If you thought your brokerage account was on a roller coaster last week, you were correct. After a rocky start, the market seemed to get its footing Thursday only to have the rug pulled out on Friday due to trade tensions and a tepid jobs report.

Friday’s 2.2% drop in the S&P 500 is the ninth swing greater than 1% in the past eleven trading days. The math there is that you had TWO, count ‘em TWO, days of relative calm in the market since March 23rd.

Some bullish pundits pointed to the lower than average trading volume last week as a sign that investors were remaining calm. But the trading volume in declining stocks is still significantly higher than the volume of increasing stocks. Some of you know I look at the TRIN or the Arms Index for guidance on market direction.

Believe it or not, the increased volume should help some options trades. Volatility is one of the factors that determine the price of options. So not only does an option price increase with higher volatility (all other things being equal), but it has helped the trades work out in short order.

As you’ve seen recently, many of our bearish options trades came to profitable fruition in rapid time. We closed out the Snap (NSDQ: SNAP) puts last week for a 66% gain. We have just the Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) puts left in the ad tech bear play. It is currently in the money but doesn’t expire until July. Omnicom is a less volatile stock than the others in that trade so it is expected that it might take more time to play out completely.

I am juggling several different trade ideas and hope to get some out to you soon. The volatility is making the execution of some of the options trades difficult. I work on the ideas and research the stocks for quite a while with my fingers crossed that the stock prices will be attractive when it’s time to pull the trigger.

Luckily, I have some bullish and bearish plays so I should be able to get some alerts to you this week.

Around the Portfolio:

ANI Pharma (NSDQ: ANIP) purchased ANDAs for 23 previously marketed generic drug products from IDT Australia for $2.6 million. An ANDA is an abbreviated new drug application. It is a request for approval from the FDA specifically for a generic drug. The company also acquired a necessary active pharmaceutical ingredient for one of the new products for $135 thousand. According to industry sources, the value of annual sales for these drugs is $500 million.

Celgene (NSDQ: CELG) continues to be in the headlines. Many on the street applauded the departure of COO Scott Smith. While it’s never terrific when a corporate leader leaves, many viewed him responsible for some of the missteps the company has had with incomplete data submitted to the FDA for new drug approvals.

Analyst Michael King at JMP Securities believes this is the first major step in restructuring Celgene’s executive team and he hopes the evolving management structure improves execution and accountability.

Separately the company was granted orphan drug designation by the FDA for Pomalyst for the treatment of Kaposi sarcoma. Drugs with this designation can sometimes receive an expedited review for approval and often receive extended patent protection.

As a reminder, I placed an $83 stop on Celgene in late March. This means if the stock closes below $83 for more than a day, I will sell it out of the portfolio.

Ichor Holdings (NSDQ: ICHR), a company with exposure to the booming chip manufacturing industry, has been taken down with the rest of tech. Analyst Sidney Ho at Deutsche Bank believes the company’s valuation doesn’t make any sense.

He notes that while Ichor may deserve a small discount to its peers due to high customer concentration, the current 50% valuation discount is unwarranted. Ho reiterates a Buy rating on Ichor Holdings with a $38 price target.

The trucking stocks, despite being on a bumpy road, are receiving some strong support from Wall Street’s analysts.

Deutsche Bank analyst Amit Mehrotra upgraded Werner Enterprises (NSDQ: WERN) to a Buy from Hold along with J.B. Hunt (NSDQ: JBHT) and Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP). JB Hunt and Union are not in the portfolio but I will take a look at them.

The analyst remains positive on the backdrop for transportation stocks and believes the recent share pullbacks bring attractive entry points. Mehrotra tells investors in a research note that truckload demand and pricing are up significantly year-over-year and that the coincident rise in industrial production and GDP growth should propel earnings.

An analyst at Stifel is also positive on the shippers and started coverage of the group. Of our stocks, only Werner is included, which I find odd based on the super fundamentals for Old Dominion (NSDQ: ODFL) and SAIA (NSDQ: SAIA). The analyst expects a strong freight market coupled with capacity shortages to lead to double-digit truckload rate increases in 2018.