Stocks are messy these days.

The major indexes peaked in July and the new 52-week highs list topped out almost 2 months ago.

This is all perfectly normal market behavior for this time of the year. In fact, if markets were behaving any differently, then THAT would actually be unusual.

Just like over the past 3 quarters. If stocks didn’t do as well as they did, again, that would have been weird.

The market continues to behave according to historical trends, obnoxiously so.

And to be clear, it’s when the market ignores seasonal tendencies that we want to pay more attention, because THAT is the signal.

In the meantime, we’re just chugging along in one of the more normal years for the market that we’ve ever seen.

So during this messy Q3 period of the pre-election year, with the indexes stuck below overhead supply, volatility is higher than it’s been in a while, especially among Consumer Staples stocks.

So what should we do in a directionless market, with higher than average volatility?

Give the people what they want!

Sell them the Calls, AND sell them the puts too!

Collect that cash baby!

So that’s exactly what we did.

We sold a strangle in Philip Morris betting that this messy market remains messy over the next month or so: [Read more…]