Market update and time to lock in half the Akamai gains

The bank investors around the world can breath a sigh of relief today knowing that the taxpayer in Europe (and the US!) will transfer another few trillion dollars from society to their balance sheets in the name of “saving the system”.

And just like I’d written earlier this week and again yesterday:

“Upshot is that I don’t think there’s anything that the EUcrats can do except further kick the can down the road. If they pull that off and the market decides that it’s still backstopped by taxpayers, then we’ll have a big near-term rally. If not, the markets will likely get hit near-term.”

The markets are up about 2% across the board here in the early going, with breadth 10 to 1 positive.  Apparently the bears and shorts I know aren’t a minority out there — this type of now panicky buying comes from shorts being squeezed out of their positions and bears running for the hills.

All those calls we still have from our aggressive buying during the summer crashes are kicking in big once again today.  And that’s a good thing for two reasons. The first being that outsized profits that come from call positions are obviously a good ting. The second being that such outsized gains in a single morning’s action highlights for me that I’m still a bit too levered to the long side.

So with out portfolios blasting through to wild new highs once again, I’m doing some more trimming. I’m selling 1/4 of my BAC common stock position for a 25% gain in less than a month.  I’m also selling half of those Akamai calls this morning for a 150% gain in just one day.  Keeping the other half and am now playing with the house’s money on those.