Boring day of consumer down and tech up.

For the first time since 2009, Home Depot expects annual sales to decline as demand dries up for large home-improvement projects.

The stock is down -1.25%, significantly less than its expected move of 4.79%, showing once again that more times than not option sellers make bank collecting premium while the everyday trader loses.

The numbers are horrific:

• Biggest revenue miss since 2002

• Second straight miss following 12 straight beats

• Biggest revenue drop since the great financial crisis

• 4.8% fewer transactions in the first quarter

Demand for home-improvement goods has dropped while they’re also affected by the consumer slowdown in home renovation projects.

The simple answer for all of this is when interest rates are low consumers borrow against their home equity and spend. When interest rates are high and home values are not increasing, consumers don’t borrow and don’t spend.

[ wsj ]

Big Short Burry Buys Banks (And Gets REKT)

Maybe he knows something the market doesn’t or maybe we should stop paying any attention to what this guy does.

Burry loaded up on bank stocks in Q1 including names like $NYCB, $WAL, $PACW and First Republic Bank ($FRC) which had its equity go to zero after operations were sold to JPMorgan.

On the opposite end of the trade includes hedge fund titans George Soros, Renaissance Technologies, and Bridgwater Associates who all dumped bank stocks with Renaissance and Bridgwater zeroing their positions.

It’s hard to overcome the ego and just buy tech, but that’s what the market is doing and the market is never wrong.

[ yahoo ]

RIGD Reports on $SPY

Some days it’s better to just go outside and touch grass. Today is one of those days.

$SPY is sitting around 412 right now essentially where we opened yesterday. It’s been a zero volatility low volume borefest slow grind to the upside.

-GEX is highest at the 412 strike so we should see some action start to come in now, but intraday the RIGD app hasn’t flagged one event worth trading.

It’s options expiry week and sleepy Joe is speaking today about the debt ceiling, so maybe the robots who run the show are waiting for a headline to break this thing one way or another.

Looking at Friday highest open interest remains the 400p and 400c

There haven’t been any large trades come through like yesterday but there’s some size at the 410 strike with someone selling the call and sweeping the puts for a few thousand contracts (bearish).

It’s rare to see big tech getting bid up $GOOG, $MSFT, $NVDA, $AMZN and it not pulling the index up.

We’ll be back tomorrow with some real excitement.

(hopefully)

thanks for reading THE REPORT by RIGD AI

we’re building tools for the modern degen investor

follow us on twitter @rigd_ai

p.s. we are hiring a data scientist with experience trading options. is it you?