The SPDRs Strangle of selling a SPY March 140 Call and also selling a SPY March 129 Put has had a nice performance of a two day period.

Selling both the Call and the Put kicks in the time value of the options which is decreasing rapidly as the expiration approaches.

Who would have thought 4 months ago that the Chinese market would pull back as radically as it has in such a short amount of time?

The Thornburg Mortgage April Calls have a large amount of volume today as the stock has skyrocketed 85%.

In a week where all the three major averages dropped 2.5% and many good picks all of a sudden became bad, the Basic Materials sector was the strongest.

Following-up the earlier call this week for FRE puts, today we have another financial that is experiencing a lot of put buying and that is Washington Mutual (WM).

We saw a lot of buying in the Freddie Mac March 2008 puts this afternoon.

In researching the performance of the streetTracks Gold Shares (GLD) vs individual gold mining companies I found that four out of the five top gold miners outperformed the ETF during the past 6 months.

Three stocks in the Agricultural Chemicals business reached new highs on Wednesday, Potash Corp. (POT), Mosaic Co. (MOS), and CF Industries (CF).

 This stock is a little expensive at this time but the industry has been strong with Warren Buffet purchasing shares of Burlington Northern around $80 according to reports and Carl Icahn purchasing shares of American Railcar (ARII), Greenbrier (GBX) and a 9.5% stake in CSX Corp (CSX).