The first full week of 2014 is behind us and what a bore! The ES traded in a 25 handle range, with the VIX slumping back down to 12. Implied volatility is extremely low in all underlyings and its hard to find any decent premium to sell. Today was the "employment situation", we added 74k jobs, way under any of the estimates. Most products reacted the way I would have expected. Treasuries were up, Dollar down, metals up. The stock market initially sold of but continued to grind up the rest of the day, and closed the week green. Its seems the market is convinced nothing can go wrong. If there is bad news it just means the fed will do more, if theres good news, well then the economy is better. Its seems the market is way to complacent and participants are chasing high prices. For me, the more interesting plays have been commodities. I have been accumulating positions in SLV(silver), JO(coffee), and GDX(gold miners). They were all hammered in 2013 and seemed to be forming a base. These are longer term holds. Im selling calls against my positions to lower cost basis. What was interesting about todays # was metals rallied. That was something we never saw in 2013. Im hoping that this week wasnt a glimpse into 2014 future. I would love to see more two sided markets with some higher implied vol.
