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…
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DiggThursday Fix – Victory In Our Time!
by Phil - October 27th, 2011 8:24 am
You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. – Winston Churchill
I do HAVE to say "I told you so!"
When I was interviewed on Monday and they asked why I’m bullish, I replied that "stimulus trumps everything" and that’s what we’ve been playing for, especially in our new White Christmas Portfolio, which will be off to a rockin’ start with the aggressive upside trades that I not only mentioned in yesterday’s post - which made easy fills yesterday morning, as the markets shook out the last of the weak hands on yet another rumor-driven dip.
We got our daily double on the AGQ calls, as expected and SSO fell all the way to $44.20 (150% profit on that trade if they finish Friday above $45) while FAS dropped $13.35 and that spread will be good for a 2,100% gain if FAS can get back to and hold $14 – which should be a snap thanks to our friends at the EU.
In the morning Alert to Members, I put up this cute little Gif to illustrate the day’s action and it was a real roller-coaster day but we stayed generally bullish, taking quick profits off our morning bear plays on DIA and USO. We added a bullish trade ideas for AMZN (complex spread), TNA (short Nov $40 puts at $3.60) but that was it for the day because my comment to Members at 11:01 was: "Dollar rejected at 76.80 – still hope for the bulls!"
Well, those bulls were us and we already had our bets in place from last week, when things were cheaper so there was nothing to do but watch as the markets took off like a rocket from that point forward. Heck, we were so bullish we even sold NFLX puts (Nov $67.50 puts for $3) as a bullish offset to a DXD hedge (which we’ll pull the bottom of today). On Monday we had picked up bullish trades on AAPL and GLW and I mentioned EWG in Friday’s post (those should be looking good this morning!) as well as our plays to go long in the Russell Futures at…
Will We Hold It Wednesday – 1,333 or Bust (as usual)
by Phil - July 20th, 2011 8:13 am
Here we go again!
We blew right though our expected bullish levels of Dow 12,500, S&P 1,317, Nasdaq 2,775 and Russell 825 but failed to make 8,300 on the NYSE so, as usual, our biggest and most difficult to manipulate index is holding us back – flashing a warning sign while the other indices scream for us to "party on." Fortunately, as I mentioned in yesterday’s morning post, we had already gone aggressively bullish with the SPY Aug $128/131 bull call spread at $1.83, selling the Sept $120 puts for $1.57 and that net .26 spread is already net $1.86 – up 615% since I posted the trade idea at 12:53 in Monday’s Member Chat.
It’s good to have a few aggressive trades like this to take advantage of market bounces. Before that we had taken the SSO Aug $51/53 bull call spread at $1.05, selling the Sept $44 puts for $1.07 for a net .02 credit at 10:46 in Member Chat (the SPY play was for late-comers who missed out on SSO). The Aug $51/53 spread finished the day yesterday at $1.35 but the real win comes from the short $44 puts, which fell to .70 so the .02 net credit is now a .65 net credit for .67 total profit, up 3,350% in less than 48 hours. See, options are fun!
The only other trade ideas from Monday were a long-term bullish play on RIMM (selling 2013 $22.50 puts for $4.20) a long futures play on the Russell Futures (/TF) off the 810 line (now 835) and I reiterated our bearish spread on CMG as I felt they would disappoint on earnings (they did). Yesterday we picked up a long-term longs on GLW, RYAAY and WFR, half covered our FAS longs (iffy so far), took a poke at shorting the DIA that worked for a quick 10%, shorted oil with a DUG spread (futures too scary) and picked up another short spread on CMG – selling 3 Aug $330 calls for $16 ($4,800) against 2 long Dec $360 calls at $18 ($3,600) for a net $1,200 credit – those should be nice winners this morning!
In the afternoon we flipped more bearish and picked up 10 SPY weekly $133 puts at $1.15 ($1,150 of our virtual dollars) for our $25,000 Virtual Portfolio and those are probably going to hurt this morning as the Dollar has been…
Put Player Portends Pullback in Corning Shares
by Option Review - February 11th, 2011 4:38 pm
Today’s tickers: GLW, EXPE, ODP & TSO
GLW - Corning Inc. – A massive put spread purchased on the glass maker this afternoon appears to be the work of an investor positioning for the price of the underlying stock to decline ahead of August 2011 expiration. Corning’s shares increased 0.55% this afternoon to arrive at $22.28 by 1:40pm in New York. The price of the underlying stock has climbed more than 51.6% since August 27, 2010, to touch a 52-week high of $23.43 just last Friday. The large bearish stance employed in Corning put options today is perhaps a sign that at least one player believes the next six months may not be as fruitful for GLW investors as the last six. The trader purchased 28,000 puts at the August $22 strike for a premium of $1.83 each, and sold the same number of puts at the lower August $18 strike at a premium of $0.56 apiece. Net premium required to buy the spread amounts to $1.27 per contract, thus positioning the investor to profit should Corning’s shares drop 7.0% from the current price of $22.28 to breach the effective breakeven point on the downside at $20.37 by August expiration day. Maximum potential profits of $2.73 pad the put player’s wallet in the event that shares in GLW plummet 19.2% to trade below $18.00 before the contracts expire in August. Corning’s shares last traded below $18.00 back on December 1, 2010.
EXPE - – Expedia, Inc. – Contrarian options traders are initiating bullish plays on the online travel company this morning in the face of a more than 18.25% decline in Expedia’s shares to an intraday low of $20.99. Bullish strategists established near- and long-term positions that suggest the firm’s earnings miss has been priced in to its shares. Some traders are betting the stock is unlikely to fall much further, while others are initiating outright bullish bets that Expedia’s shares will recover somewhat in the next few months. Shares in EXPE dropped after the company…
Massive Delta Neutral Position Signals Bearishness at Jacobs Engineering Group
by Option Review - January 26th, 2011 4:23 pm
Today’s tickers: JEC, GLW, TM & AKS
JEC - Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. – The third-largest listed U.S. engineering company popped up on our scanners today after one option strategist initiated a big delta neutral position using a large number of long-dated, in-the-money put options tied to more than 1 million shares of the underlying stock. Shares in Jacobs Engineering Group increased as much as 7.3% during the first half of the session to secure a new 2-year high of $53.10. JEC reported weaker-than-expected first-quarter results before the market opened on Tuesday, but increased earnings guidance for the full year. A spate of target share price increases and ratings upgrades from a number of analysts helped shares in Jacobs Engineering higher today. The investor responsible for nearly all of the volume in options traded on JEC today seems to be taking a contrarian view on the stock, positioning for bearish movement in the price of the underlying, while not entirely standing in the way of the rally or bullish sentiment. The trader appears to have shelled out a total of $67.127 million ($11 million for the puts, $56.127 million for the stock) to purchase 1,060,000 shares of the underlying at $52.95 each, and 20,000 in-the-money put options at the July $55 strike for a premium of $5.50 apiece on a 0.53 delta. The position may work in the investor’s favor if shares move sufficiently higher or if shares fall, however, the potential for the greatest gains lies to the downside because the value of the puts will grow much more quickly and offset any losses incurred on the decline in share price. Shares in JEC are soaring at their highest in two years but this put player is prepared to make out handsomely if the good times should come to an end.
GLW - Corning Inc. – Bullish options traders are dominating the scene at Corning this morning with shares in the glass maker now extending gains realized after the firm’s earnings report on Tuesday. Corning’s…
Which Way Wednesday – Topping or Popping?
by Phil - January 19th, 2011 8:30 am
When we first began following the Alpha 2 TradeBot pattern on Jan 3rd (see Stock World Weekly for current chart) back on Jan 3rd, I said: "Let’s assume we get that extra 2.5% between Friday’s close and expiration day – that’s going to take us to Dow 11,850 and S&P 1,285." Yesterday the Dow hit our 11,850 mark, 2 days ahead of schedule! If we break higher here (and the S&P is already at 1,295 – see David Fry’s chart) then we are "off the charts" and possibly running a whole new series – which is very possible as last year the IBanks didn’t have $25Bn worth of POMO a week to feed into their machines – that has to be worth something right? At least 10 S&P points…
If, on the other hand, S&P 1,300 becomes a hard stop and the Dow can’t hold 11,850, let alone break up over 12,000 – then the second part of my prediction was that we would pull back to Dow 10,900 and S&P 1,188 – a test of the 200 day moving averages. If we get that pullback and those levels hold, THEN we will be happy to get on the bullish bandwagon – we just want a test!
Not, of course, that we are waiting around doing nothing. We already had our "Secret Santa Inflation Hedges" and, at this point, you either have them or you shouldn’t even look as they are up well over 200% already and the market is "only" up 2.5% since then. We were waiting patiently for Russell 800 to confirm our Breakout 2 levels and we not only got that but we got several nice tests since then so we’ll have to put that one in the "win" column as well for the bulls.
While I don’t like chasing the MoMo stocks higher, AAPL and IBM show us that there are some solid fundamentals underlying the big boys and I mentioned in the Morning Post of the 6th that I did like CSCO ($20.77 at the time) and GLW ($18.98 that day) as solid, go-forward positions. Even without our option plays, they are both up nicely in less than two weeks – certainly a higher percentage (5% for GLW, 2.5% for CSCO) than AMZN, which is up $3.50 (1.8%) or NFLX, which is up $6 (3.2%), who I cautioned…
Fickle Friday’s Jobs Report
by Phil - January 7th, 2011 8:29 am
I don’t know what the Jobs will be but I’m betting on disappointment.
I had said to Members yesterday that I liked the Jan QQQQ $56 puts at .77 and the Weekly (next week, not today) QQQQ $56 puts at .53 as good ways to play a jobs miss. My comment in Member Chat was that I felt the ADP figures pushed expectations up significantly higher and now we would be much more likely to disappoint with almost any number short of 250,000 jobs added.
The key is the seasonal adjustments but there was already some very disturbing jobs numbers in the Gallup Poll, which came out last night and showed unemployment RISING from 9.3 to 9.6% in December and, even worse, the number of Underemployed workers shot up from 18.5 to 19%, just 0.5% lower than we were in January of last year.
Gallups Job Creation index showed no improvement in December but it is holding +10, which is the best net level we’ve had since October of 2008. So we have ADP going one way, yesterday’s unemployment numbers were flat and Gallup says things are getting worse. 8:30 will be very interesting indeed.
While we wait for the number, let’s take a look at last week’s post to see how things are tracking. Monday morning I mentioned we liked FCX short at $120 (a trade that was reiterated Tuesday morning) as we felt the run in copper was overdone. It was a rough week but FCX is down at $116 now so we’re on track at the moment of course we took a spread in chat, which was the Feb $119/110 bear put spread at $3.60, selling the Jan $120 calls for $3.60. That spread is now $4.60 and the calls have dropped to $2.30 for a nice net $2.30 gain already.
I said that $90 was already ridiculous for oil and we shouldn’t go any higher. We picked up the USO Feb $40 puts on Tuesday morning in Member Chat at $2.10 and those are now $3.70 so a nice $1.60 gain there, which is about the same as if we had just shorted the stock as it dropped from $39 that morning to $37.68 now. That’s where puts are very useful, you don’t have to commit as much as a short on the stock, you limit…
Thrilling Thursday – Comedy or Tragedy?
by Phil - January 6th, 2011 7:29 am
Russell 8-0-0, Russell 8-0-0! Wherefore art thou Russell8-0-0? Deny thy dollar and refuse to fall, or, if thou spike not, be but consolidating at resistance and I’ll happily Capitulate….
If it’s good enough for fair Juliet, it’s going to have to be good enough for us as the Russell finally makes it over our 800 target – the last barrier that was keeping us on the bearish side. Above these lines – it’s time to stop worrying and love the rally as we romanticize the deadly combination of QE2 the Obama tax cuts as: "A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parents’ strife."
Of course Willie Shakespeare has nothing on Jimmy Cramer, who’s pearls of wisdom are also sure to be repeated centuries from now. Last night the Bard of Wall Street sang a veritable sonnet in praise of the stock market and foretold a tale of woe for anyone dumb enough to take profits into this rally:
We got the correction this morning, Dow fell 35 points… Today’s action was proof positive that you need to stop worrying and learn to love corrections… What scares me, and what should scare you, is that if you sell your stocks here, you won’t be able to get back in. You should be worried about stocks getting away from you, because I think we can be on the verge of something big – something very positive. FORGET the fact that stocks have run up a lot in the last 6 months. For more than 10 years, this market has done nothing, THAT is the most important frame of reference…
What’s changed? We are finally starting to see big breakouts from a slew of breakouts from several large cap companies including: CAT, UTX, FCX, SWK, CBE, ETN, CSX, UNP and so many other big industrials. Ladies and gentlemen, we have waited over a decade for this move and what do people want to do now that it has arrived? They want to sell! That’s right, they want to sell. That’s right. They want to dump the stocks (sell button sound effect) because they are up way too much short-term or because they think the moves are illusory or driven by short squeezes that will
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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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