It's Quadruple Witching Week. Be Prepared

Let me make several wide ranging comments here this morning.

It's op-ex this week, and a quadruple one at that. Expect high volatility and wide ranges. Even if they do not occur, be prepared for them.

Note how the ES is in the middle of the channel. Note the gray boxes. It could go anywhere, higher or lower. The ES could easily get back to 1295.

Yesterday was the tip off. I tweeted it 8 minutes before the low. I hope you saw it. There was a down tick of -1461 on Tradestation just as the VIX ran over 30. Price was melting and people were freaking out.

Twitter. Who knows when it will work or when it won't. I tried to tweet three different entries at three different times of the day and evening and it wouldn't work. I put on a simultaneous hedge yesterday right after I tweeted the the low and twitter was jammed. It was jammed when I bought the USDJPY and was still jammed later when I added to the position. So much for transparency!

Please note the intraday post here noting the opening of the USDJPY position. I posted it when Twitter was jammed. I've been waiting for this for over a year -- well before I started this blog.

Last night the yen blew apart and I added to the position. This is intended to be a trade of the decade position, and I realized I will likely take some pain before it goes my way, but I feel strongly that it will.

Longer term, my view is that Japan's bear market ends below the 2009 lows (around 6000+). I will be a screaming bull on Japan then. After 20+ years of deflation and now a national tragedy, the country and its collective psyche is coiled like a massive spring and will explode higher.

I may also open a short Swiss franc, long dollar position (long USDCHF) too. I view both currencies as making terminal thrusts that will be strongly reversed. It may not look that way now, of course, but that's when you need to put on the trade, not later when it looks "right" -- unless of course that's your strategy.

I never trade on news, only when the reaction to news drives price to certain predetermined levels. Especially at this time, do not trade on "news" which in this environment is likely to be rumor posing as fact.

For example and with all due respect to my European friends: what does an EU energy minister (or anyone from the US or even the IAEA for that matter) know about the situation inside a Japanese nuclear reactor? Even the Japanese don't know.

Keep your eye on the charts and know the key price levels, that's it.

Regarding precious metals: I'm hearing that the Japanese are selling their gold to buy food. Take note of this. Gold is an asset just like any other. It will be sold or bartered when needed without second thought. Also take note of how it's been acting during this crisis -- that's right, just like any other.

Platinum and palladium may be telling us that the world may not suddenly need as many cars as was previously thought by economists who merely extrapolate the present. Hold your physical metals as a store of wealth and trade the underlying securities for profits. The time to buy metals was back in the panic of 2008. I've been slowly trimming gold, silver, platinum, and palladium stocks for months.

Same goes for uranium. I trimmed my uranium stocks to the bone well over a month ago because the charts told me too. The remaining skeleton positions can drop all the way back to even for all I care, and I hope they do. China just said it was pausing its nuclear reactor expansion. I don't believe them.

Natural Gas: I think it still goes lower for a while, but there is a chance it becomes the bridge fuel should nuclear fall out of favor.

By the way, the simultaneous hedge is the SPXU against OEX 575 weekly calls with net long delta but a defined risk to the downside (the well-below retail price of the calls). The calls will explode today with the futures up 17. A lot of people got short this week, especially yesterday. Let's see how many cover.