This is just getting silly: perhaps the next update on ICI mutual fund flows should occur if there is an inflow for once…ever again. In the meantime, ICI reports we have just recorded the 17th consecutive weekly outflow from domestic equity mutual funds, and what’s worse for mutual funds’ depleted liquidity ratios, it is now accelerating, hitting a total of $4.3 billion, a more than 50% increase from last week’s $2.7 billion. YTD outflows have now hit $54 billion, as ever more capital is going into far safer fixed income instruments. As a reminder, here is what Rosenberg said on the issue yesterday: "As for liquidity ratios, equity funds portfolio manages have theirs at an all-time low of 3.4%, down from 3.8% in June. Tack on the fact that there are really not very many shorts to be covered – since the market peaked in April, short interest is 4.3% of the S&P 500 market cap (in August 2008 it was 6%) and there’s not a whole lot of underlying fund-flow support for the stock market here." As for this being a contrarian signal, hopefully all those who see this as a buying opportunity can also find a way to make the now retiring baby boomers about 10 years younger and force them away from fixed income capital reallocation. Oh, and fix the broken market and restore investor confidence that the casino is only modestly rigged.
In the meantime, no matter what the market does (and somehow it has been flat during the entire period of record redemptions: good to know someone is putting capital into stocks), on a short-term basis, nobody wants to touch it with a ten foot pole. Retail is no longer fascinated by speculating and day trading: after all why should they – they get better odds in Vegas… where the decor puts the aging CNBC female anchor crew to shame.
Our charts predicted a flatline and a flatline is what we’re getting!
I do so love it when a plan comes together (see David Fry’s chart). In yesterday morning’s post I predicted that bad data would send us down at 10 am and I rushed out our first Alert to Members at 9:37 with a call to go naked on our DIA Mattress play, which effectively flips our virtual portfolio bearish and we even added the QQQQ July $46 puts at .85, which we exited just one hour and four minutes later at $1.05 (up 28%) as we 1/2 covered our Mattress Plays back to neutral.
We do a lot of day trading on options expiration week – taking advantage of the lower premiums. As I said I would in the morning post, we shorted gold at $1,250 and we even shorted AAPL for a nice, quick gain before stopping out. At 10:37 I had already said to Members: "I’m done with short plays here. Not going long but that’s a lot of money already and I’m not greedy. We’ll see if we hold this 1% dip first," meaning we got the 1% pullback we expected on our 5% rule and we know not to be greedy with our day trades! At 10:57 we flipped to TNA June $47 calls at $1.20 and we rode those up to $1.60 (up 33%) at 11:54 but it was our TBT short put play that made me the most happy as brand-new Member Flipsiceland told me at 12:12:
Thanks Phil, just paid for my 3 month ‘prescription’ for the members service, in one and half hours.
That’s what I really love about my job, as it says on our logo: High Finance for Real People – Fun and Profits! We love making profits and we also like to have fun while we’re doing it… The fun didn’t stop there as we had a nice winner on OIH puts, Copper Futures long and we hit the turn on the nose as I warned Members at 2:25 that: "Volume is very light with just 80M shares on the Dow at 2pm so VERY stickable but I would have to short into a stick save at this point as we shouldn’t be going up other than some desperate window dressing that can be quickly unwound" and at 3:19 we hit the turn almost on the nose as I said to our Members: "Volume at 3:15…
This is not like most career fields, where an average teacher, middle manager, or sales person can sustain a living. An average performance in trading is one in which the trader does not make money at all. The Times article cites research suggesting support for the often-cited statistic that 80% of daytraders lose money.
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This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
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It has been a tough weekend for the President. First, the CEO of the Associated Press states the government's seizure of AP phone records was "so broad and so secret," among other factors, "that it was an unconstitutional act," adding that it had already had a chilling effect on newsgathering and press freedom...
Add to that James Goodale's comments (the leading force behind the release of the Pentagon Papers and first amendment lawyer), that President Obama is "worse for press freedom than Nixon" and things are not going well...
As if sniffing at the threat the ongoing collapse in JGBs, culminated by Toyota pulling a bond issue on soaring yields, which forced even JPM to come out with an ominously titled piece called the "VaR Shock" driven by the epic plunge in the Yen, Japan's economy minister Akira Amari has hit the wires saying "the yen's excessive strength has been largely "corrected," and further weakness could be harmful, Japan's economy minister said Sunday, suggesting the Japanese government may be happy with the currency's current level....
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
Note from dshort: In response to a special request and in light of the strong market performance in the S&P 500 and meteoric rise in the Nikkei 225, I've updated my Mega-Bear weekly chart series through Friday's close.
It's time again for an update of our "Real" Mega-Bears, an inflation-adjusted overlay of three secular bear markets. It aligns the current S&P 500 from the top of the Tech Bubble in March 2000, the Dow in of 1929, and the Nikkei 225 from its 1989 bubble high.
The chart below is consistent with my preference for real (inflation-adjusted) analysis of long-term market behavior. The nominal all-time high in the index occurred in October 2007, but when we adjust for inflation, the "real" all-time high for the S&P 500 occurred in March 2000.
Global X, the New York-based ETF sponsor known for its unique lineup of commodities and emerging markets funds, announced six of its ETFs will be reverse split, including three gold mining-related funds.
The $29.4 million Global X Gold Explorers ETF (NYSE: GLDX) will undergo a 1-for-4 reverse split while the $2.78 million Global X Junior Miners ETF (NYSE: JUNR) will see a 1-for-3 reverse split. The Global X Pure Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: ...
It seems that every Tuesday in 2013 since January 8 has been positive on the Dow. And this past Tuesday was no exception. Now that sounds like a trend to put money on -- buy the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) at the close each Monday and close out the position late on Tuesday.
The Dow and S&P 500 both hit new all-time highs once again on Wednesday, while the Nasdaq hit its highest level since November 2000. The “risk on” allocation of new investment capital into cyclicals continues, although Wednesday saw leadership from defensive sectors Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Telecom, along with Financials. Nevertheless, ConvergEx reports that the average correlation of the ten S&P business sectors to the overall index averaged 82% last month. While that is below the 86% averag...
BMY - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – Shares in drug maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., are ripping higher today, up 6.5% at $44.94, the highest level in more than a decade, ahead of the release of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2013 Annual Meeting abstracts tonight. The ASCO Annual Meeting begins on May 31st in Chicago. Options on BMY are far more active than usual today, with overall volume topping 64,000 contracts by 12:25 p.m. ET, versus average daily volume of around 11,400 c...
We are starting to see some very extreme readings on our monthly and weekly index charts since there has been no correction this year. I posted below first the monthly chart of the S&P 500 going back 15 years showing bollinger bands – rarely do we get above the upper one, and never have we been this far above. Then below that I posted (with 4 charts of 4 years each) the weekly data and you can see we are at a rare time we are above the weekly bollinger band as well. This non stop rally is getting very historical.
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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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