Markets are trading higher to start Monday morning after a strong finish to trading last week. NQ Futures are about 50 points frm all time highs, and S&P Futures are only about 115 points from trading above its pre-COVID highs.

AAPL, AMZN, and FB delivered huge results Thursday night yet the market sold off early on Friday and the NQ Futures actually went negative at one point before charging higher into the close. It's difficult to overstate how much those 3 stocks alone crushed their earnings expectations, and to have them all up dramatically mid-day on Friday (they represent about 35% of the Nasdaq100) and somehow have the index go red meant that a majority of the other 97 stocks were lower.

The VIX is still hovering around 25. Protection is priced into this market and investors are willing to pay for it. Any time the VIX has approached $23.50, we've seen market volatility come back and the VIX trade higher.

There is so much uncertainty left in this market that participants are willing to pay for protection in the form of S&P puts and calls, and I don't see the VIX dropping dramatically until we see a path to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Dollar Index is up a bit this morning. Gold is holding stead just under $2,000 and Oil is right near $40.

Payrolls for July are out Friday at 8:30 am EST. Consensus estimates are looking for about 1.5 million jobs added.

Notes traded higher last week, and is flirting with new highs. Notes have now moved above the recent highs and have settled at about 140. It's quite remarkable that all the indices are climbing towards all time highs this morning as the 10-year note climbs near 140 with a yield of 0.556%.

Uber is out with their earnings Thursday after the bell.

Disney is out with their earnings Tuesday after the bell.

Canopy Growth is out with their earnings next Monday, which will impact our positions in Constellation Brands. STZ is out with their numbers much later in the earnings cycle.

We will look to add a short term trade using options in Disney ahead of their earnings tomorrow night. Stay tuned for updates later today or tomorrow as we look to gain exposure to Disney ahead of tomorrow night. We will look to buy a simple call at or near the money in Disney, or could possibly go for another bull call spread.

Disney reported 54.5 million Disney+ subscribers in May. The short term pain in Disney is dramatic, but I expect their streaming subscriptions to rise dramatically. Disney+ released "Hamilton" on July 4th, which is worth watching if you haven't checked it out. The content Disney+ offers is almost unmatched, with Star Wars, Marvel, ESPN, National Geographic, Mickey Mouse, PJ Masks, Frozen, etc, etc, etc.

You can enter any trade we are currently in if you have not entered it yet with the exception of the Uber options trade, as the credit we received from selling the $35.50 call is negligible at this point.

Our long term portfolio will consist of 5-10 positions that will provide long term value, while our short term portfolio will consist of swing trades that we will hold for days or possibly weeks, and our option trades.

Disney out with their numbers Tuesday after the bell. Disney bounced nicely on Friday to stay within its solid uptrend channel. We will look for a swing trade in Disney or an options play into earnings tomorrow night. I want to let the market open today and see what happens at the open before placing a trade.

Be on the look out for updates, we will look to open a short-term position in Disney later today or tomorrow ahead of their earnings announcement.

Constellation Brands traded lower intraday Friday before bouncing right back up to its channel line. We will be watching this closely as we approach Friday, as CGC has earnings a week from today.

Uber trailed off a bit this week. Uber should hold its 382 level of about $29.24. They come out with their numbers Thursday after the bell.

Monday: Marathon Petroleum (MPC), McKesson (MCK), Tyson Foods (TSN), Clorox (CLX), Noble Energy (NBL) before market open; Virgin Galactic (SPCE), Tenet Healthcare (THC), American International Group (AIG), Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO), Diamondback Energy (FANG), Chegg (CHGG) after market close

Tuesday: Vulcan Materials (VMC), KKR & Co (KKR), Cinemark Holdings (CNK), Warner Music Group (WMG), Ralph Lauren (RL) before market open; Prudential Financial (PRU), Allstate (ALL), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Disney (DIS), Nikola (NKLA), Beyond Meat (BYND), Planet Fitness (PLNT), Match Group (MTCH), Twilio (TWLO), Wynn Resorts (WYNN) after market close

Wednesday: Discovery (DISCA), Sonos (SONO), Nielsen Holdings (NLSN), Regeneron Pharmaceutical (REGN), Wayfair (W), The New York Times (NYT), CVS (CVS), Moderna (MRNA), Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBGI) before market open; Square (SQ), Etsy (ETSY), Roku (ROKU), Marathon Oil (MRO), Live Nation Entertainment (LYV) after market close

Thursday: Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Hilton Worldwide Holdings (HLT), YETI Holdings (YETI), iHeartMedia (IHRT), Mylan (MYL), Papa John’s International (PZZA), Ascena Retail Group (ASNA) before market open; Booking Holdings (BKNG), T-Mobile (TMUS), Stamps.com (STMP), Cloudflare (NET), TripAdvisor (TRIP), Zillow Group (ZG), Uber (UBER), Dropbox (DBX), Datadog (DDOG), The RealReal (REAL), Caesars Entertainment (CZR) after market close

Friday: Eventbrite (EB), Novavax (NVAX), AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC), Eastman Kodak (KODK) before market open

Source: Yahoo Finance

Florida reported some of its lowest numbers recently on Sunday, with 7,104 cases and 62 deaths. There can be a lot of variance in the reporting of the numbers, especially over the weekend, but the trend is definitely going the right direction in Florida right now and hopefully is continues that way.

The hardest hit states seem to have reached their peak in cases, yet other states have now started seeing upticks.

Massachusetts has risen from a 7-day average of 187 new cases on July 5th, up to 403 cases on August 2nd.

The US curve has begun to turn downward, yet we're still averaging about 61,800 cases daily with over 1200 deaths each day.

The worldwide curve, which is actually rarely talked about since so many countries have attempted to isolate themselves, is still rising and currently sits at 258,476 new cases every day.

Source: NYT

Stay tuned for updates this week as we look ahead to Disney and Uber earnings out Tuesday and Thursday, along with many others. The open will be fast this morning with the S&P up 20 points and NQ Futures up 98 points as of 8:20 am EST.

Current positions

Long Term portfolio:
Long half a position in DIS at $118.63. Stop is $98.45.
Long half position in UBER at $31.50 or better. Stop is $26.24.
Long half position in STZ at $180.50. Stop is $164.05.

Short term portfolio:
Long STZ at $180.50. Stop is $174.80.
Uber call spread at net debit $67 - bought $32.50 Aug 7th call and sold $35.50 Aug 7th call.