PSW After Dark
A lot of people wonder what it is that you get with our Basic Membership package and my simple answer to that is "more of the same."
Much, much more!
Basic members in additon to having access to our portfolios and special members only posts and sections, get to view my intraday comments and selections live during market hours and, after the market closes, they get the full brunt of the member chat which, tonight, went something like this (but it looks much nicer on the chat board):
Phil 
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm |
GM, TSO, FSLR and PCX - I just get bored telling people to short them after a while… I’m getting bored telling people oil is a scam at this point too, I’m ready to just enjoy the ride up to whatever insane level they decide to print because this is going to be one hell of a ride down.
David, do you have a link to that or citations, I’d love to use it later.
Ooh, VIX very angry! That’s nice at least…
Pretty good volume for a holiday week.
GM - .27 for the Aug $5 puts says a lot about what people think. The Aug $10 puts are $1.85, that’s spotting you 18% in the price of the stock for 50 days!
Joseph - Ah so true, I hope to hear my daughters one day say "Daddy, what’s a Republican?" I think they’ve screwed themselves out of the next 12 years of government and that’s being kind.
" Vogel and Mahoney claim that the disclosure chopped $7 billion worth of shareholder value from Apple’s stock in the two weeks following the June 2006 disclosure that the company had discovered backdating in its past. Their problem, however, is that Apple’s stock has basically tripled since then, as the company has continued to sell gobs of Macs, iPods, and, more recently, iPhones."
Greg - you are a smart guy. Amazing 4 weeks in a row the market is a disaster. Like I said, this must be how the Hang Seng traders must have felt when their market was "only" down 20% and probably at 30%, 40% and now at 50% off they are saying the same thing - "How can it possibly go any lower?"
PCX - yeah, I got out too early too. I’m surprised it didn’t turn back up with oil. One would almost think that the oil price was BS and the coal guys know it.
Ben was warned by the ECB at their last meeting that if the US didn’t do something Europe would act without them, well here it comes.
xian
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm |
RMM- they have to communicate…i dont know about coordinating, but to make informed decisions on either side they’d have to take each others temperatures.
but they both want to b independent- yet at this juncture they r both tied to oil and only the USD can influence it.
occam - feel free to mail me the 50% if it’ll make you feel better. I’ll send you a few putters in return.
Alex
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm |
This was heavy. But logically we can´t live with this Oil jumping 1$ per day and the dollar falling 0.4% per day.
My porfolio is complete market neutral only selling premiums for now.
What a bunch of jamokes. They’ve been waiting all day to flash up "Bear Market" is official now since we closed down. They are so giddy that Michelle Caruso Cabrera is doing a double chest thrust today.
occam
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:08 pm |
Mck - still time to short PCX another day — if you look at it’s monthly chart it is absolutely insane. It’s rise may have been steeper than BIDU or FSLR.
mck
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:23 pm |
occam - I’m with you, just untangling from chasing it up from 120 area instead of waiting for the chart to turn. There’s tons to be made now that it’s ranging, esp with the huge premiums.
"…enjoy the ride up to whatever insane level they decide to print because this is going to be one hell of a ride down."
this is exactly my attitude.
windywheel
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:39 pm |
listening to think or swim’s midyear review right now live
the guy just said that AAPL doesn’t have any new products coming on line
iphone is not a new story and american consumer has the attention span of a knat
Check out this site, its a live stream/search off of Twitter. This allows you to search people "twitts" specific to stocks. Have a look at Howard Lindzons specifically. Make your own conclusions.
http://stream.stocktwits.com/tagged/howardlindzon/page/2
xian
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:42 pm |
windy- that’s about the attention span u should pay to that guy…bear is vogue
yeah, i’m not very impressed, to put it mildly
it’s the first time i’m listening to it
though he did just say that every trader he knows is long C
DB
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:48 pm |
Well I was short FSLR untill it jumped last week. I remember Phil saying he’d short it when it got to $300 - which it never did. I never did get back in. But why’s it take such a hamerring today ?
And why the damage to ISRG - it can’t all be because some analyst initiated coverage at Neutral with a "meets estimates" on earnings ???
In my LTP i’m churning callers like there’s no tomorrow. Its taking about 3 days to chew through their premium and then I have to roll em down. But I’m not rolling down the long side because they’ll just get chewed. So I’m effectively selling lots of bear spreads. I’ll have to roll the longs to get position back - but not untill this has settled.
Its all very depressing.
Phil,
Is TIE getting beat up so bad just because of BA? Has anything changed your mind on the company? Do you still have the ‘09 15’s or are you rolling to the 12.5’s?
DBS
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:01 pm |
Phil - Maybe you should ’school’ this guy.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/01/magazines/fortune/birger_hunt.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008070205
Phil
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:03 pm |
LOL Fred! Hard to laugh after today though, just a total horror show.
You know I’m wondering how there could not be a single world leader who is willing to stand up and put an end to this madness. Oil is now at $144 after trading most of the regular hours below $142 and no one even mentions it or is outraged by it even though the global economy is collapsing around them. It’s too bad everyone forgot what Reagan said: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
Thinkswim - Wow, let the Apple bashing begin I guess.
That’s interesting Yev, wish I had time for all the cool little tools there are out there.
ISRG just got caught up in the current. In a rational world, this is a great buy point, about where we got in last time but, if we’re lucky, they could retest $225 on a big market sell-off.
FSLR - Actually on the 23rd we did take the $270 puts for $12.50 and then rolled them to the $280 puts as they went up which ended up being $16.65, now $36.50. I don’t think I ever made it an official portfolio trade but we did discuss it in chat.
Be careful with a lot of bear spreads DB, you could get burned by a Fed move or something.
TIE - still the $15s, it’s been too damn depressing to roll.
windywheel
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm |
newpara
don’t know who the guy is
now they’re just talking about new aspects to their site, which is ridiculously overwhelming as it is
so i’m signing off.
good night all.
Phil
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm |
DBS - Don’t forget they call Fortune "The capitalist’s tool" for a good reason.
Wow, NVDA getting strangled, stabbed, shot, stabbed, poisoned and chopped up into little pieces for lowering guidance! That’s going to send AAPL and other PC people lower I bet, then the semis…
vicky (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm |
Just a stupid thought… if the oil move is speculator driven and lets say their target is 170, is it not more profitable for "them" to drive the price down from 144 to 100 (44 points) based on the demand destruction thats happening instead of looking for another 26 points to the upside?
Wonder if I will survive till the point when oil decides to go down.
troy (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:31 pm |
Phil - what is up w/the EIA? Are they seriously trying to drive oil higher?
vicky (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:37 pm |
Phil, do you AAPL covered in the 10KP. I uncovered this morning, but did not end well.
Phil - The information came directly from the EIA site. http;//tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wcsstus1w.htm
I used the 5/23 inventory number of 703,289,000 barrels against the 6/27 number of 705,823,000 for the total of 2,534,000 for the past four weeks and the 4/25 number of 701,339,000 barrels for the preceding four week total of 1,950,000. The dollar value was based on oil at about $142/bbl.
Keep in mind that H.R. 6022 did allow delivery of oil per an existing contract with the Secretary of the Interior. The link to that is: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h6022/show
As for the oil soaked nail comment about Bush, Paulson & Cheney, that was made up. Sadly it has some truth to it…
Keep kicking ass on the orial side!
xian (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm |
L.A., Miami Home Foreclosure Rates More Than Double (Update1)
OOPS! Link to EIA is: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wcsstus1w.htm
TM (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm |
The Truth about ANWR Drilling
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/06/29/the-truth-about-anwr/
thinking about fortune’s oil/silver argument. it would seem to make sense as the tech bubble was supply/demand driven. in terms of shares, once a fool bought a share, it was put in his account and unavailble until he put a sell order.
this made me question my reasoning…BUT- float (ie supply) was real and always remained constant, unless there was a split or something- but then again, there really was a physical share u could have printed for u and take it home.
the housing bubble fits better- as ive mentioned b4, in miami people were flipping the contracts on condo units that had never been built. developers would buy a site get some financing to start building and immediatly begin selling contracts on the unbuilt units…there was demand.
these new contracts, w/o a real unit behind them, r very much like OI- u can drive around miami and c halted/abandoned sites (ie no units available for delivery), but there’s a contract out there- even if only half the building was sold.
the "demand" in oil is similar to this. it’s like a huge building of units that arent built, but the contracts r written (expanding OI) and being flipped back and forth.
a bunch of institutions r holding these oil contracts as long term flippers- always rolling month to month and keeping OI elevated (across the entire board of futures contracts), eventhough the barrels r never delivered. then come in the scalpers/traders, who just game the liquidity as the longterm flippers roll contracts (ie selling pressure in the near months, and buying pressure in the further months) .
the scalpers’ gaming effectively arbitrages the further months and the nearer months buy/sell pressure…this is y the delivered barrels close at the speculative price.
if this makes sense (im a little confused myself and not too sure), then price will only begin to come down when the longterm flippers (institutions) start closing out positions- ie "sell to close" w/o paired to a new "buy to open"
immediately the "arbitragers" will become overwhelmed (as they cant short to the instituion further out b/c the "buy to open" wont b there for them to pair against) and begin exiting themselves and the whole market collapses from w/in as well as from w/o- ie across the entire board.
so if this does make sense (still not too sure), then we must ask "what will cause the institutions to reduce size"
it would have to b demand destruction- which is already happening and likely to speed up.
we will c this as total OI (summed across the entire borad starts to fall).
commments/criticisms wanted
Hey Phil. You are absolutely going to LOVE this………. It combines two of your favorite subjects: CNBC and OIL PRICES.
nvestors are fretting over US$143 oil. Consumers are concerned about US$4 gas. But a recent story on CNBC.com really put this all in perspective. The story revealed how the high price of crude really stacks up against several other "necessities."
The conclusion…oil’s actually pretty cheap at these levels.
In fact, a trip to your favorite neighborhood sports bar will really give you sticker-shock. A barrel of Budweiser beer will set you back US$447.25.
Would you like some Tabasco hot sauce for your chicken wings? That’ll cost you US$6,155.52 a barrel! Hmm…I’ll take mine mild.
Switching to water to quench your thirst instead of beer won’t save you much either.
A barrel of Perrier will set you back US$300.61 per barrel.
How about a trip to your local neighbor Starbucks instead? Cost: US$954.24 a barrel. That’s only IF you take your coffee black. Adding milk will cost you another US$163.38 a barrel.
Of course you can always just stay home, and drown your inflation sorrows in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk instead. Cost: US$1,609.44 a barrel.
xian (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:53 pm |
peter- LOL…this is a good question:
what item in that comparison doesnt belong and y?
ill have to say crude doesnt belong b/c all the others items r refined/process products while crude is like digging up a bunch of dirt- it’s the raw material.
Xian - Good point.
To which I will answer: "What!. You’ve never had crude coffee before?"
And…speaking of digging up a bunch of dirt…….Here’s a story you can tell next time the situation arises:
You’ve made a pot of coffee and another person is pouring themselves a cup…..You tell them that the last person who drank your coffee complained: "This coffee tastes like mud!" to which you responded: " It should…..It was ground this morning!!!"
Phil (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:06 pm |
EIA - well there’s 86Mbd sold at $142 per barrel so that’s $12Bn a day or $4.45Tn a year. What is the cost of bribing an EIA official? I imagine if we say they are unbribably and it would take $50M of a combination of favors, junkets, presentations etc. to convince them that your view of peak oil is correct then that would be .0011% of the money that’s being made selling oil.
If I spent $50M and targeted a dozen people over 5 years, I can have 8 of them telling you black is white if I want to….
I thought you would like that JB!
AAPL - sorry, I recovered them along with my other Apples but wasn’t specific. Remind me and we’ll deal with it tomorrow.
Thanks David! I did realize the last bit was original…
Xian - good thoughts, I’m off to dinner but will get back on that later.
Demetrius Michael (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm |
NYX - I should’ve taken the loss, thousands of dollars ago. I know it’s a great company, but sometimes the scar is just too deep. If I get 60, the stock is gone.
Demetrius Michael (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:38 pm |
Anyways I’m happy if we bounce tomorrow…. Everyone depressed? Check, time for an upday.
today from excellent short seller, d kass today- (he’s shorting USO thru long DUG)
"I will have more on my more upbeat view (with emphasis on the magnitude of the growing negativity bubble, the vulnerability of crude oil to an imminent price drop and a further discussion of a number of cr measures that imply less financial stress than equities are currently indicating) early next week, but for now, I believe that the skies are starting to clear after Mr. Market’s damaging hurricane, however, there is a lot of rebuilding left to be done on the ground."
xian (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:59 pm |
DM- NYX looks like NIKE of the exchange world in terms of market depth…i feel ur pain, but if (when) it does go back to 60, then i think that’s just a rest stop…going to b a long trip
cramer has C at the top of his "dirty dozen list"- the untouchables he has zero confidence in…i agree w/ the divi cut
1. Citigroup- Here’s a company that is in so much trouble that I can’t even begin to figure out how to fix it. There was a moment that it could have been unwound, but now your best hope is that it goes to $5 or $6 and we realize it could fail and we let the Saudis bail it out. Don’t laugh — that’s the 1990 scenario. Pathetic that history repeats itself, but this is the worst-run major bank in the world. You get what you pay for. A dividend cut is next.
k1 (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:08 pm |
xian- I’ve also been struggling with the connection between oil futures prices and spot prices. In fact, the other day I posted a question about why we don’t see the price of the futures converge on some "real" level as expiration approaches. In a recent GaveKal newsletter, there was a comment on this subject I found useful. I’m posting the text here even though it’s a bit long, because the newsletters seem not to be publicly available:
Question: Warren Buffett recently said that the copious amounts of storage volume needed to warehouse oil precludes speculation from increasing prices? In other words, that speculators could impact the spot market only if they had access to large volumes of storage, and could remove physical product from the market. How do you reconcile your view with Buffet’s comment?
Ahmad answers: Actually, the cheapest way to story oil is by keeping it in the ground. And if prices for oil were only going to continue rising, then oil price producers would have little incentive to dig it up now and sell it at today’s prices when they could get more by waiting. …
But to get more specifically to Buffett’s contention—oil speculators do not need to store oil. They need only store paper. The Brent and WTI futures are the benchmarks for the price of oil. Evervthing prices off the benchmark. The benchmarks were created by big oil and investment banks to provide a price discovery mechanism in a standardized and liquid market. Speculators, or “long-term investors”, are affecting the price level of the benchmark by the simple mechanics of bringing in a constant stream of demand for paper positions—and as we all know when demand is greater than supply the price goes up; as a result of that the spot market price goes up.
To understand this process better—let us explain the different mechanics of the spot and futures markets.
Futures are financial transactions. The nearest futures contract is called “the prompt”. Once the prompt is about to expire an investor can:
- a) Roll his position into another futures contract
- b) Exit his position altogether
- c) Or exchange his position for a physical contract (EFP)
The spot market is a physical market. To participate in this market you have to either:
- a) Bring a very large tanker to the distributor and load it up with crude at a given date window,
- b) Or distribute oil from the same place at the given time.
The spot gets its price from the reference benchmark which is the prompt futures, and trades at a differential to it (either a premium or a discount). The spot market can trade up to about two months ahead.
Paper demand is not physical demand and thus is NOT “real demand”. The real demand will always be found in the spot crude changing hands every month. That’ is about 20 to 30 times less physical oil than paper demand in the prompt.
Now what really matters here is not that 30 times more paper barrels are being traded than physical barrels. It is that those traded paper barrels have absolutely NO PHYSICAL requirement (hedging physical bets). It is a demand that far exceeds the “real demand” and is thus skewing price away from “real supply demand balances”. In effect demand is growing massively but supply is not.
they always go for the soft-spots and apply pressure
Bayou Co-Founder Sam Israel Gives Up After a Month on the Run
July 2 (Bloomberg) — Samuel Israel, the hedge-fund firm founder convicted of directing a $400 million fraud at Bayou Group LLC, surrendered to authorities almost a month after he jumped bail to avoid a 20-year prison term.
Israel, 48, arrived this morning to turn himself in riding a Yamaha motor-scooter, according to police in Southwick, Massachusetts, near the Connecticut border. The rural town is about 117 miles from where Israel disappeared in New York on June 9, the day he was to report to a federal prison northwest of Boston.
“They arrested my girlfriend and I turned myself in,” Israel said this afternoon as he was led out of federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts. His girlfriend, Debra Ryan, was charged by federal prosecutors last month with helping him flee.
fredrang (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:06 pm |
Good post. What we don’t know is the discount that is actually being paid on the spot market. For example, when Valero was buying sour crude last quarter they were getting discounts of around $20 per barrel so they can use the futures price to gouge the consumer while the refiners and others that take physical delivery pay far less. The refiners should be losing far more than they are given the reference price as gas would need to be over $5 to keep pace with the crude price we see every day.
I’ll venture to guess that less than 1% of our politicians have taken any time to learn how this works.
Thanks for the info.
k1- that’s great info…thanks. it helps me get a clearer picture.
i think it has to due w/ an expanded OI- not too sure on the particulars, but the idea i have is based on a what happens during a short squeeze in the futures markets:
OI falls and prices rise b/c traders r closing out positions ("buy to close")
what i expect to happen when oil cracks is prices falling as OI falls- institutions entering "sell to close" and liquidity dries up.
the institutions r smart and they have to know that there’s a ton of air under them right now (the scalper/traders following the liquidity).
institutons tolerate it b/c the news flow backs the bullish premise and more fools get drawn in, so there’s no need to bail immediately- BUT as soon as it becomes clear that no one wants crude (ie inventory builds), then they’ll have to lighten up and enter the "sell to close" orders (maybe already doing so- i hope)
side comment: my mom says she’s seeing a lot more people riding bicycle and walking around. she lives in an apartment building that’s near the center of downtown coral gables- a city w/in the city of miami.
a nice area, lots of cafes, restaurants, outdoor/indoor dining, wide sidewalks w/ awnings, fully grown trees w/ shade (old city for s. florida), so walking/biking isnt too shabby- rather relaxing, id think.
anyway. its a nice neighborhood and even they r feeling the gas pinch around there.
Phil
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm |
Xian’s oil premise - OK, you are on the right track. First of all, it is ridiculous to compare what the hunts did in a very small, non-electronic market 30 years ago to what is going on in oil today. There were no silver derivatives, the way you jacked up the price of a commodity was to buy it and take it out of circulation - there wasn’t anything to "fake" because people who needed silver bought silver, not contracts for silver. This is why Fortune’s arguement is too ridiculous for Masters to respond to, and the author attempts to use a lack of response as "proof" he is right - totally juvenile…
So, getting past that, I posted the NYMEX rules here once but essentially they are "If you get to the end of an expiration period and you don’t want the barrels you have under contract, you can roll them to a later period at no charge." What kind of crap is that? Now obviously, if I paid $145 for oil and it keeps going down and down I need to take my loss at some point but, as long as I can generate and interest in the contract I bought for $80 last year, I can just roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll, month after month after month. And all my rolled contracts show up as "open interest net long" and feed the myth that there is some tremendous demand, regardless of the facts.
At this point, they’ve been rolling for so long they are getting careless and all full of themselves, just like speculators do at the top of any bubble. Also, they may buy a few more contracts here and there and now they have themselves a much bigger position than they should but, as long as CNBC can keep herding the suckers in for them, they can wriggle out of the positions one by one until a bunch of retail schmucks are the only people holding the 1Bn+ barrels worth of contracts that are sitting on the NYMEX for $150Bn. Then they can turn around and short them and make about $75Bn because no matter how badly you want to dump those 1Bn barrels, it is almost impossible to get more then 42Mb through Cushing in a month and arranging delivery to an alternate point is very prohibative.
So, like any good squeeze, there is a bottleneck that stops people from selling. You can buy an infinite amount of contracts but you can only liquidate 42M a month so oil can drop 10% and there would still be 958,000,0000 barrels to go after a month at $135, then 916,000,000 barrels at $120, then 870,000,000 at $105, then 828,000,000 at $90… and before you know it, those 1Bn barrels that were flipped for $150Bn will be changed into 750,000,000 barrels at $70 or $52Bn, wiping out about $80Bn from the bagholders.
So, when you say "what will cause the institutions to reduce size" I’m saying they are already reducing their size. GS doesn’t tell you oil is going to $200 because they want you to make a lot of money. They are telling you oil is going to $200 because they bought a ton of it at $80 and they want to dump it on some sucker before Congress makes them report their holdings. Congress just friggin’ told us GS and MS have been manipulating the markets only it’s not technically illegal at the moment. Making it illegal is a very hard thing to do and the Republicans have been pulling out all the stops to keep it from happening and they ran it into the summer break without a resolution so it’s party time at the NYMEX as GS and MS shove the price of oil up our asses while they cover theirs.
I will also point out that STILL, a month after I first mentioned it, NO ONE has traded a SINGLE barrel of oil betwen Jan and Nov 2012, except June, SINCE OIL WAS $70 a barrel. Where the hell is the legitimate hedging that magically doesn’t need oil for a year? Think about it… http://futures.tradingcharts.com/marketquotes/index.php3?market=CL
Peter - Wow, is CNBC actually back on that kick? Maybe we should point out to them that Hanna Montana gets paid 10,000 times more per hour than they do or that by weight, they are the stupidest "news" crew to ever clog the airwaves… I guess by that logic we should be saving up for tap water, which is also a necessity and should obviously therefore cost $5 a gallon or maybe they should sell me some blood for $145 a barrel and I’ll open a blood bank because clearly all liquids should be the same price because they are liquids right?
Nice find K1!
Xian,
Good ol’ Miracle Mile, great hang out place for locals.
xian (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm |
phil- im getting it…i think- thanks for the indepth response- still need to process it. u sound like the wine was delicious…LOL
khan- my man, u know it- it’s livened up a ton in the last 10 yrs or so, lots of younger professional crowd. the coolest thing about that are is a small pub off of ponce de leon blvd. its totaly crap, but the underage drinking is always welcomed…has changed its name at least 3 times since ive known it ("crown & garter" "the english pub" and something else).
what makes it so cool is that its literally 2 bs away from the gables police station…needless to say, i havent been there in a about 8 yrs.
Phil (Premium)
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 pm |
Here’s a nice legislative update on what is attemping to be done by Congress (well, one side of it).
I like the Shays bill but it has no teeth.
This is a good list, coincidentally, the names of these Congresspeople often pop up in connection with the words "spoke in opposition to" pretty much any atempt to do something about the oil crisis.
74% of Americans (even Republicans) reply either "very angry" or "somewhat angry" about the price of gas. Every week Bush and co fail to act is another Congressional seat out the window… Great survey in general.
This is totally great, Fox has this thing where they dump news uned stuff from the field and sometimes you read really interesting things like this congressional feed and this internal Fox chatter:
"The IE unit has been set up by the RNC to satisfy the the Byzantine rules of the US campaign finance rules which limit how much the party can spend in coordination with the McCain campaign to approximately 19 million dollars
Just to be clear, the McCain campaign has no involvement with the ad campaign that is being undertaken by the RNC’s independent expenditure unit (or any other activity they may undertake). In fact, neither does the RNC itself.
The Independent Expenditure Unit, as the name implies, is walled off from the RNC and the McCain campaign. The RNC hires a group of people to decide on what the ads should say and where they should run. They give them a checkbook and that is basically the end of their involvement.
I know it all sounds vaguely ridiculous but it is perfectly legitimate and not really that unusual.
This is not the entire story but this is as short a version I could come up with that made sense.
Also, no I do not have the ad(s) yet. And no, I don’t think I will get them today. But as soon as I do, you will be the first to know."