Mah Jong effect? Tue Feb 22

Just heard an interesting comment on the business station. A presenter was wondering whether the unrest could spread to China and the guest made the point that living standards are rising in China while only the few get rich in the oil states. Rising food prices are nearly always a factor in revolutions but the Chinese consumer may be able to cope better than before or perhaps the Chinese government may have more capacity to keep food inflation down. It's a big wild card though and the index is finding it hard to recover from yesterday's surprisingly deep slump. It's only the prospect of the US - which was closed for Presidents' Day - sailing blithely onwards that is keeping the index to a loss of 6 after nearly an hour.
That, and an announcement of an additional off-market buy back from Bhp combined with a medium sized shale gas acquisition that has helped the big Australian to jump more than 2.5%.

11 am Oil ran hard last night and gold was also firm, along with most base metals, although copper missed out again. The gold stocks are solid but not rocketing. Sbm is steady and Rsg is potentially breaking out as it trades at 142. The spot gold chart has a lot of momentum and it's looking like new highs are on the way.

I bought back the last of my Pdn short at 500 as the 60 minute chart showed signs of life and I thought that, being an energy play, the stock could be in demand. It hasn't turned out that way though and the stock is back at 496.
Aristocrat is holding up, down only 1 at 307. It dipped to 300 though and I bought a few which I've re-shorted at 305, 306.
Fortescue is down again and I sold a few more of the Feb 675 puts for 14.5 but shorted and bought back stock around it so effectively got a price of 17 for them.
Qan is holding up surprisingly well considering the oil price surge.

11.39 Shorting Boral was the stupidest trade I've done for about a year and I added insult to injury by refusing to cut all the short stock. Plus I bought a few puts over the last couple of days.
When I enter a trade with no obvious stop, I tend to get myself in trouble and this was no exception. I'm happy to stretch a stop if I can see where it is but this was just a skyrocket. Anyway, I've borne the pain here, and it's usually about the frustration rather than the money. The stock is finally starting to look like a natural - albeit speculative - sell as it follows a doji bar with a break of the lows.
Now that it's finally given me the signal that I was pre-empting, the challenge is to hold on for a day or two. The Feb 566 puts I bought yesterday are doing quite well but have only made up for the loss on some Feb 541 puts from the day before.
It briefly broke the previous low last Friday, the day it went ex dividend but that was only for about half an hour. If it can't rally back as the day goes on, a few of the smart punters who are long will be selling out.

12.02 Unlike yesterday, the local market is not on its own with geopolitical worries. Japanese and Korean markets are down more than 1.5%, oil is still rocketing and US futures are soft. It's too early for the Chinese markets but the Xjo is down 23.

1.30 The loss quickly grew to 47 points but the index has recovered to 4863, down 37.

I got out of more Fmg Feb 675 puts at 25 but my other short positions are holding. Nearly everything is getting hit so even oil and gold stocks are underwhelming.

3.17 It's been pretty quiet for the last 3 hours with the index sitting at 4860, down 40. Qan and my two gold longs are down with the market and sucker play Boral is recovering so it's a breakeven sort of day for me despite a good result in Fmg and some progress in Lynas. I did buy back some Bld at 550.

The HSI is down 2% and the rest of Asia is a sea of red too. Even if there's a resolution overnight in Libya - which seems unlikely - the fear of contagion is going to linger for a while

I'm not really sure what to make of the Asx 200 chart. I was assuming that the 4840 high from mid January would provide support but there's quite a lot of momentum in the selling and it's only 20 points away. It might be more likely that we get a continuation of the choppy, overlapping rally that we've had up to now. That scenario would give the index scope to fall back to 4760, 4780.

4.16 The Xjo index drifted down to close off 43. The golds recovered somewhat and helped me back into the black for the day. It's not sheep stations but it's quite nice to make a few bob on a couple of weak days, encourages me to think that it's worthwhile trying to pick the swings rather than adopting a buy and hold strategy.