Super Tuesday – America Wakes Up to Sophie’s Choice
by Phil - March 6th, 2012 7:35 am
Romney, Newt or Santorum?
In the movie "Sophie's Choice," Meryl Streep was forced to make a terrible decision over which of her children would be sent to the gas chamber and which to the labor camps. Even after choosing, she was unable to live with the decision and she and her husband killed themselves, which manages to further screw the boy who was sent off to the labor camps, now an orphan too. That pretty much sums up this Primary season for the Republicans as they have to choose between 3 TERRIBLE candidates – any one of which is a pretty clear path towards National suicide.
A recent Gallup poll indicated 55% of Republican voters say they wish someone else was running but, that leaves 45% happy with their choices (I guess if they were Sophie, they would have just flipped a coin and been done with it) and perhaps today we'll get a better indication of who the front-runner is as 410 delegates go up for grabs today, which is much less than last election, when John McCain alone scored 511 delegates on Feb 5th, 2008. Interesting Republican trivia: On that day in 2008, Mitt Romney came in 2nd with 176, Mike Huckabee had 147 and Dr. Ron Paul scored 10. So Romney was only 1/3 as popular as McCain 4 years ago and I'm pretty sure McCain got his ass kicked in the General elections, didn't he?
Something has to change in this country as 93% of all income gains in 2010 (most recent figures) went to the top 1%. 93%. How does this work? In 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3%, but the gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Looking ahead to last year, National Accounts statistics show that corporate profits and dividends distributed have grown strongly in 2011 while wage and salary accruals have only grown only modestly. Unemployment and non-employment have remained high in 2011.
While it is very, VERY good to be in the top 1%, being in the bottom 99% – not so much. What I try to get the top 1% to see though, is that getting 45% of the growth, like we did under Clinton, is pretty good – especially when it means that EVERYONE is participating in economic improvements and the overall growth is…
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DiggFake News Friday – What A Fool Believes
by Phil - March 2nd, 2012 8:18 am
Oil shot up to $110.55 yesterday.
The news was that a pipeline in Saudi Arabia had been attacked and oil had been running up all day into this "news," which, funnily enough, turned out to be fake. We caught the news at 3:05 in Member Chat (thanks Kustomz) and we had been waiting for oil to stop going up so we could short it. The turn came at the $110.50 in the Futures (/CL) and we caught a nice run down to $109 and I reiterated, at 3:36, with oil still at $109.88 my love for the USO April $40 puts, which were $1.08 at the time and finished the day at $1.15.
As Malsg pointed out in Member Chat: "The pictures of the fire are taken in daylight … but Saudi sunset was several hours ago … the oil market only stared going nuts after the close." A very good observation that gave us the resolve to stay short on oil – which is working out fantastically this morning as well.
We also grabbed an aggressive short spread on BNO, as it seemed the whole day's run had been BS, with traders in the know stocking up ahead of the fake news so they could unload barrels into the retail suckers who bought into the spike. Don't worry though – no one who bought oil up from $105 on Thursday to $109 ahead of the news will be arrested or even questioned – we'll just keep pretending the total farce of oil trading is a legitimate pricing mechanism, even though it costs people around the world hundreds of Billions of Dollars each year in excess charges (see "Goldman's Global Oil Scam Passes the 50 Madoff Mark").
Now, this is the part where I would usually point out how the economy is weaker than we think etc. but I'm not going to do that this morning because the S&P still over 1,360 and, if a stronger Dollar isn't going to stop this rally – nothing will. Even yesterday, I joked to Members that I wasn't going to highlight negative news items in red anymore as there was no such thing as bad news in this market.
As you can see from David Fry's SPY chart, we''re back testing the bottom of that channel today and, if we don't break down here, then we can…
No Worries Wednesday – Top Ten Plays for the Bull Market
by Phil - February 22nd, 2012 6:27 am
We're still waiting for a clear signal.
The S&P is finally over our 1,359 level but, so far, has not stayed over that line for a full session and we need two sessions over the line to confirm it. However, I did promise not to be bearish if we're over 1,360 and I think I got it all out of my system in the last few posts, as well as last night and this morning's Member Chat, where I outlined my case for for the oil glut and the collapse of the EU, which will lead to the collapse of Asia and the US – but not today.
Today there is a ton of money sloshing around in the system and we are clearly in a massive technical rally, which may (or may not) end at any moment. We discussed our February trade ideas from our morning posts on Monday's morning so I won't rehash them here but I do want to take a look at ways to leverage some trades to take full advantage of this non-stop rally as we have VERY CLEAR stop lines (our 10% lines) where we'll have a clear signal to get out or cover if ANY of the major indexes fail.
As with our early February trade ideas, we can add one more bullish trade each day that we're over the line and cash out the older trades that go well in the money and, of course, accumulate some Disaster Hedges (20-30% of your unrealized profits into protective hedges is a good rule of thumb as well as the cheapest form of protection – STOPS!).
My favorite disaster hedges are playing for a correction in the Dow or the Nasdaq which, if you are a Dow Theorist, would seem very likely based on the chart on the left but, so far, nothing matters to the bulls – who have their story and they are sticking to it – regardless of those pesky facts. Sorry, that's a bit bearish (bad habit). Anyway, my favorite disaster hedges are:
SQQQ April $13/17 bull call spread for .70. This trade has a 471% upside potential by itself if SQQQ (currently $13.14) gains 30% by April expiration (58 days). That's a lot but SQQQ is a 3x ultra-short to the Nasdaq so a 10% drop in the Nas, back to 2,650…
Whipsaw Wednesday – Party Like it’s 1929!
by Phil - February 15th, 2012 8:27 am
You can't fight the Fed.
Whether this market is like 1929 or 1999 either way the bulls had a good run until it burst into flames – much as the people on the Hindenberg had a lovely trip across the Atlantic with a bit of a rough landing in New Jersey.
So let's not spoil the party by worrying about the Future (or even the present for that matter) – let's just look at all the lovely things we can buy and make 500% this year if the S&P breaks 1,360 and heads higher on a sea of freshly printed Dollars, Yen, Euros, Francs, Pounds and, possibly even Drachmas (but ixnay on the Uanyay – no one wants to talk about that!).
Gold has got to be a good inflationary bet and ABX has lots of it. Currently trading at $47.61, you can sell the Jan $40 puts for $3.05 and that obligates you to buy the stock at $40 and you can leverage that $3.05 by buying the Jan $43/52.50 bull call spread for $4.40 for a net cash outlay of $1.35 on the $9.50 spread. That's a potential for 603% upside at $52.50 but, even if they flatline at $47.50, it's still a $4.50 win on the spread and the short puts would expire worthless for a $3.15 profit and that means you are starting out 233% ahead and all ABX has to do is not blow it.
Now, I'm going to do this one time to make it clear on margin. If you DON'T have a Portfolio Margin account, TOS says the margin on the above trade (for selling the Jan $40 puts) is $390 per contract. 3 ounces of gold are $5,190. If you run this spread with 10 contracts, you'll have $1,350 cash out of pocket and $3,900 in margin so close enough to 3 ounces of gold but these 10 contracts make $3,150 if ABX is at the same price at the end of the year and $8,150 if ABX is higher.
Of course we're assuming ABX is well-correlated to gold (and it is the World's largest gold miner so not too much of a stretch there) but clearly you are more likely to make $3,150 on this ABX spread than you are to see your $5,190, 3-ounce gold purchase gain $3,150 (60% – gold $2,768)…
BOEasy Money Thursday – Greasing the Wheels
by Phil - February 9th, 2012 8:27 am
More free money!
That's the way we like to start the day as the BOE pumps another $75Bn into the mix and, best of all, their currency went UP on the news because "whisper numbers were for $100Bn." Now that we know the magic formula, we can start a rumor that the Fed will print $3Tn and then, when they ONLY print $2.5Tn – the Dollar will become much more valuable. See, I'm starting to think like a Central Banker!
Also in the "bad news must be good news" pile as Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos (wouldn't it suck to live in Greece with a name like Bob Smith?) heads to Brussels with NO DEAL. That's right there is still no deal on the Greek bailout that has boosted the markets by 22% since October. They do claim that the only remaining issue is pension cuts but all the Florida voters who picked Romney will soon find out how easy that is to accomplish.
Just last February, I was writing a Thursday post titled "Greece is the Word" where I warned that the 4.23% CDS rate hitting Greek bonds was unsustainable and that turned us bearish right at the top of the rally at S&P 1,344. Yesterday, the S&P was back to 1,349 and I wonder if Greece never happened – would I have continued to be bullish with the markets at this level?
On the whole, even WITH the snowballing Greek crisis, we "only" fell to 1,249 in March so, with Greece all fixed – maybe we can afford to be a bit more bullish. I'll be more comfortable with the upside once we see that Greece is not a "sell on the news" event but, as I noted yesterday, our last 10 bullish picks did quite well and a few of them are still playable and certainly there are still opportunities out there to pick up good stocks fairly cheaply.
Take DMND, for example. Last night, the stock fell from $37 to $20.50 as the beleaguered company will have to restate their last two years of earnings and that sent the CEO and two CFO's out the door and does, in fact, constitute a "material adverse change" that will allow PG to, at their discretion, terminate their deal to merge their Pringles division into DMND in exchange for a…
Thrilling Thursday – Our “One Trade” Does Good!
by Phil - January 19th, 2012 8:12 am
One trade to rule them all!
That was our goal and our one precious trade for 2012 was BAC on January 5th, buying the stock at $5.75 and selling the 2013 $5 puts and calls for $2.55 for a net $3.20/4.10 entry (see "How to Buy a Stock for a 15-20% Discount" for more on this strategy). On Tuesday afternoon, I modified the entry live on TV at about 3:45, with BAC at $6.70 and you can see the immediate reaction the stock had on my pick into the close.
BAC was $6.49 on Tuesday afternoon at the start of my interview but the 2013 $5 puts and calls were $3.10 so the net was only $3.39/4.20 – not a huge change. BAC came through on earnings this morning and is up at $7.20 pre-market and we're well on our way to our 56% profit target, now with a 30% cushion.
It's no wonder that the TV crowd jumps on my picks as my last two appearances gave them a GNW spread on 10/24 for a 127% gain and an AXP spread from 10/5 for a 140% gain. BAC was, by comparison, a fairly conservative play and that's because, as you know if you've been reading this week – I'm not entirely convinced that this rally is sustainable – but I'm feeling much better about it now that we have BAC earnings out of the way!
This is a great time to thank my friendbuddypal Jim Cramer for chasing all his sheeple out of BAC this year with his SELLSELLSELL rating – without you and your half-assed opinions Jim, we'd have to work for a living! Why just yesterday, my trade idea for Members in the morning Alert was the FAS Feb $67/70 bull call spread at $2, selling the Feb $55 puts for $1.30 for net .70 on the $3 spread but last night – Jim didn't like my bullish Financials pick:
Financials were, in fact, one of my "Secret Santa's Inflation Hedges for 2011" that were published on Christmas Day, 2010 (and you can read that post for the logic behind each trade). All 4 of those trades are done tomorrow so let's see how they performed for the year:
- 30 XHB Jan $15/18 bull call spreads at $1.40 ($4,200), selling
…
Testy Tuesday – How Many Times Will You Fall for the Same Thing?
by Phil - January 17th, 2012 7:54 am
Isn't this exciting!
The pre-markets are up 1% after a long weekend. That hasn't happened since – two weeks ago! Of course last Tuesday, we were jammed up as well and the Tuesday after Christmas, we were jammed up as well but THIS TIME – we're REALLY feeling it, right?
The funniest thing is the way they have dozens of idiots saying all sorts of ridiculous things on CNBC and not one of them mentions even the vaguest hint of deja vu in what has been the most consistent pattern of late 2011, early 2012.
On this Dollar chart from Scott Pluschau, you can see the dives that are occasionally taken to goose the markets and we have another one this morning with the Dollar down 1%, making the 1% pop in the futures slightly less impressive when taken in context.
This time may be different because, according to Friday's Legacy Commitments of Traders Report released by the CTFC, Commercial Traders are now net short on the Dollar to the tune of 59,023 to just 6,061 longs – about a 10:1 ratio that is EXTREME to say the least. Non-Reportable, Non-Commercial Traders (ie. Speculators), on the other hand, are almost 10:1 the other way with 9,765 long contracts and just 1,390 shorts. Reportable Non-Commercial Traders (Hedge Funds) fill out the rest of the longs with 52,644 long contracts against just 8,057 shorts.
That's an odd sort of positions for the speculating class to be taking (super-long on the Dollar) considering the possibility of a highly dilutive quantitative event (QE3) in the very near future. This is why we can't be gung-ho bearish – tempting though it may be and this is why every little rumor of Europe being "fixed" sends the Dollar flying down – there are no buyers – only nervous long Dollar holders.
As you…
Wednesday Wheeeee – We Love it When a Plan Comes Together!
by Phil - January 11th, 2012 8:21 am
Once again, we're done with our day before you get up.
In my 5am note to Members, I said: "I see nothing in the news to justify this pre-market "recovery" and I hate to sound like a broken record but I like shorting oil (/CL) if we get below that $102 line with tight stops and the Dow (/YM) is right at 12,400, which is a great spot to short. RUT (/TF) is at 762 and below 760 (same as yesterday) will confirm a downturn but 12,400 is a great line so why wait?" By 6:26, I was able to follow it up with:
And wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! There go the Futures!
It's 7:07 and we're still going down, with oil at $101.24 (up $760 per contract) and the Dow at 12,340 (up $300 per contract) and, as Dennis said: "Good enough for steak and eggs for me!" Roro got up late but still caught the Dow at 6:16 and that was right on the nose for the oil drop as well as we hit it right on the nose this morning and now we're done and waiting for the next good set-up.
Of course we scale in and scale out of positions as there's no need to get greedy in the Futures, where a single remaining contract catching a $1 move down in oil (now $101.25 again) pays $1,000. This week, we have even stationed our own Craigzooka in New Zealand, where it's tomorrow – which makes it much easier to bet on today's action as he can tell us what happened already! Not that today was all that hard to predict, right? My comment to Members LAST Wednesday was:
It’s been a pretty reliable bet that they tank the markets into the longer-term note auctions because it scares people into T-Bills and keeps the rates low. From this line-up, it seems to me they intend to jack us up on Friday and then zap us on Tuesday as Esther George releases something hawkish ahead of the 3-year and it’s no coincidence that Plosser, by far the biggest Hawk, is given the floor at 12:30 on Wednesday – just 30 minutes before the critical 10-year auction. Coincidence? Surely you cannot be that naive!
So that's how we've been playing the past 7 days and it culminated in pressing our…
Thursday Foolishness – More of the Same with One Trade
by Phil - January 5th, 2012 8:13 am
Our day is done, how’s yours?
That’s right, we already did our 3am trade where we caught the dead top of oil (and the dead bottom of the Dollar), where my 2:59 am comment to Members in Chat was:
Dollar at session low of 80.40 at 3am and oil back at yesterday’s high at $103.70 so oil (/CL) makes a nice short below $103.75 here but DANGEROUS pre-market trading as Iran could spout off at any moment and the trading is VERY THIN.
So that brings us back to the good old Dow (/YM) futures at 12,350 and they are just over that line at 12,351 but that’s the short of the moment as long as the Dollar is over 80.40 .
For the next hour, I did a blow by blow on the oil trade in Member Chat on the way down to $102.70 – a nice $1,000 per contract worm gotten by the early birds, where we took the money and ran ahead of likely morning manipulation back up to $103.50, where we can short it again on inventories (11am). The Dow slipped to 12,300 and paid a solid $250 per contract as well, paying for over 100 Egg Mcmuffins this morning by itself. If you want to see how we make decisions along the way down – it’s well worth going over this morning’s comments – there was also some good discussion of other topics this morning, including my pick for the best wide-screen TV.
We’re still just messing around with hit and run plays, waiting to see how the week pans out and next week we’ll be waiting to see how earnings pan out as well as what we expect will be a pretty major market pullback leading into the 10-year auctions next Wednesday at 1pm. Clearly the Fed freaked out and jumped in yesterday when TLT hit $118 so we are fairly comfortable with our prediction of a…
Will We Hold It Wednesday – Nasdaq 2,603 Edition
by Phil - December 28th, 2011 6:53 am
Watch the Nasdaq.
That’s the index we need to catch up to the Dow now that the S&P is halfway to goal at 1,297 (from our Must Hold line at 1,235). The Dow is in La La Land, led by MCD (up 31%), IBM (up 26%), PFE (up 24%), HD (up 20%) and KFT (up 20%) while this year’s Dogs of the Dow are BAC (down 59%), AA (down 43%), HPQ (down 39%) and JPM (down 22%).
While the losers may seem to outweigh the winners, that’s not how it works as the Dow is price-weighted so BAC dropping from $14 to $5.50 "only" costs the Dow about 68 points (roughly 8 points for each Dollar), IBMs rise from $145 to $185 added a whopping 320 points.
So a 26% rise in one component and a 59% drop in another nets out to a gain of 252 points! At the beginning of the year, they had roughly the same market cap ($150Bn) but IBM has gained $70Bn and BAC has lost $100Bn which, of course, translates into a net gain of 2% on the entire Dow – BECAUSE IT IS THE STUPIDEST INDEX ON EARTH!
Our Members, of course, know this. I wrote "DJIA: The Most Useless, Overused Tool on the Planet" back in 2006, when GM was still part of the Dow so no need to rehash it all here other than to mention the fact that a 30-component index has made 5 substitutions in the 5 years since I wrote that article only serve to highlight how ridiculous it is to use the Dow to draw long-term conclusions. The Dow is manipulated because it’s easy to and Uncle Rupert sits with the other Masters of the Universe to decide how to use this headline tool to make things look as good as possible in the US markets.
That’s why CSCO and TRV replaced C and GM in June of 2009. C was at $28.80 and is down a bit, GM went BK from $45 (which would have been a 360-point loss in the Dow) while CSCO was disappointing but essentially flat and TRV is up $20, adding another 160 points so a 520-point swing (5%) on those substitutions alone. In September of 2008, AIG ($135 at the time) was swapped for KFT ($32). KFT is just $37.70 but AIG was…
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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...
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