Still Here, Just Not Seeing Good Trades

I’m not on vacation, just watching the sideways action in the markets and can’t seem to find anything I want to trade on or invest in.  After I opened my DIA position last week I saw it dip close to where I wanted, but then it came back up quickly.  Yesterday I tweeted about the Dow finding support off of its five month trend line of higher lows, but I failed to make a move based on that technical indicator. 

Both the Dow and the S&P 500 are lower than when I opened that bearish call spread and both are up from when I added DIA naked puts to the position, but those couple of trades aren’t going to do much for me this month.  Some out-of-the-money naked puts and calls would have been great to have had while the markets essentially just slide sideways, with DIA mainly between 102.50 and 105.00 with only a few instances where it peaked out above or below those levels.  Now that the Dow has moved back up to the higher side of its trading channel with only three weeks to go in a really good year it seems complacency is the mood in charge again. 

Without finding any stocks or ETFs to get excited about I’m not risking my good year and feel a lot of the big money managers are having the same thoughts now.  Why waste a good year’s solid returns when there’s not a clear picture of what’s coming next? I’ve even caught myself checking out dividend paying stocks as a better move in the near-term.  I charted USO and GLD on my Chart Analysis blog.  GLD is going down as we all expected, so that was an easy one.  I was expecting a bounce for USO today, but after trying the upside early it failed to maintain positive in the afternoon.  That’s killing my UCO puts, but not beyond a manageable level yet.

What are the rest of you seeing out there?  What stock picks am I missing that are worth trading or investing in these days?