TRADING WEEK MAR23RD-MAR27TH

From the 16th to the 20th the intraday trading ranges were 18.54, 19.10, 20.35, 15.16 and 15.97. The respective highs for the day in the VIX were 83.6, 84.83, 85.47, 84.26 and 69.51. For the VIX to touch the eighties for that long a period of time is insane. If you were bottom picking then selling puts was the way to go. For instance, with SPY at 240 you could sell the 03Apr 236 puts for 16.00. If you were assigned you would have 220 as your long basis. If SPY was at 215 on expiration you could probably sell the 215 calls for 14.00 which would lower your basis to 206. If you were assigned on your calls you would effectively sell SPY for 230, giving you a profit of nine points. The big risk would be if it dropped hard below 200. It had already dropped 35% off the high from a few weeks ago. If your puts expired worthless you'd have an out of sight APR of about 175% on the trade. The VIX was down nearly 20% on Friday morning from Thursday's close. On the 18th the low for the SPY was 228.02 but finished the day at 240. On the 20th the low was 228.50 but finished at only 228.80, down 11.71 and trading lower after the close. In spite of that the VIX closed down six points. Unless there is a major crash on Monday we may not see the VIX above 80 for quite a while. Normally people would be anxious for an earnings release a month before earnings season. MU reports after the close on the 25th. Nobody cares. On the 26th GDP is released at 8:30am ET with Consumer Spending being released twenty-four hours later.