Smoking

When I say smoking, I'm not exactly talking about the Qs, although they did put on a good show today. The better (and scarier) show was to look South out my bedroom window at the sky this morning,, engulfed horizon to horizon with a sickly yellow, brown smoke extendng up 20,000 feet or so. Here in beautiful Southern California we're used to a little excitment, but being burned out of your house by 10,000 acre wildfires whipped by 60 mph winds is a little more than I bargained for. The San Marcos fire is about 10 miles upwind and I drove down to the smoke line at Palomar just to check it out. So far they've evacuated over 250,000 folks (that's a lot) and the winds are expected to increase this evening. Lost power a couple times, but so far our place remains on the fringe of the burn line. Talk about risk management.

The markets did get a reprieve today, although at times it looked pretty tentative. The Qs managed to bounce off the 20DSMA, with the 10DSMA the likely next stop. MSFT announces on the 25th and there will no doubt be some gaming before than. I did notice that MSFT premium lifted a bit today and took the opportunity to sell some Nov calls. If it lifts more tomorrow, which I expect, I'll probably sell more.

The Vix did a little flip flop, popping up out of the gate and then slowly ratcheting down for the remainder of the day to close 14% above the 10DSMA. I suspect we will see a bit more deterioration in the VIX as it works of a slightly overbought condition.

Short post tonight as we have to pack up some essentials in case the fire heads this way in the middle of the night and forces us to join the hordes of evacuees.