Looking higher so far..

8:30am So far this morning, the futures are pointing to a higher open. Wells Fargo said things are going well with Wachovia and Wal Mart guided to the high end of the earnings range. It should head the market higher initially. The curious thing so far is that retail sales numbers have been almost all below estimates yet the market is still looking to be strong this morning. There has been a tendency for the market to ignore bad news with the hope that things are going to get better. We could close out the short week with an up day. That would be nice.

On to making some money. There was some curious option action in a couple stocks I am keeping an eye on. The first is NetApp (NTAP). The speculation is that, since IBM won't be closing the deal with Sun Microsystems (JAVA), they will be looking at a company like NetApp (NTAP). I hate to jump on these speculative plays with a lot of capital because they don't work a lot of times. And when they don't work, the stock gets crushed. Just look at Sun (JAVA) over the last week. If you are going to participate in this one, it probably should be with Call options and committing small amounts of capital.

The other stock I am looking at is VMWare (VMW). There was strong option activity in this stock yesterday. The curious part about it is that there was no specific news around the trade. That tells me that there is some big money who either knows something r is willing to manipulate the market enough to make the trade work. I saw action in the May puts. It looked like a Bull Put Spread which tells me someone is probably pretty bullish on the name. The way I am going to trade this is very simple. I am going to wait until earnings and set up a directionally hedged trade using options. They report April 22nd after the close. I will be putting the trade on during the day on April 22nd. When the big money is in a stock like this, big moves are usually in order. There is money to be made in this stock, you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Until next time, stay low risk..