Weekend Wrap-Up
by phil - December 13th, 2008 8:26 am
Another great week for our levels!
In last weekend’s wrap-up we were very pleased that the Dow stayed right in the lower end of our range, from 8,200 to 8,650. This week we tested the upper end of the range from 8,650 to 9,100 and the two weeks, taken together make a great case for 8,650 being our mid-point and looking at the chart illustrates why the VIX is falling so fast – while it still may FEEL volatile during the day, we’re actually moving into a tighter range…
Looking at a longer-range chart, we need to break over 9,100 early this week and get up to 9,500 to flatten the declining 50 dma so that’s what we’ll be looking for this expiration week. It’s going to take some more stimulus to get there, we have a possible package for the auto industry and a Fed cut on Tuesday as well as possible action by global central banks. There is an international fall-out to the Madoff scandal as EU banks have disclosed Billions in exposure to this ponzi scheme. There are many articles on the scandal under "Phil’s Favorites" so I won’t go over it here but the repercussions are what we will be concerned about next week.
Monday started off with a bang as Obama discussed the New, New Deal – a $500Bn or so infrastructure project to keep Americans busy next year. That was all the market needed to take off on Monday but we were more than a little skeptical as we’ve seen manic Monday’s before and they seldom follow through. With all the stimulus flying around we discussed the need to learn the word "Quadrillion" as we’ll be using it soon enough the way the World governments are tossing money around. We were totally incredulous that gold could still be under $750 so we kept on buying and that worked out very well this week! As I said on Monday morning: "Trillion here, a Trillion there and before you know it we’re up to a thousand Trillion and you have to know what to call it" and THAT is why we like gold.
Nonetheless, I pointed out that the MSCI index was now trading at $1.17 per dollar in net assets, the lowest level since 1995 with 39% of the stocks trading below shareholder equity. The economy may be really, really bad but we are…
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PSW Contest – Closing Out the Very Merry Month of May
by phil - June 2nd, 2007 4:30 pm
We had a fantastic May and made a lot of good picks and had tremendous returns on our members site.
We closed 263 positions during the month with a 186% average gain and a gain on capital of 299% – that’s what we call a great month!
Our members already know what a great job we do and support the site. Now I would like to ask those of you who read us for free to do me a favor: This site is supported by advertising and advertising is supported by people like you coming to www.philstockworld.com and reading our site or signing up for the FREE EMail Subscription through FeedBurner, at the top right-hand corner of the free site. Those of you who do subscribe already know that we never give out your names or Emails to anyone and we don’t even ask you to join – I’m not asking you to join now – what I am asking for is for you to help us move this site up to the next level.
We will be closing to new subscribers shortly for the summer as we revamp the site, add some features and launch our first paid newsletter service. Those of you who are FeedBurner subscribers will get a mailing when we reopen the site, as memberships will be limited, and will get an opportunity to receive the newsletter at a discount. Right now though, I’m asking for your help in bringing some more people over to the free site so, if you enjoy reading my daily commentary and find the information useful, please do me the small favor of sending this invitation to subscribe along to 5 friends or family members (hopefully not mutually exclusive!) who you think would find this useful as well.
Free Email Subscription!
That’s it, that’s all I’m asking you to do in exchange for all this free content! Please though, 5 people. We want to get to a level of audience where we can negotiate our own ad rates and that’s what it will take.
For those of you who are…
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Virtual Portfolio Update
by Greg - January 7th, 2007 7:47 am
Hi everyone, the online spreadsheets have just been updated. A downloadable version has also been posted for January.
Cheers,
Jared
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Wild Wednesday Wrap-Up
by phil - January 3rd, 2007 8:18 pm
Wheee! That was fun…. Can we do it again?
Unfortunately yes. The market is either consolidating for a breakout or getting toppy, I’ll let you know which as soon as we figure it out but, as I said this morning – I don’t know and, apparently neither do investors who rushed in and out of stocks today like the audience in a Bugs Bunny joke.
Much like Bugs Bunny pulling the lever that said "Intermission" and causing everyone to run out and crush Elmer Fudd, we played today’s action pretty perfectly as we took our vacation on Friday long in the market and short on oil and today (until 1pm anyway) those were both right on.
The markets were indeed off to a fine start this morning and punched through record highs but pulled away from a fairly bearish Fed report that indicated the Governors aren’t as wild about the economy as investors are but I think people are taking the minutes way out of context and the sell-off was unwarranted, even though I expected it to happen.
We were very comfortable with our choices today as the market failed us at pretty much all of our targets so we got in and out of positions with pretty good timing:
- Dow 12,550 fell at 1:20, giving us a great exit signal.
- Transports gapped up today and stayed well above the 50 dma – our best sign of the day!
- S&P did not hold 1,425, confirming the Dow drop at 1:20
- NYSE did indeed lead us, falling below our 9,200 target at 11. How did they know the Fed minutes would be scary?
- The Nasdaq was braver but also led the others down, turning under our 2,450 mark at 12:50 but giving us some small hope by closing slightly green.
- The SOX gave a great start but finished soundly negative.
- The Russell barely held the 820 mark after being soundly rejected from 830.
Don’t blame oil for this one, they did their best by dropping and dropping and then dropping some more finishing the day way down at $58.32 below my $58.71 wish-list target! Next stop may be $57.50 as the roaches scramble to leave the trap.
This is…
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Inside Scoop on the Apple IPhone and Other Patents!
by phil - December 16th, 2006 5:29 am
The IPhone is coming, the IPhone is coming, the IPhone is coming! …On Monday???
Well, according to Gizmodo who, I am certain, are just looking for publicity. This is starting to remind me of when Dean Kamen told us that "IT" would revolutionize transportation, reshape cities, resolve the energy crisis etc. and everyone speculated on everything "IT" could possibly be, from properly recounting the Florida ballots to cold fusion but, in the end, it turned out to be a scooter that very rich people can play polo on!
While I don’t think the IPhone will turn out to be a Segway-sized disappointment, I’m very concerned that I won’t be able to play polo on it and, with expectations running as high as they are it had better at least cure cancer!
One cool thing that is in the works from Apple is a patent they filed earlier in the year to embed "microscopic image sensors" in an LCD screen, effecively turning your monitor or, more importantly, your phone’s screen, into a camera – allowing for true face-to-face communications!
And have you ever wondered why Apple insists on keeping that huge amount of space at the bottom half of their laptops? Well here’s the embedded docking station they filed a patent on!
Now if that were a cell-capable IPod you could get web access anywhere in the world…. Interesting!
According to Kevin Rose, of Digg, the IPhone will have the following features: 
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January launch on "all" providers, both CDMA and GSM
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Extremely small form factor
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Two battery design (with single charger) — one for playing music, the other for phone functions
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Flash memory: 4GB for $249, 8GB for $449
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"Slide-out keyboard"
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Possibly touchscreen
Apparently the Apple guys are not up on the KISS rule of product design but we’ll see how this all meshes together. Surely the fear of Apple has been holding down Motorola, who have already shifted their marketing focus to the lower end, ceding the high ground to a product that doesn’t exist yet from their former (or maybe still)…
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Wild Weekly Wrap-Up
by phil - December 9th, 2006 9:50 am
I said in the morning that “markets will react (or overreact) to whatever jobs number we get” and they certainly did both!
The Dow flew up to 12,300 in the first 15 minutes, dove to 12,250 in the next, flew all the way up to 12,331 just an hour later and finished fairly well at 12,307 but they got me today with that early move!
It took a while for the market to come around to my Goldilocks view of the jobs report but the other indices all made similar moves eventually except the SOX and the Transports, who missed our marks. This does leave me neutral towards the markets going into Monday.
Oil fell again and we had a great time with puts for the third day in a row, our Valero Group mainly gave us a nice spike at the open and drifted down all day, despite a desperate and very fake pump job on oil earlier in the day. At one point oil was up over $1 and we took that time to grab more puts!
The stake in the heart for oil came as the dollar bounced off our 82.50 targetand was propelled 1% higher by comments made by Hank Paulson on CNBC at mid-day. After that, the drop was just a matter of time!
Crude did hold $62.03, so we are not out of the woods yet but it was another interesting day at the NYMEX as losses mounted across the board. The February contract (active a week from today) had huge volume but still dropped to $63.09, just $1.06 over the current month contract! This is not good for traders who are in the red and were hoping to roll into the next month – unless of course there are people who are willing to let them store their oil very cheaply as they pray for a very late (or very, very early) hurricane…
Now the November contracts, at $67.95, have fallen below the October contracts ($68.08) and both are higher than the Decembers, which dropped to $67.73. The September contracts, at $67.35 are still below the August contract price ($67.39). Oh the horror!
Since everyone on the planet was short the dollar this week (except us, of course) there could be a bit of a short squeeze next week, depending on how the China trip goes of course. Gold moved in tandem with the dollar, losing 1%…
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Forgotten Trades
by phil - November 18th, 2006 8:04 pm
Arnie made a comment the other day that we all have very short trading time-frames and it really hurt my feelings (as you all know, I’m the shy, sensitive type).
I am not a day trader! I am not adverse to taking profits during the day – but that does not make me a day trader…
I take a lot of long positions but, as I have mentioned often before, I generally tend to stop worrying about them once they make over 20% as I just set my stop (-20% of the profits) and forget about them. Tracking a bunch of Jan ’09 leaps every week would make for a very dull column!
This column is generally about short-term options, not stocks or leaps, which are very, very dull but I am very, very good at picking those – probably better than I am at close options. As I always say, the close options are for play money while we watch our real plays take shape!
The last time I touched base with these picks was August 3rd so I think we can indulge ourselves once a quarter to see how I’m doing. I am listing them all, the good, the bad and the ugly because I don’t want you to think I’m cherry picking (as embarrassing as some of these picks are!).
I’m sorry that the original picks are all buried at the old blogspot account (and I’m in no mood to dig them out of that mess) but we’ll fix it all on the new site (I hope!). I apologize for not having all the exact start dates but if I didn’t find them in August, I’ll never find them now!
From 8/3 picks on you’ll notice a different format as I’m trying to bring this fully up to date.
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Sometimes it’s nice to just buy something and walk away for a while… AAPL Jan $55s seemed expensive at $9.40 on 6/20 but we held through the dip by selling the July $60s and collecting $2.50, lowering our base to $6.90. They currently trade at $31.50 (up 357%).
I got tired of waiting for ADM Jan $35 puts (9/18 – $1.35) as they were the protective side of a spread but I should have let them play out, now $2 (up 48%).
I always play the Boeing Buddies (TM) but I hate to sound like a…
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Weekly Wrap-Up
by phil - November 18th, 2006 9:58 am
What a way to end the week!
Dow and S&P records going into the weekend – now that’s investor confidence! Minor pullbacks from the other indices but all well within our comfort levels, including the transports who came within 5 points of my target of 2,675 (despite the decline in oil) but closed at a comfortable 2,691.
You’ve got to love it when every single index we track hits our predictions on the nose!
It’s been a good week for predictions in general – in comments at 9:23 I recommended a day trade on the Dow: “I’m going to be checking out the DIA $122 and $123 calls if the market takes a nice dip. I’m looking for a bounce at $122.70.”
Here’s the chart, bottoming at $122.67 at 9:39! Needless to say that trade went very well with the DIA $122s coming in at .75 and finishing at $1.20 (up 60%) and the $123s coming in at .10 and giving us a quarter at the close (up 150%).
But that was not our best trade of the day! That hardly rates a mention compared to the ICE trades!
We had a great session Thursday deciding how to take advantage of the NMX IPO and we decided that the ICEwould be a beneficiary and we picked up the Dec $85s for $12.30. They finished the day at $17 (up 38%) but I lost a dollar if it going out and in on an early dip so I took half off the table at $20 (up 63%).
At 10:01 I decided to make a $1.50 offer on the $95s and by 10:04 it got away from me but filled at $1.20 just 10 minutes later. We exited that one at 11:30 for $9 - 650% in one hour! That’s a pretty good annual rate of return folks! It also turned out to be the EXACT top of the day so I’m very, very proud of myself (pat, pat).
Congrats to everyone who played along at home – now that the earnings nonsense is over, we can concentrate on situational trades like this on the pro site.
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On the whole it was in incredible week, we even started making some money on oil puts again!
Relentless doubling down strained my position limit and left me unable to add positions to take advantage of Thursday’s drop but I was happy…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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