yesterday's break was not very vigourous, and it makes me wonder whether support will hold here.

Postions: long DFS August $12.50 puts, PALM November $12.50 calls, and $SPX index fund in 401k