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Trade of the Day (NRG) 9.12.2012

Chart Candle Stick StocksTrade:  Buying the NRG Sep 22 Straddle for $.95

Risk: $95 per 1 lot

Reward: Unlimited

Notes:  Paper bought 4892 NRG Sep 22 Puts for $.40 OPENING position

UPDATE 9.16.2012  With time decay is against me, these Straddles are worth $.70, but time is working against me.

UPDATE 9.21.2012  I sold all my Puts out at $.65 and and Calls expired worthless, so the Straddle was sold for $.65.  Moving to the next trade.

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Halftime Report 9.12.2012

Some of the announcements from today include iPad sales of 84 million units and the iPad accounts for 91% of web traffic. The phone has a thinner, lighter and bigger glass screen and aluminum case. Apple gave developers an early peek at the specs in order to have apps available for the new dimensions. The new iPhone is both HSPA+ and LTE compatible on a single chip and single radio. It has a new A6 processor with double the speed of CPU and graphics. The 5 is an overall upgrade from the iPhone 4.

AT&T Inc. (T) move up one dollar early in the morning most likely on news from Apple (AAPL) releasing its new iPhone 5. The stock is now up only $0.15. The carriers will have to pay a high premium to get the iPhone 5, contributing as much as $400 per customer for a two year contract.

The DOW is up 26 points today, 0.19%, to 13,347; The NASDAQ up 10 points, 0.34%, to 3,115 and the S&P is up 4 points, 0.31%, to 1,438. The DOW started higher today and peaked early in the morning at 13,374 and then hit a low around 11:00 am of 13,318. It is hard to tell what is moving the market today as both positive and negative news has come out of the media today.

Gold futures are flat, silver and crude futures are down less than half of a point but platinum futures jumped up 41.90 points today, a 2.61% gain. Corn futures are down -9 points, a 1.16% drop. Corn peaked around 830 in the middle of August and has since been down, currently sitting at 768.60.

Imports and Export prices came out today. Import prices are down on the year by more than 2%. Jobless claims and Producer Price Index tomorrow at 8:30 am EST.

Alex Kalish has a masters in economics from Suffolk University.

Questions, comments and suggestions welcome: alexk@keeneonthemarket.com

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The Zuckerberg Interview Bounce 9.12.2012

Zuckerberg called the stock performance these past few months “disappointing”, and admitted that the drop in the stock price didn’t particularly help employee morale at the company. He did note, however, that morale wasn’t as bad as people might think, and that Facebook takes huge steps to reward its employees. Interestingly, Zuckerberg also said he enjoys being an underdog in the eyes of Wall Street, and stated, “The first half of the year was a little bit slow on products, but the next nine months I think there will be a lot of exciting stuff.”

Shares of Facebook were up 3.5% in after-hours trading following the speech. He looked comfortable as he answered questions, and for the first time he came out and said that Facebook does care about its shareholders. The highlight of his speech was his steadfast focus on the mobile space. He said the word mobile 34 times in a 32 minute speech. Zuckerberg said he expects advertising revenue to regain momentum, and that he ultimately expects mobile ads to generate higher revenue than desktop ads. As Facebook traffic occurs more and more on mobile devices, generating revenue in the mobile space will be key to progressing the stock price.

Finally, Zuckerberg pointed out that Facebook was not interested in building a smartphone, which has been a recurring rumor over the last year.

In his eyes, the future of the company remains bright, and time will tell if he can answer his skeptics and reverse the downtrend in the stock price.

Brandon Kieltyka is currently an undergraduate studying Finance at Daytona State College.

Twitter: @kieltyka05