March 10, 2015 Market Wrap Up

The market gapped down this morning, and stayed down the whole day. The S&P 500 dropped over 35 pts, closing at 2044.77. The move was large enough to erase the year-to-date gains in the S&P 500.

There was no clear catalyst on why the market sold off. One could come up with several reasons for today’s sell off. However, it seemed pretty controlled vs. a panicky sell off.

For instance, the VIX was up over 10.82%, closing the day at 16.69. The high on the year is over 22, back in January, which we still have a long way to go before we start to see some real fear in the market.

The United States Oil Fund LP (ETF), (USO), sold off more than 2.4%, closing at 17.91. It’s now down more than 25% over the last three months.

Also, included in the sell-off was the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) -0.49%, which are down 1.9% year-to-date. Some of the sell off was attributed to the strong dollar, which hurts commodities like oil and gold, as well as, multinational companies that deal in multiple currencies.

Despite the sell off, we did some bullish activity in the options market. More specifically, we saw call buyers step in by Kraft Foods Group Inc options. We saw buyers on the March and June lines. Overall, there were about 27,000 contracts that traded, good for 7.4 times usual volume. The stock closed at $61.39, down 1.24% on the day.

Here’s a look at what’s remaining on the schedule.

Key Economic Numbers Left for the Week:

12 March 2015- Jobless Claims 8:30 AM ET, Retail Sales 8:30 AM ET
13 March 2015- PPI 8:30 AM ET

Key Earnings Left for the Week:

11 March 2015- EXPR, MW, BOX, SHAK
12 March 2015- LEAF, RICE, ARO, RMAX, ULTA
13 March 2015- ANN