US Equity Market Options Expiration: Shenanigans Central

For those of you not keeping track, tomorrow is option expiration for the US stock exchanges. This normally precipitates an unusual amount of gaming and painting on the tape, as the writers and holders of puts and calls shove the prices around to inflict the most pain on anyone foolish enough to play their game.

Intel reports after the bell tonight and the market is expecting great things from them.

Tomorrow the US reports CPI, and then heads into a three day weekend, as Monday is Martin Luther King day in the US. Martin Luther King had a dream; and this may not be it.

The SP 500 futures have been the lead sled dog in this rally with the banks carrying the water. The daily chart has a rising wedge on it that is quite ominous, but we recall the rising trend in the 2003-7 stock reflation that never broke, and kept rising on light volumes to the bubble peak. And then of course it collapsed, with the other bubbles, of which it was a symptom, compliments of the Federal Reserve and the Bush Treasury.



Here is the last reflationary bubble that the Treasury and the Fed created. Remember that one?