Tuesday – Topping Out or Just Pinning the Fed?
by Phil - January 24th, 2012 8:26 am
Tough call today.
The Dollar bounced off 79.75 this morning, nothing to crow about for Dollar bulls as the Euro remains just over the critical $1.30 mark and the Pound is solidly over $1.55 for the moment.
You could say it's a bearish sign that the Dow and the NYSE stopped dead at our breakout levels but that's to be expected on a first attempt at breaking out – even if they have already attempted the same move back in late October, when the Dow was 5% lower in it's test and the NYSE was testing the same line (7,866).
Our broadest market index is the one that's holding everyone back as what little volume there has been in this rally has been fairly narrowly focused on certain leaders. Now a pessimist might say that this is a reflection of the blatant manipulation of the indexes in which certain Banksters place buys on stocks that have disproportionate positive effects on the junior indexes in order to fool retail traders into believing there is a rally while the Banksters drive the VIX down to multi-year lows, dump all their stocks on the bagholders and prepare to cash in by crashing the markets on a major event like tomorrow's FOMC Rate Decision which is, in fact, very unlikely to have any language specific to the QE3 that has been promised by the MSM since Thanksgiving.
An optimist would say – well, you can read almost any MSM site for that. It's lonely at the top of the range when you are bearish, one by one the other bears capitulate and soon you are there all by yourself with your shorts – your lovely, lovely, cheap shorts! The Dow shot up yesterday to just over the 12,749 breakout line we have as the tippy top of the range on our Big Chart so of course I called for DIA puts in Member Chat. The DIA Feb $123 puts, which came in around .75 and finished the day not much higher at .78 after topping out at .95. Ranges usually hold – if you're not going to have conviction at the very top of a range to short – when will you? For one thing – you have a very good stop line to watch!
As noted by Dave Fry in his SPY chart, the bulls have engineered their golden cross…
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DiggPut Spread Eyes Sharp Pullback In CAT Shares
by Option Review - November 9th, 2011 2:06 pm
Today’s tickers: CAT, PANL, LIFE & SLXP
CAT - Caterpillar, Inc. – The machinery maker’s shares may surrender much of the gains posted during the October rally, according to one bearish strategy initiated in the December contract this morning. Shares in Caterpillar are in the red this afternoon, along with all of the other Dow 30 names, to trade 3.5% lower at $92.50 as of 12:45 pm ET. It looks like one investor initiated a roughly 3,000-lot bearish put spread, buying the Dec. $90 puts, and selling the same number of Dec. $75 options, for an average net premium outlay of $3.07 per contract. The trader may profit at expiration next month if CAT’s shares fall 6.0% to breach the average breakeven price of $86.93. The investor may pocket maximum potential profits of $11.93 per contract should shares Caterpillar plunge 18.9% to trade below $75.00 at December expiration day. CAT’s shares last traded below $75.00 back on October 7. The stock presently trades 37.0% higher than its October 4 52-week low of $67.54.
PANL - Universal Display Corp. – Shares in Universal Display Corp. rallied as much as 11.75% to an intraday high of $55.25 after the company posted better-than-expected third-quarter earnings. The provider of components and technologies used in the production of flat-panel displays earned $0.12 a share, excluding some items, which beat the average expectation that the firm would break even for the quarter. Shares in PANL are off their highs off the morning to stand 8.2% better on the day at $53.49 as of 11:25 am ET. One options player appears to be positioning for shares in Universal Display Corp. to continue to climb through November expiration. It looks like the investor purchased a 1,000-lot Nov. $55/$60 call spread at a net premium of $2.10 per contract. Profits are available on the spread should PANL’s shares rally another 6.7% to surpass the effective breakeven price of $57.10. The bullish trade yields maximum potential profits of $2.90 per contract to the investor in the event that shares in Universal Display surge 12.2% over the current price of $53.49 to trade above $60.00 at expiration. Options implied volatility on the stock is down 20.1% to arrive at 81.9% in the first half of the session.
LIFE - Life Technologies Corp. – Put options on biotechnology company Life Technologies Corp. are more active than usual this morning. Shares in the name are down better than 3.0%…
Monday Madness – G20 FinMins Set Two Week Deadline
by Phil - October 17th, 2011 8:01 am
Two weeks!
European leaders have two weeks to settle differences and flesh out a strategy to terminate their sovereign debt crisis as global finance chiefs warn failure to do so would endanger the world economy. “The risk of a recession would be increased dramatically were the Europeans to fail to accomplish goals that they’ve set for themselves,” Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said after the G-20 meeting on Saturday.
The Brussels meeting “has the potential to turn into a positive historic moment,” Joachim Fels, London-based chief economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to clients yesterday. “But it could also easily turn into a negative catalyst.”
Europe’s plan, which has still to be made public, includes writing down Greek bonds by as much as 50 percent, establishing a backstop for banks and magnifying the strength of the 440 billion-euro ($611 billion) temporary rescue fund known as the European Financial Stability Facility. “The plan has the right elements,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in Paris. “They clearly have more work to do on the strategy and the details.”
The G-20 officials — who met to prepare for a Nov. 3-4 gathering of leaders in Cannes, France (and we’re fondly remembering London’s 2009 meeting with the graphic on the right) — said in a statement that the world economy faces “heightened tensions and significant downside risks.” European authorities must “decisively address the current challenges through a comprehensive plan.”
The policy makers held out the possibility of rewarding European action with more aid from the International Monetary Fund, while splitting over whether the Washington-based lender’s $390 billion war chest needs topping up. Europe’s latest strategy hinges on putting Greece, whose government forecasts its debt to reach 172 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, on a sustainable path. Austerity has plunged the country deeper into recession and provoked civil unrest that threatens political stability.
My reaction to this in Member Chat this Morning was to call for shorting the jacked up Dow Futures (/YM) at 11,600, saying:
Speaking of the illusion of power – yet another G20 meeting ends with yet another plan to have a plan but this time, for some insane reason, they only gave themselves a week to fix everything. I’ll be writing about this this morning but the gist of it is the Finance Ministers have essentially sent their own
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Just Another Manic Monday – Value Investing
by Phil - September 26th, 2011 8:27 am
Up, up and away!
As I mentioned in Friday’s morning’s post, we did a lot of bottom-fishing on Thursday as we began to develop Disaster fatigue with long plays on XLF at $11.50, shorting TLT at $123, shorting VXX at $49.50, TNA at $34.50, BRK.B at $65, AA at $10.20, VLO at $19, IMAX at $15.75, BA at $58.32, AGQ at $170, CHK at $27.50, DIS at $30.14 and ABX at $47.50. They were hedged, of course and, for the most part, you still had a nice chance to make those entries on Friday – but not so much this morning as the futures are up about 1.5% already (7:30).
Friday morning, in my Alert to Members, I reminded them that BCS looked like an excellent VALUE to me, no matter what the PRICE was ($8.75 after hitting $8.40 the day before) and this morning, that PRICE is up well over 10% in EU trading. Did the VALUE of BCS change materially over the weekend? Of course not, certainly not by the $4Bn their market cap gained – like the song, the VALUE remains the same – only the highly variable price of a share of BCS is undergoing ch-ch-changes…
I pointed out similar hedged, long-term plays could be made on GS ($94), MS ($13), BAC ($6) and C ($24). Of course we hedged them per our discussion in the morning post (TZA was our morning choice but we’re out over 650 on the RUT) but then we went long on EWG (Germany) again with the very aggressive Oct $16,18 bull call spread at $1.30, offset by the sale of the $17 puts for .90 for net .40 on the $2 spread. 10 of those in our virtual $25,000 Portfolio cost $400 and can return $2,000 in less than 30 days if EWG is over $18 and, guess what – they’re over $18 this morning!
Another bullish bet we placed was USO Nov $28/30 bull call spread at $1.30, selling the $27 puts for $1.10 for net .20 on the $2 spread with a 900% upside if USO simply doesn’t drop from where it is now. That’s what’s nice about options – you don’t need the market to go up to make money good money. On this trade idea, your worst-case scenario is owning USO at net $27.20, about 10% lower than it…
TGIF – Stop the Week, We Want to get Off!
by Phil - September 23rd, 2011 8:35 am
What a disaster!
Of course, that’s why we have Disaster Hedges, right? August 11th was the last time we did a "Hedging for Disaster" post which included a LONG trade idea on gold that’s done now (we’re short) after gaining over 300%. We’re a little mixed in our results on the other hedges but that means we can SWITCH HORSES – from the trades that have already worked to the ones that haven’t yet. That’s how we cash out our winners on a regular basis – it’s the pony express of investing. Our other Disaster Hedges from that post were:
- DXD Oct $23 calls at $2, selling Oct $27 calls for $1.15 and the Oct $19 puts for .70 for net .10. That spread is currently -.05 so down 150% so far and a nice horse to switch to, offering a .05 credit on the $4 spread.
- FAZ Oct $65 calls at $22, selling Oct $72 calls for $20 and selling JPM 2013 $20 puts for $2.05 was a net .05 credit as a backstop to our long financial plays. FAZ is now at $71.34 and the October FAZ spread is now $3.70 but the JPM puts are now $3 so net .70 is only up 1,500% so far. Should the financials stay low, we get the full $7 from the spread and we’re obligated to buy JPM for $20 (now $29.27) in 2013.
- SDS Sept $26 calls at $3.20, selling Sept $32 calls for $1.65 and selling VLO Jan $15 puts for $1.20 for net .35. SDS is only at $25.73 so far (not a disaster yet) and the spread is now net $1.25 and the short VLO puts are .17 so net $1.08 on this one is up 208% and we’re not even at goal – that’s pretty good! Note the spread is LOWER than when we started so this can also be used as a fresh horse with a different offset, like X Jan $15 puts for $1.20 for a net .05 trade.
- TBT was stopped out with a small loss at $24 (fortunately). My comment at the time, with TBT at $24.88 was: "Keep in mind though, that the Fed has said rates will stay low through 2013 so it would be wise to uses stops on the puts, at least, if TBT fails to hold $24!"
- EDZ
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Whipsaw Wednesday – What Us Worry?
by Phil - September 7th, 2011 8:25 am
That was easy!
Only 3 days of panic and we’re back to manic already – I’d say that was a record but our last panic only lasted two days, on August 18th and 19th, when we dropped 600 points before bouncing back 800 points the next week so this last 3-day, 600-point drop was gentle by comparison. That, of course, did not stop the usual round of Doomcasters from declaring the end of the World (especially the European section) as we know it but that was all so yesterday morning and now it’s 24 hours later and the Dow is up 300 from that bottom in the pre-markets.
Pre-market yesterday we were bullish but cautious, going long on Dow (/YM) futures at 11,000 (now 11,227 – up $1,135 per contract) and Russell (/TF) Futures at 666 (now 688, up $2,200 per contract) and our bullish EWG spread from the morning post should be going gangbusters already as the DAX pops 3% this morning!
We also laid out new hedge ideas on EDZ and GLD but the point of those was, wisely, to take the money and run on our old hedges as they bottomed out in the morning (max profit), trading in our well-ridden horses for fresh ones that have more time to expiration and lower deltas to snap back on a bounce is all part of our range-trading strategy – we may need those hedges again, just not now….
By the time the market opened, things looked too good not to play bullish and we ended up picking 19 bullish plays in yesterday’s Member Chat with not one bearish one. My comment to Members in the 9:44 Alert, where we took a very aggressive upside play on the Dow was: "Damn, and I said I wasn’t going to get too bullish. Oh well, what can you do?" As I have been pointing out in our Range Trading posts – sometimes you just have to go with the flow…
Just 18 minutes later, I put up 6 long-term trade ideas on CAT, DIS, HOV, JPM, SKX and T as we took advantage of low prices, a probable bottom and a high VIX. The nice thing about our buy/writes is that they have a built-in 20% discount (see "How to Buy a Stock for a 15-20% Discount") and can usually be scaled in to ride…
Fully “Fixed” Friday – Extend and Pretend Edition
by Phil - July 22nd, 2011 8:22 am
All fixed!
Greece is getting another $229Bn at 3.5% with about 30 years to pay it from the EU (ie. Germany and France) and private bond-holders will share about 1/3 of the pain by "voluntarily" renegotiating their own notes. Sounds like a really great offer, right? BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Another $630Bn of already promised emergency aid has now been places into a very slushy fund that will now allow the EU to throw money at any nation that so much as sneezes – WHETHER OR NOT THEY ASK FOR ASSISTANCE. This will allow them to play economic Whack-A-Mole, putting out all the little Euro-zone fires until that money runs out (about 6 months at the EU’s current burn rate).
All this fantastic news from Europe has sent the Dollar down to test the 74 line and that was down from 75.37 just ahead of yesterday’s open and that’s a 1.8% drop so we would expect our indexes to go up at least 1.8% – BUT – none of them did. In fact, the Nasdaq only gained 0.72% and the Russell was up 1.07% and the Dow was up 1.21% and the S&P was up 1.35%. The NYSE, which had been our perennial laggard, did the best yesterday – gaining a close, but still no cigar 1.57%.
Will we make it up today or is this an indication that things may not be quite so good as they seem? After the close yesterday, I did a news round-up for our Members and there is still plenty to worry about and we took a stab at some SPY Weekly (today) $135 puts at .79 for our aggressive $25K Virtual Portfolio on the off-chance they "fix" the US debt ceiling and accidentally make the Dollar strong again. At the moment, we are still playing our short lines in the futures, where we’ve been scalping nickels and dimes since my 3:23 am Alert to Members (if you are not a Member, you can sign up here), where I said:
I like shorting the Futures here: S&P (/ES) at 1,346, Nas (/NQ) 2,415, Dow (/YM) 12,720 and Rut (/TF) 842.6 – as long as 74.20 hold on the Dollar, we should get a bit of a sell off so these are levels to look for as the Dollar heads back over that line but we can scale
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Bearish Options Traders Take to Caterpillar Put Options
by Option Review - May 16th, 2011 4:08 pm
Today’s tickers: CAT, KONG, ACOR & AXL
CAT - Caterpillar, Inc. – The machinery maker’s shares fell during the past five trading sessions and started out this week on the decline, as well. Shares in CAT fell briefly this morning, but reversed course to rally as much as 1.8% to an intraday high of $108.27. But, the rebound in the price of the underlying stock today may not be a lasting trend according to some options players initiating bearish stances on Caterpillar today. It looks like one pessimist purchased a put spread, buying around 3,000 puts at the June $100 strike for a premium of $1.39 each, and selling the same number of puts at the lower June $90 strike at a premium of $0.26 a-pop. The net cost of initiating the spread amounts to $1.13 per contract. Thus, the trader starts making money if CAT’s shares drop 8.7% from today’s high of $108.27 to breach the effective breakeven point on the spread at $98.87 by expiration in June. Maximum potential profits of $8.87 per contract are available to the investor should shares plummet 16.9% to trade below $90.00 at expiration next month. Longer-term bearish sentiment appeared in January 2012 contract put options. One trader purchased 5,000 deep out-of-the-money puts at the January 2012 $72.5 strike for a premium of $1.59 each. Rising levels of options implied volatility on CAT as well as bearish movement in the share price will benefit the investor by lifting premium on the puts, while the erosion of time value on the long position will work against him. The puts may have been tied to stock. Options traders are exchanging roughly 1.6 put options on the stock today for each single call option in play as of 12:30pm in New York.
KONG - KongZhong Corp. – The Beijing, China-based wireless media company popped up on our scanner this morning due to predominantly bearish activity in June contract options. Shares in KongZhong Corp. plunged 24.9% during the session to touch an intraday…
Caterpillar Call Options Active Ahead of Earnings
by Option Review - April 26th, 2011 4:24 pm
Today’s tickers: CAT, CLX, S & ELX
CAT - Caterpillar, Inc. – Signs of bullish sentiment on the machinery maker appeared in the options market this morning with the price of Caterpillar’s shares rising as much as 3.1% to an intraday high of $112.20. Strong earnings from a number of big industrials-names this week helped CAT’s shares higher in the face of the company’s own first-quarter earnings report ahead of the opening bell on Friday. In weekly options on the stock, the April ’29 $105 strike put options are most active. Two-way trading in the puts suggests mixed sentiment in the days leading up to CAT’s earnings. Buyers of the puts may be wary of an earnings miss, while sellers of the contracts seem to be saying they at least expect shares in the name to remain above $105.00 through expiration on Friday. Meanwhile, the May contract is a-buzz with activity as well. Call options are more heavily populated than puts in early-afternoon trade. Bullish players positioning for the price of the underlying stock to continue to climb ahead of expiration day next month bought calls and sold puts. Volume is heaviest in the May $115 strike calls, where around 6,300 contracts have changed hands, fewer contracts than the 11,355 lots of previously existing open interest at that strike. Buyers of the options are dominating, paying an average premium of $1.60 per contract for the right to buy the underlying stock at $115.00. Investors long the May $115 strike calls profit at expiration if shares in CAT rally another 3.9% over the current price of $112.20 to exceed the average breakeven point on the upside at $116.60. More than 1,100 call options were picked up at each of the May $120 and $125 strikes at average premiums of $0.52 and $0.17, respectively. Caterpillar’s shares recently hit an all-time high of $113.93 on April 4, 2011. Options players traded more than 55,000 contracts on the machinery manufacturer by 1:20pm in New York.…
Bulls Eye Avon Products Put Options
by Option Review - April 18th, 2011 4:14 pm
Today’s tickers: AVP, CAT, AMD & GM
AVP - Avon Products, Inc. – Options traders exchanged more than 5 times as many put options as calls on Avon Products today, but it looks like most of the volume was generated by near-term bullish players. Shares in the global manufacturer and marketer of beauty products are currently down 0.85% to stand at $28.10 this afternoon. More than 14,000 put options changed hands at the May $26 strike on paltry previously existing open interest of 644 contracts. It looks like the majority of the puts were sold for a premium of $0.30 a-pop. Put sellers keep the full $0.30 premium per contract as long as Avon’s shares exceed $26.00 through expiration day next month. The deep out-of-the-money puts currently tout a delta of 0.20, or roughly a 20% chance of landing in-the-money. But, Avon Products is slated to report first-quarter earnings before the opening bell on May 3, 2011, and an earnings miss that sends shares in AVP lower, and therefore the delta and premium on the puts higher, could place put sellers in far less comfortable positions. Put sellers could have large amounts to stock put to them at an effective price of $25.70 – after factoring in the $0.30 premium received – if shares in Avon Products plunge 7.5% from the current price of $28.10 to trade beneath $26.00 at expiration. Shares in AVP have exceeded $26.00 since June 9, 2010.
CAT - Caterpillar, Inc. – Shares in the machinery maker joined in on the broad market decline today after Standard & Poor’s Rating Service cut the U.S.’s long-term credit outlook to negative on rising budget deficits and debt. Fears at home add to global concern that economic growth may slow in the event that Greece winds up in default. Caterpillar’s shares fell as much as 4.7% during the first half of the session to touch an intraday low of $102.16. Trading patterns in the weekly options suggest some investors are speculating on an immediate rebound…
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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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