Weekly Wrap-Up
by Phil - November 10th, 2006 9:15 pm
Well, that was a lot of work to gain 200 points wasn’t it?
That’s right, we started this week on Monday morning at 11,985 so all that whining and moaning about the markets was for nothing! The markets are fine, we had a pullback which may already be over.
The Democrats failed to bring about the predicted economic apocalypse as once again this great democracy can have a revolution every decade or so and treat it like an ordinary changing of the guard.
Sure the Dems will send money flying out of some sectors (Pharma, Oil, Defense) but it will boost others(Biotech, Travel, Retail) so it’s just a bit of a forced sector rotation more than a problem in the markets.
The Dow pulled it out at the last minute with a sudden surge over the critical 12,100 mark to finish right about at Monday’s high.
The Dow was pulled down today by AA (down 1.7%), DIS (down 3.5%), T (don 1%) and VZ (down 1.4%). The standout performance came from AIG (2.4%) with BA (as usual), CAT, HON, HPQ, INTC and JPM providing backup.
I have come to the conclusion that we shouldn’t be shorting any gaming stocks as Nevada’s Harry Reid will be the new Senate majority leader – I missed that one but it would have been a smart play this week!
The S&P was slightly better behaved for the week, never really giving back Monday’s gains and finishing at 1,381.
The NYSE also had a very good week with 2 short bounces off the 8.800 level but never any real danger.
The Nasdaq was the standout of the week with a 2% gain and a 2,390 finish, the highest weekly close since Feb 2001!
We were watching the Russell which ran up to 769 and the SOX which managed a 1% gain for the day as well as the transports, which shot up 2% today on a sharp rebound off the 200 dma we’ve been watching all week.
Oil dove back down $1.57 to finish the week at $59.59 but you wouldn’t know it from XOM, who skated along at their all-time high. My current thinking on this is that the E&P companies are suffering first as the analysts have decided the Dems will cut the tax breaks, which will increase the value of reserves.
This is all very logical sounding until…
October Wrap-Up
by Phil - November 6th, 2006 8:30 pm
Test
Well we pulled that month out at the end!
It was a bumpy ride into options expiration with a 24% loss for the week (damn oil puts!) eating into the 53% we had made in the first half of the month but the last 10 days were decidedly kinder to us and we close out October in pretty good shape.
While still a far cry from September’s 92% average, I must again point out that I did say at the time we should just quit there because it would be very hard to top!
October’s final tally was 141 closed positions held an average of 9 days for a 41% average gain – more in line with a usual month.
Our remaining 36 positions have been open an average of 15 days with a 7% gain. Of course, like some of our closed positions, they include the wrong ends of spreads and several hopeless oil positions that drag down an otherwise decent group.
The closed positions still include the total losses of 4 MS and GS positions that tormented me since September as well as 10 oil positions that were rolled into December but are recorded here as a loss.
There were 24 doubles including, surprisingly, 5 XOM puts and 3 Valero puts – all from earlier in the month when things still made sense in the oil patch.
All but 8 of our doubles were puts, so I suppose my early month pessimism wasn’t entirely unfounded…
Our best non-oil plays were a PD put, TAP put, GM put, TM call, GCI call, LPL call and the last of our Google calls.
Our worst plays were oil – we should have quit while we were so far ahead! Not following the Valero Rule led to virtually every one of these losses and I will try really hard not to try to outsmart it in the future.
I have very few regrets, unlike September – where we would have done well to hold on to many of our plays – October was a choppier month that took profits away as fast as it gave them.
Our 32 regular stock positions returned 12% on an average hold of 26 days with just 13 positions remaining open – not bad for “an options guy…”
The full spreadsheet will be posted tomorrow at:
http://www.clinamengroup.com/philstocks/

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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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