Category: Stock Option Trading News

Dow Chemical (DOW) plans to sell a 50 percent interest in five of its global businesses to a Kuwaiti company for about $9.5 billion and form a new joint petrochemicals venture. Dow Chemical Co. and Petrochemical Industries Co.(PIC), an arm of Kuwait Petroleum Corp., announced plans to form a 50/50 joint venture to create a fully integrated petrochemicals company.

The Dow is up about 1500 points (13%) over the past year and at its high earlier this month, the index was up over 2000 points. The NASDAQ is up around 20% over the past year. These are delicious results and it would be nice if the next 52 weeks were guaranteed to be as prosperous.

We did a little number crunching on today’s market results and found the following: Only 8% of all exchange traded funds made gains today, while 41% of energy sector exchange traded funds made gains in trading.

Molson Coors Brewing Company (TAP) and SABMiller (UK:SAB) have entered into a joint operating agreement in the US and Puerto Rico in hopes of boosting profits.

The New York Times (NYT), perhaps bowing to criticism, but more likely seeing the error in their online revenue model has chosen to make the online version of its publication free. Rupert Murdoch has reportedly been toying with the idea of doing the same with the Wall Street Journal. Does this mark the ‘tipping point’ for the pay for access model some online publications have been experimenting with?

Chevron (CVX) announced today a $15 billion stock buy-back in an attempt to return some of its profits to shareholders. This news coupled with projections of oil prices reaching $90 or even $100 per barrel has us thinking there may still be price gains in big oil stocks.

The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee announced it would be lowering rates from 5.25% to 4.75%. This is the first rate cut the committee has made since June of 2003. The Federal Reserve Committee also cut the discount rate it charges banks for short term loans by one-half a percentage point.

Liongate’s 3:10 to Yuma, starring a gun slinging Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, will open in theaters this Friday to critical acclaim. But, ‘in the world’ where movie stars, the movie’s Oscar chances and money rarely share the same point of view, the politics of releasing and promoting films can get contentious.

A stock picked using a value investing technique is a way a lot of investors find stocks they like for the long term. There are other favored techniques such as technical signals and trends, but investors often favor the valuation method as a way to get a dime stock for a nickel.

In the course of writing the PowerOptions blog we often find ourselves discussing news events and signals indicating a stock will move up or down. Rarely have we focused on the best way to exploit a position once we have a strong hunch on which way the underlying equity will go.