Tradesports Opportunites - Financial Contracts

2/28/2006
Existing Home Sales – Even beautiful weather couldn't save New Home Sales. The inventory buildup has already begun. The Trade: Softly sell the above consensus contracts. This will be a tough contract to get good prices on.

3/1/2006
ISM Numbers – After three straight months of declines will it finally perk up? The market thinks so. Consensus is for a 56 up from last months 54.8. Drilling down gives mixed signals, the employment section declined and new orders (the most important part of this release) also showed a small decline. But Backlog Orders were up and New Export Orders surged. The Trade: I'd stay away from this one unless you can make the market by selling high above consensus. The smart bet here is staying on the sidelines.


Personal Income and Spending– How long can we sustain a negative savings rate? That question has made fools out of too many forecasters for me to venture a guess. Consensus is at .6% for Personal Income and the guesstimates on this one are generally pretty close since it can be estimated from other similar releases. The Trade: After the huge rise in retail sales Personal Spending at .6% (at 90) , .8% (at 80) and 1% (at 55) are all reasonable longs. Fuel prices are the only "gotcha" here.

3/2/2006
Initial Claims – There are some numbers that you should never trade. This is one of them.