Market Drama, Dow Drops and Tariffs, Oh My!!!

• We woke to news that President Trump was going to impose tariffs on China again. After what appeared to be a successful meeting with North Korea's Kim, this might be a surprise that the tariff talk is heating up again. The market dropped on this news from open.
• The tech stocks had nice runs the whole week even despite the rest of the market being down on Thursday. Friday they remains pretty even. Some were down and some were up, but Apple appeared to be down a little more compared to others. Apple was going to make all new phones with the high resolution OLED screens. Due to higher priced materials increasing the price of their phones, Apple has decided to keep the course unchanged and remain with their standard LCD screens. I doubt that means they will drop the price of the new phones as they will continue to try to get $2 out of 3 quarters.
• Boeing dropped hard in the first hour of trading on Friday. It had a nice run up from 2:30 to 3pm only to give most of it back to end the day unchanged, but down for the week.
• Home Depot had it's regular Friday rally first thing in the morning. It appears to be the one stock that you can load up your Call options on it's low from Thursday  and sell by 10am on Friday. Sure it went down, but not below where it closed on Thursday and went back up higher.
• Return to retail was lead by gains in Best Buy, Macy's and L Brands. I like these for their high dividends and positive track record this year. I have found that when you have these in your portfolio, they are good to sell Call options when they hit their relative highs in about 10 days.
• The same is true for Verizon who went down with AT&T over the past couple of days. When Verizon hits $49.50 it is good to sell a Call option against your position. At the same time a speculative person would consider buying a Put options to sell when it hits $47.50. I don't know if you will be that lucky because if Verizon follows AT&T, the bulls will run up the price over the next couple of weeks since the AT&T acquisition of Time Warner is going through right away.
• I found that JP Morgan bottomed this morning when it got down to 106.27. JP Morgan has traded in a range between 106 and 110 over the past month. It ran up past 108 after that and came down a little. I expect it to go up more this coming week as interest rates will settle in. You might get another chance to get it at 106 next week, but not likely.

Monday Ups and Downs in the Market

• With so much news happening this week, the market is going to react. With optimism for President Trump meeting with North Korea's President Kim drove the markets up some on Monday.
• Tesla opened up, took a mid day breather and went higher. Tesla will continue to go up for the rest of this month despite any negative news that doesn't have to do with production. CEO Elon Musk says they will produce 5000 vehicles in the last week of June. This production figure was promised multiple times for the past year and a half. If they don't meet it this time, Tesla will plummet in July.
• Alphabet (GOOGL) jumped up after 10am to hit 1048, but gave half of its gains back after 2pm. I have noticed that Alphabet would go up for a week and down for a week in the first half of the year. Recently in the past couple of weeks those changes have happened more rapidly in less than a week. Last week Alphabet completed a 5 day run mid day on Tuesday and went down for the remainder of Tuesday through Friday morning around 10:45am. Since Friday morning it has gone up.
• Boeing has tread water moving between 369 and 374. When it dips, there is an opportunity to buy Call Options and be out within a couple of hours with nice gains.
• Home Depot continued to go up on Monday. It was a focus of CNBC's Option Action on Friday with expectation of breaking out to a new high by the end of July. At it's current pace that will happen by the end of the week, but I would expect a pull back before then. Right now it has broken 200 and doesn't appear that it will trade below 200 again.
• AT&T's purchase of Time Warner will be ruled by the court around 4pm this afternoon. We won't get a market reaction until Wednesday. This is a big deal for Disney, Comcast and Fox as the Fox sale competition increases.

Friday Market Up Again

• Once again there was news about Apple phone sales are slowing because suppliers have announced they are receiving less orders from Apple. I find this funny since we have an idea of where they are made (China), but Apple is secretive and uses multiple suppliers for so many parts. Because of the news Apple dropped 3 points at open and recovered some during the day.
• Home Depot and Boeing dropped at open with everything else including Alphabet. By 10:45AM everything changed direction and moved up. Home Depot has run up strongly this week from 190 to 197. I would expect to see it give back some Monday through Wednesday and have a very strong Thursday and Friday. Wednesday afternoon will probably be the best time to buy Call Options.
• Alphabet (GOOGL) got sold off by the end of the day and completed it's 4th day in a row of downward performance. So far this year, Alphabet would have one week where it changes direction from being down to moving up on Tuesday and have a big Wednesday through the end of the week. The opposite is true as it reverses direction from the upside on Tuesday as it did this past Tuesday and dropped from there. The movement from the prior week was from 1065 to 1162. Half of that would put it at 1013 as a floor to look for it to rebound to new highs and that should happen Tuesday morning. 
• This week Twitter graduated and is now listed on the S&P 500 and has gone up all week. Who knows what is going to happen next week with Twitter, but there is a lot of news happening:
• President Trump meeting about trade this weekend.
• On Tuesday is the summit with North Korea.
• On Tuesday there will be a court ruling on AT&T purchase of Time Warner.
• The Federal Reserve Board is meeting on Wednesday and we will have an announcement at 2pm on inflation and if the Fed Funds rates will be raised. Given the strong start to June, I would expect the rate to be raised and interest rates to start going up on Monday.