FRIDAY 3/21/14; OpEx; Biotech Selloff

The Flight 370 missing airplane mystery is nearly two weeks olds and ships and airplanes explore the remote area southwest of Australia trying to find the debris spotted by satellites. Copper is on a wild ride with huge up and down days occurring this week. Copper trades +1% higher to 2.97.

Japan markets are closed for Vernal Equinox Day. The rest of Asia and Australia are up. Aussie’s fourth-largest iron ore producer, Roy Hill, secures billions in debt which creates optimism among the miners such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. SSEC leaps +2.7%. HSI +1.2%. China property stocks are up and down like a roller coaster today catapulting from +6% to +10% higher. The yuan prints another low against the dollar.

Today is the eighth anniversary of Twitter when co-founder Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet, “just setting up my twttr.” Turkey’s PM Erdogan closes down Twitter as the elections approach. Ongoing tweets detail the corruption in Erdogan’s administration. Twitter provides a workaround so Turkey citizens can continue to post free speech. Erdogan threatens “I’ll dig up Twitter by the roots” and he may block Facebook next. Dictators and communists realize that technology will empower and educate the people so they try to crush the Internet otherwise they will lose their power.

[Text is Redacted: Purchase March 2014-03 to Read the Complete Chronology]

Semiconductors reverse course from recent happiness. SOX loses -0.9%. IBB is bludgeoned -4.7% perhaps a large gaping hole is developing in the biotech bubble. 3-D printing stocks are thrown overboard. DDD loses -6.1%. AAPL recovers late day due to the rebalancing and finishes up +0.8%. IBM -0.7%. CSCO -0.9%.  TIF is up and down all day long finishing down -0.5%. JWN scales back the plans for expanding the Nordstom Rack stores in Canada. KO finishes flat but call buyers are chasing into Coke. FCX explodes +5% higher. SCCO +1%. POT and MON are both down -0.6%. BAC is slapped -2% due to the GS comments.

For the week, all 10 sectors of the SPX are higher. The SPX finishes +1.4% this week. The Dow +1.5%. The Nasdaq +0.7%. RUT +1.0%. Tech and small caps lag when they should be leading for a robust rally. Despite the strength in chips, the tech sector lags overall. The banks log huge gains this week from +3% to +8%. C +7%. JPM +6%. MS +5%. The dollar gains +1% with USD above 80 to 80.25. Gold loses -3.5% this week. Semiconductors erupt higher. SOX +3.6%. SYMC, the biggest PC security software provider, is a big loser down -10% this week losing -13% today. Biotech rolls over this week. CELG dumps -3.4% this week. IBB -3.1%. GILD -4%. BIIB loses -4.2% this week.

Internet company CEO’s including Reed Hastings of NFLX, Eric Schmidt of GOOG and Mark Zuckerberg of FB meet with President Obama at the Whitehouse to discuss privacy rules. The March Madness basketball tournament brackets are blown out due to shocking upset games. It is one of those years where even Harvard is advancing. The only people happy over the basketball betting and gambling are the bookies and sports bars.

The Obamacare sign-up deadline ends in nine days. The Whitehouse hints that they may extend the deadline at least for those that started an application. Obamacare will only pay the first 30 days of care for a person who’s insurance is not yet verifiable but the doctors will foot the bill for treatment after that until their coverage is verified or disqualified for lack of paying premiums. This confusion will lead to higher costs overall.

Concerns increase that Putin is not finished with aggression. Russian troops are increasing and assembling on the Ukrainian borders. Since Putin appears to have free reign without resistance, many fear that Russian tanks will roll into the Ukraine at any time, perhaps this weekend.