You Can't Trade Boeing Right Now

Ten minutes into the session this morning, Walmart had traded 5,000 option contracts.

Everybody knows Walmart. You know it, you love it, your mother shops there. Five thousand contracts.

And I don't care that we're ten minutes into the day. That number should be a multiple of itself by then.

Same ten minutes, JPMorgan had 385,000 shares and 4,000 contracts. One of the most heavily traded names on the board and it doesn't exist.

Boeing was under 150,000 shares. You can't trade Boeing right now. It's a 747 over here.

Starbucks was up 30% on about 2,000 contracts and 200,000 shares. Shit-tastic volume, and that was more size than that thing had seen in a while.

Now go back three sessions. We did not trade a million S&P contracts on any of them.

You have to go back to Christmas Eve to find volume that light.

Christmas freaking Eve. 

We’re in the middle of August. This is the stretch where trade seasonally picks up, because some of the most violent markets in history have happened right here between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Before PPI printed, you could have called the futures closed and nobody would have argued. Minutes going by with a hundred contracts trading.

I was up for it at 5:30 am and there was nothing on the other side of the screen.

No one will commit money to any place but AI.

It is technology or absolutely nothing, and everything else is cannon fodder at this point.

The entire market making industry is focused on maybe fifteen names. 

Microsoft trades two million shares before you finish your coffee, Intel had 23,000 contracts inside of ten minutes, and then you step one inch off that path and the lights are off.

So when somebody shows you the S&Ps up 40 handles and tells you the market is ripping, ask them what's behind it.

There's no volume behind this move…

Absolutely nothing.

I wouldn't trust it as far as you can throw it, and that goes for a move in either direction. A tape this thin can be unchanged or up another 40 handles in a couple of moments and neither one would mean a thing.

Hands and feet inside of the vehicle.

Which is also why I have not shorted anything into it. Don't stand in the way of a boring market, and this week has been boring.

I would sooner miss a good trade than take a crappy entrance.

So no, I'm not going to sit here and tell you what PPI means for the September meeting. It's over. Get over it.

Watch where the size is instead. Right now it's in about fifteen tickers, and everything you thought was a liquid stock is trading like a Tuesday in late December.

Which is the whole reason I keep going back to earnings in a tape like this. A print gives you a number and a date whether anybody shows up to trade or not.

Cisco was priced for a $10.11 move yesterday and it delivered $10.11. That number was sitting there the entire time.

I put a session together on how I use it. → Watch the replay.

To your success,
Don Kaufman