Monday Monetary Madness – This is what the Yield’s Like when Fed Doves Cry
by Phil - February 20th, 2012 6:37 am
Why do we scream at each other
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry – Prince
It's no coincidence that this week we will be hearing from Fed Governors Kocherllakota (1pm Tues), Hoenig (12:30 Weds), Plosser (1:30 Weds), and Bullard (9:15 Thurs) ahead of our 2-Year Note Auction (1pm Tues), 5-Year Note Auction (1pm Weds) and 7-Year Note Auction (1pm Thursday) as the Fed needs to bring out 4 of it's 5 most hawkish members to talk up the Dollar (by talking down QE3) to keep those rates paid as low as possible for Treasury.
Once the Hawks drive the rates down and the notes are sold, the Doves will once again be released to talk them back up by extolling the glories of QE3 – completely reversing whatever was said before just as the Hawks will once again be called upon to reverse what the Doves say at a later date – when they need rates to come back down. The joke of it all is that traders will react to each statement, every time, as if it's a "game changer" and adjust their positions to reflect the new reality of the moment. It reminds me of a quote from Orwell's 1984:
As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
After all, what…
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DiggWednesday Worries – Yentervention, Euro Style
by Phil - February 8th, 2012 5:16 am
78.50 on the Dollar!
The Yen finally got back to 77 and EUR/CHF back to 1.21 so my theory that the BOJ has given up on the Dollar and moved to boosting the Euro is playing out nicely.
This does not make me more bullish (expecting falling Dollar to boost the markets) because, in the grand scheme of things, this is kind of like now there are two kids building a sand wall on the beach instead of one – sure it will last longer than the wall just one kid was building but, eventually, the tide will get it anyway or, as Jimi Hendrix said more poetically: "Castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually."
Once you start messing around with Forex markets, you are messing with major macro forces that are hard to control. Japanese banks have $7.5Tn of Japanese bonds at 1% – what happens to the value of those bonds if the BOJ does push the Yen down 10%? Who takes that $750Bn hit? What if rates go up to 2% – what's the value of the bonds then? Who will bail out the Japanese Banks when they have a multi-Trillion Dollar (several hundred Trillion Yen) hole in their balance sheets? Do Japanese spreadsheets even have room for Quadrillions? They are going to need it!
Then there's this Bloomberg article on the Central Banks, who have doubled their balance sheets since 2006 to $13.2Tn but, magically, have caused no inflation (according to Ben Bernanke – not according to people who actually buy food and stuff). China is now sitting on $4.5Tn of other people's TBills (mostly ours) and that's up $1.5Tn in a year. The ECB is right behind them with $3.6Tn and another $1Tn supposedly coming in the next EFSF round and the Fed has $2.9Tn plus whatever nonsense they are running off book.
So, how is it that WE are the bad currency here? If the Dollar is a problem, then China, who's GDP is only about $8Tn (optimistically, possibly $5.5Tn depending on who's measuring) is almost as insane as Japanese bankers and maybe more so as they are betting on our country's ability to pay and maintain the value of the Dollar (already a fail, right?). I suppose no one can ever recognize losses and just carry more and more junk…
Friday Follies – No Jobs but Hey, Look at Facebook!
by Phil - February 3rd, 2012 8:19 am
Distractions.
That's all we have lately. Greece's silly $171Bn loan is meant to distract us from Europe's $17Tn debt hole and the US continues to borrow $171Bn PER MONTH to cover it's deficit and we don't even talk about Japan as the debt climbs over 220% of their rapidly declining GDP and who knows what's going on in China but, generally, when you have double-digit declines in home prices on a monthly basis – there's going to be a problem down the road.
This may be my last bearish post before drinking the technical Kool-Aid this weekend and we've already selected 5 trades for our Members that will make 200-500% if the market keeps moving forward and there are still plenty of stocks we can make a lovely Buy List out of if this rally has legs – especially the way we like to bet, since our hedges allow us to make very nice returns, as long as we simply hold our current levels.
There's the rub though – are the current levels sustainable? The nice thing about consolidations like the one we've been having this year is that they firm up a floor and give us a very obvious exit point on the way down so we can move some of that sideline cash into play – as long as we hold 12,500 on the Dow and 1,300 on the S&P and 2,800 on the Nasdaq – pretty simple strategy, right?
Notice the 2nd row has our major indices priced in Euros and our third priced in Yen. My main issue has been that we've been much weaker than it seemed as the Dollar's relentless decline masked a downturn in the inflation-adjusted price of our stocks (and the weak Dollar also serves to inflate revenues reported by multinational companies) but, at the moment, we're at our breakout levels by any measure so we may as well go with the flow until we see a proper reversal.
First we need to get past our NFP report at 8:30 of course. I'm expecting a miss but will the market even care or will that just mean Uncle Ben has an excuse to pump up the QE according to their new "formula"?
Keep in mind that what Bernanke said last week regarding the Fed's system for determining policy boils down to – As long…
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…
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…
Bulls Feed On Large-Cap Financials Weekly Call Options
by Option Review - December 2nd, 2011 1:49 pm
Today’s tickers: JPM, GS, VLO & HRB
JPM - JPMorgan Chase & Co. – Financial names are on a tear today, and some options strategists are positioning for the good times to continue in the near term. Weekly call options on some of the large-cap financials are flying off the shelves this afternoon, as traders look to take advantage of the rally while it lasts. Shares in JPMorgan are soaring 8.2% to stand at $32.96, making the stock the best performer of the 15-largest holdings in the XLF, as of 12:30 PM in New York. Investors prepared to benefit from continued gains in the price of the underlying purchased in- and out-of-the-money call options with one week remaining to expiration. Bulls picked up roughly 1,800 in-the-money calls at the Dec. ’09 $32 strike for an average premium of $1.06 each, and bought another 3,000 calls at the higher $33 strike at an average premium of $0.39 apiece. Call buyers may profit at expiration next week in the event that shares in JPMorgan Chase & Co. exceed the average breakeven prices of $33.06 and $33.39, respectively.
GS - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. – Similar to that observed on JPM, near-term bullish activity in Goldman’s weekly calls indicates traders are willing to shell out premium today to speculate on continued recovery in the price of the financial institution’s shares over the next five trading sessions. Goldman’s shares are up 5.6% at $99.75 in early-afternoon trade. Options players exchanged more than 5,900 calls at the Dec. ’09 $105 strike against open interest of 187 contracts, and appear to have purchased the majority of the contracts for an average premium of $1.05 a-pop. Investors long the call options may profit at expiration next week in the event that shares in Goldman Sachs surge 6.3% to surpass the average breakeven point on the upside at $106.05. Finally, bullish sentiment spread to the higher $110 weekly call where traders paid an average premium of $0.30 to buy some 630 contracts.
VLO - Valero Corp. – Financial stocks are not the only bright spots in the market today, as evidenced by the 5.0% rally in shares of oil refiner Valero Corp. to $23.22. Options traders hoping the stock will record many more green sessions during the next couple of months picked up January 2012 contract call options this morning. It appears traders purchased around 2,500 calls at the Jan. 2012 $24 strike for…
Thrill Is Gone Thursday – Already?
by Phil - December 1st, 2011 8:11 am
Yesterday was very exciting, but now what?
David Fry summed up yesterday’s action perfectly, saying "Wednesday’s massive rally was prompted by sudden global central bank intervention adding (printing money) liquidity (reducing the lending rate overseas to zero basically) to shore up sovereign debt in the eurozone. They basically set up a swap facility to do the job in the future. Is it a cure or a bailout? No, this is a handout. And it doesn’t solve the problems the eurozone is facing."
"But, it must be said that the European leaders must have hit a dead end in talks and a potential financial panic must have seemed likely. Mind you, Mr. Bernanke is perfectly comfortable with reflation and money printing. He’s been at it for a long time. It will take years for the Freedom of Information Act to discover how much money and to whom the U.S. has given free money. Americans and others will see price increases in all products and services as a result of a weaker dollar negatively affecting purchasing power. Beyond Moral Hazard issues this is the cost you’ll see and perhaps even wonder why."
It’s the classic "stick save" that was clearly (to us) telegraphed by the very low-volume blow-off bottom last week and now, in retrospect, it is also clear that the market manipulators and their media hounds were pulling out all the stops to get retail investors to SELLSELLSELL.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been railing against the market manipulation and the media nonsense that had been going on each month and today we learn that Wall Street execs did, in fact, meet privately with top Fed officials in September, according to Fed documents, and they "recommended" Central Banks make a joint effort to address the Eurozone debt crisis. Don’t forget that our Fed works for the Banksters, not vice versa! In addition to knowing well in advance this move was coming, their suggestions included boosting the global economy by buying securities, a move that may yet happen as many investors believe yesterday’s swap announcement was a prelude to additional coordinated action.
You see, it’s not enough for Lloyd Blanfein (allegedly and for example, of course, a fine man like Lloyd would never do this) to know that the Fed is going to make a massive move like yesterday – there’s much more money to be made if…
Super Tuesday Committee Failure – So What?
by Phil - November 22nd, 2011 7:43 am
Long live the Debt! In case you are voting in the next election – here are 12 people to get rid of. Much as I may blame one party over another for this failure, they all deserve what’s coming to them for A) Pretending they were going to accomplish something and B) For not now getting up and making very strong statements denouncing the corruption in politics that make it impossible for Congress to do the Nation’s business anymore.
In case you happen to be a Fox News viewer, I will try to keep this VERY simple because, as it turns out, we now have definitive studies that prove Fox News MAKES YOU STUPID. Of course, it is possible that only stupid people watch Fox News but I know many people who think they are smart and watch Fox News so I have to blame Fox News here as do researchers at Farleigh Dickenson University who found "The results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all." As I can tell you from raising my own children to be good citizens:
The biggest aid to answering correctly is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which leads to a 6-point decrease in identifying the protesters as Republicans, and a 12-point increase in the likelihood of giving the correct answer. "Jon Stewart has not spent a lot of time on some of these issues," said Cassino. "But the results show that when he does talk about something, his viewers pick up a lot more information than they would from other news sources."
Watching Fox News, by the way, led to an 18-point disadvantage (out of 53% of all respondents) in being able to answer questions like "Were Egyptians successful in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak" or "Has the Syrian uprising been successful" but that was a Fox viewer’s area of expertise compared to having a clue of what is going on in American politics other than "Obama sucks." Tied with Daily show viewers for best informed were NPR supporters but, sadly, only 21% of Americans get their news from NPR and only 18% from the Daily Show while 64% list Fox News as one of their frequent news sources.
In another study, World Public Opinion, a project managed by…
TGIF – Saved by the Bell or on a Highway to Hell?
by Phil - November 18th, 2011 8:10 am
Wheeeeeeeee, what a ride this week!
Since we went bearish on Tuesday afternoon, the Dow has dropped 450 points. That pushed our White Christmas Portfolio over the top (as we flipped bearish, of course) with a virtual balance of $26,075 including $2,565 of unrealized gains on our still-open (and still bearish) positions. That’s up $11,075 (73.7%) from our $15,000 start on October 24th and we’ll be getting back to cash and going for another $10,000 (our original goal) before Christmas.
How did we do it? We teach keeping trades short and simple in a choppy market as we stick to our trading range. Trades in the WCP were very much like the trade ideas I published Wednesday morning, from our Tuesday Member Chat at 3:21. As we had a little BS rally Wednesday afternoon, many of the trades were still makeable that day. In fact, in Seeking Allpha, where the post didn’t even go up until later that morning, Jamesbwood was able to take advantage of the XOM $77.50 puts at .14 (less than our original entry) and took a double off the table at .28 – a 100% day trade!
All of those trades ideas are great examples of the kind of trades we look for in our White Christmas Portfolio (our current, virtual, short-term portfolio) – ones we can get quickly in and out of with nice gains. We were quite satisfied with our oil shorts and cashed those out yesterday and, had President Obama followed my advice and sold those 140M barrels for $100 (could have gotten $102), he could have bought them back yesterday at $98.50 for a quick $210M profit – enough to pay for at least an hour’s worth of the deficit! Percentage-wise, he would have been better off subscribing and taking those trade ideas from our Member Chat. Those Wednesday morning trade ideas were:
- GOOG $625/620 bear put spread at $3.10 is a nice downside play – figure risking $1 to make $1.90.
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GOOG is at $600 and this spread will likely expire at $5 today – up 61.3%
- MMM $82.50 puts are $1, also a good trade for a crash tomorrow.
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MMM finished the day at $80.43 and the $82.50 puts were $2.35 – up 135%
- WYNN $130/125 bear put
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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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coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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