White Christmas Portfolio – Month 2
by Phil - December 5th, 2011 7:49 am
What a first month we had!
Oddly enough, when I was last on BNN (I’ll be on again this afternoon), we were just about to start our newest virtual portfolio after closing down this year’s virtual $25,000 Portfolio early as we were way past goal, over $130,000 on the 20th (up 420%). As that portfolio went so well, we decided to play a "White Christmas Portfolio" – as I explained on TV on Oct 24th, which aimed to practice making the same kind of small, aggressive trades, with the aim of turning $15,000 on October 24th into $25,000 by Christmas (66%).
In fact, I gave out our first trade idea, GNW, which was $6.30 during my BNN interview, now $6.47 (up 3%). We discussed the Jan $5/7.50 bull call spread for $1.10, which is now $1.40 and that’s up 27% but, more importantly, your gain playing the option INSTEAD of the stock is .30, vs .17 – that’s almost 100% better gain with NO MORE RISK than buying the stock while requiring less than 20% of the cash commitment (and no margin on just the bullish spread).
Of course, our actual WCP trade idea had another component deemed too confusing for TV – we also sold the short Dec $6 puts for .85 as an offset, which lowered the cash cost of the trade to .35 and those puts are now .20, up another .65 on their own and the net of the entire trade has gone from .35 to $1.20, which is a 242% gain on net. Of course, none of that matters – what matters is that you put a net of $350 into the trade (10 contracts) plus about $600 in margin on the short puts on October 24th and you can cash that trade out today (we elected to cover it on Friday) for $1,200 and that is clearly 242% more cash than you started with on October 24th – the margin requirement is gone, but the cash remains!
With that kind of success on our first trade, it’s not too surprising that the whole portfolio has been doing well. We left off last Wednesday with a balance of $35,540 – far better than we expected to do, obviously, in our first month (up 137%) so we decided it was prudent to get back to cash as we were "too bullish".…
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by Phil - November 24th, 2011 5:27 pm
What an ugly finish November is having!
We’ve been trying to get bullish with little success and, if we are not reversing tomorrow, I will be regretting the wasted time poking at bullish plays when we could have been going "wheeeee" on the slide.
I thought that blue line on Dave Fry’s chart was going to hold, it’s about 2.5% down from our Must Hold level for the S&P on the Big Chart (1,235) and that would have been a reasonable (and slight) overshoot of the 10% drop we were expecting so we played for the bounce but now we’ve blown our -5% line at 1,173 and our next support level is -10% at 1,112 – a very sad level to revisit if we do.
Technically, of course, we’re breaking down. Fundamentally, I’m not so sure. The fear is palpable as Europe looks terrible and clearly all these austerity measures are taking a toll on the Global economy but it’s simply NOT showing up in the data yet. PMI’s are dropping across the Globe but the Purchasing Manager’s index is a SENTIMENT indicator that reflects the OPINION of the buyers about business prospects.
As I have been pointing out (yes, there was a point) in my recent series of articles about market and media manipulation – there is a protracted campaign underway to push sentiment down – to chase retail buyers out of the markets.
Who is doing this? Perhaps it is the IBanks, who want to bottom out the market ahead of QE3, when we’ll be off to the races again. Perhaps it is the Fed and Treasury, who want to chase people into the $140Bn worth of bonds they have to sell each month. Perhaps it is the Republicans, who want to campaign against the worst possible economy next year to prove that Obama has blown his handling of the economy almost as bad as Bush did – so we may as well try one of their idiots again since it seems to make no difference. Don’t laugh – I have a button for Romney that says that…
Whatever and whoever is behind the negativity (and let’s not forget Germany, who are angling to take control of the EU and will be able to do so if things deteriorate further) – our job as investors is not to particularly care – but…
Hedging For Disaster – 5 Plays that Make 500% if the Market Falls (Members Only)
by Phil - August 11th, 2011 7:30 am
We took our last round of disaster protection back in early July and almost all of those trades are well in the money.
Since you know I am a big fan of taking cash off the table in either direction, let’s not be greedy and look at ways to "roll" our downside protection into new downside plays so we can set SENSIBLE stops on our now deep in the money short plays (very similar to our Mattress Strategy). Keep in mind that this is the biggest market decline we’ve had since last Summer, so adding a layer of protection here doubles our returns if this is the first leg of a major sell-off, or it gives us a smaller hedge that we can roll up later while we take our bigger hedges off the table. As I have to say WAY too often to members – It’s not a profit until you cash it in!
Hedging for disaster is a concept I advocated during another "recovery," in October of 2008, where we made our cover plays to carry us through a worrisome holiday season and into Q1 earnings – "just in case." That "just in case" saved a lot of virtual portfolios! The idea of disaster hedges high return ETFs that will give you 3-5x returns in a major downturn. That way, 10% allocated of your virtual portfolio to protection can turn into 30-50% on a dip, giving you some much-needed cash right when there is a good buying opportunity. At the time, I advocated SKF Jan $100s at $19. SKF hit $300 around Thanksgiving and those calls made a profit of over $280 (1,400%), so putting even just 5% of your virtual portfolio into that financial hedge would give you back 75% of your virtual portfolio when you cash out.
Keep in mind these are INSURANCE plays – you expect to LOSE, not win but, if you need to ride out a lot of bullish positions through an uncertain period, this is a pretty good way to go. We cashed out our bullish $25KP positions by July 28th, (our active virtual portfolio) with the S&P at 1,340 and, since then, I’ve had a very hard time making long-term bullish picks. I want top put up a Buy List but it’s still too risky – this will be step 1 though – protect first, then buy! Once we cash…
Flip Flop Friday – 2% Up or Bust!
by Phil - August 5th, 2011 8:30 am
As the great John "Hannibal" Smith used to say: "I love it when a plan comes together."
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Of course Smith’s plans usually involved a great deal of mayhem culminating in things blowing up – very apropos considering the massive market blow up this week. The plan in Monday Morning’s Alert to Members, which was titled "Cashing in Longs and Back to Cashy and Shortish" was pretty straight-forward:
If you want to play this rally for more upside, you can still short the VIX (we did the Aug $19 puts on Friday for $1, now 1.20) or play gold down with the GLL Aug $22s, that are still .35 or the GLD Aug $155 puts at .72 BUT I’m not really believing things are fixed so these are SPECULATIVE plays to follow the rally – WHICH I DON’T BELIEVE IN. Clear?
What I do believe in is shorting the Dow with DIA Aug $119 puts at $1.20 or the SQQQ Aug $21/23 bull call spread at .85, selling the Sept $19 puts for .55 for net .30 on the $2 spread.
USO Weekly $38 puts are .44, 20 of those in the $25KP for $880! (longs are, of course off).
Let’s be straight about that, all the short-term long, including the ones in the Income Virtual Portfolio – are DONE. This was the pop we hoped for and now it’s done and back to cash!
The VIX puts are, of course dead with the VIX now at 31.66 but the Aug $22 GLL calls are still .15 (down 57%) and the GLD Aug $155 puts are now .95 (up 32%) thanks to that same rise in the VIX. Not bad for trades I did not believe…
The $25,000 Virtual Portfolio – Halfway to $100K!
by Phil - July 9th, 2011 6:39 am
Here we go again!
After a very wild ride tracking our VERY aggressive virtual portfolio, we closed out the first half with $53,942 – up 115% for the first half of the year and, since we put $11,630 back in the bank above $25,000 from last year’s $10,000 virtual portfolio, that brings us to a grand total of $65,722 – up 555% from the $10K we started with last year. Our goal in this small, aggressive virtual portfolio is $100K but forget the extra $15,722 – as I said last week, that’s our starting basis with a nice profit so we put that back into nice, safe, conservative investments (like our Income Virtual Portfolio) and that leaves us $50,000 to play with.
Our first week of trades has already been very interesting. Make sure you to read the original post and the update if you haven’t already to get an idea of what we are trying to learn by following this "hyper-aggressive" virtual portfolio model – especially last quarter’s lesson on taking those profits off the table and working on those losers. Our "biggest loser" of last quarter was, of course, FAS and those Aug $23 calls hit $5 last week (we are already out), which is $40,000! Anytime you can roll and DD a position in a $25,000 virtual portfolio that eventually cashes out for $40,000 – you will probably come out well…
The problem is mainly in learning how to stick with a position like that and that requires a lot of conviction because there were dozens of opportunities to panic out with a loss and that’s why we practice this kind of trading – you need to get the experience in playing these out over time so that you can learn to BELIEVE in the strategy and, even then, it should only be used in places where you REALLY have a very good reason to believe a stock or ETF will, eventually, come back sharply enough to make all the work pay off – because it’s a LOT of work!
Of course, no one makes 100% every six months by taking it easy, right? Practice, practice, practice with virtual trading until you get comfortable with the strategies and, even then, use them sparingly. This aggressive virtual portfolio is meant to be a small part (10% or less) of a larger, more conservative virtual portfolio, like our nice,…
Vacation-Proofing Your Virtual Portfolio
by Phil - June 25th, 2011 7:55 am
Option Sage Submits:
When driving a car and some object appears on the road ahead do you usually run right over it or do your best to avoid it?
Don’t we all take action in real-life based on the new information we receive that changes the old paradigm? Take the first two guys in this video: Who would you rather be, the first or the second guy? While the second gentleman reacts and looks ridiculous in so doing, he’s the guy that is more likely to survive when real disaster hits because he’s reacting to new information. In fact he doesn’t even know what’s making everyone else react, he just knows that when 99% are moving one way in panic, it’s best not to fight the crowd or he will be trampled. It’s no different in the market. Pride, ego and old theses have no place when new information directly contradicts an existing trade.
This week, we used DIA and QQQ puts and calls to "react" to quick changes in the market while we waited for better information before making more permanent changes in our positions. This gave us the benefit of the
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Wild Weekly Wrap-Up (Part 1) – Our Billion Dollar Oil Shorts!
by Phil - June 11th, 2011 6:08 am
That’s how much money our oil futures trade ideas generated over the past two weeks and I certainly hope everyone got a piece of theirs but, out of curiosity, how did our other trade ideas do in this terrible market? We track our virtual portfolios but we have many trade ideas during members chat on both sides of the fence so let’s take some time to review what worked and what didn’t work as the Dow dropped 500 points since the holiday.
Keep in mind this is just virtual performance and I’ll do my best to not miss anything and I’m going to include the Friday before the holiday weekend so we can review what our mind-set was as we set ourselves up for the long weekend as well as how we handled the moves since in both our daily posts and our Member Chat. I’m not going to narrate each day, that’s what Stock World Weekly is for – I’ll just make quick comments on the trades when appropriate. Keep in mind, with all options trading, once you make a quick 20%, you should be looking for the exits (see our Strategy Section) by setting stops (and we also stop out with a 20% loss of course) – we are just lucky when we happen to do better.
TGIF – Dollar Done Diving or Destined to Drop?
In the main post (main post trade ideas can be read daily by Report Members or higher – the rest are in our Private Member Chat), I discussed shorting oil futures off our $101.90 (at the time) target. We didn’t like waiting for $102 because sometimes it failed. Oil finished at $99 this week but was as low as $97.24 as we put pressure on the NYMEX pump crew by accepting their bogus offers to buy oil over $101 per barrel. This post was the first one where I decided to go public with what we were doing, hoping to break the back of the market manipulators at the NYMEX by letting as many people as possible in on the trade. This is also where I laid out our bearish fundamental case for oil so good for review. My comment in the morning post was:
As I mentioned yesterday, this week’s action is
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Margin Call Monday – Yuan Falls Limit Down to the Dollar
by Phil - April 25th, 2011 8:20 am
It’s amazing what the MSM ignores these days.
The PBOC raised the Yuan exchange by 0.0005 and that microscopic move set off a panic that dropped the Yuan it’s daily 0.5% limit against the Dollar – marking a huge and violent reversal to the recent trend and signaling that China’s usual tight control of their economy may be starting to unravel. Chinese banks scrambled to buy Dollars to meet a Central Bank rule that bars them from having Dollar short positions overnight but it’s doubtful that all were able to comply in that violent action.
The Shanghai Composite fell 1.5% this morning (Hong Kong was closed) but it does not show up in the charts on the WSJ’s main page nor is it mentioned on CNBC – perhaps because it conflicts with the weak-Dollar narrative they are using to drive the speculative commodity frenzy. Ignoring problems in China was a big theme of the summer of 2008 – as we rallied into the second biggest stock market collapse in history from Dow 11,000 in mid-July to 11,782 on Aug 11th and we were still testing 11,600 through Sept 1st but then things started going wrong as we broke below 11,000, then 10,000, then 9,000, then 8,000 – finally stopping at 7,500 (down 33%) on Nov 20th.
Special Report: How to Make Millions in Metal and Oil:
As I keep telling Members, we don’t have to be worried about missing a sell-off, it will be long and relentless when and if it comes as will the rise we get as inflation begins to kick in. Gold is now over $1,500 for a week and, before you waste money on gold – let’s look at an alternative: GLD is the ETF that tracks gold and, if you think Gold is going to $1,600 – rather than plunk $1,500 down on an ounce of gold to make 6.6% on a move up, you can buy the GLD $140/160 bull call spread for $790 (1 contract spread at $7.90). As GLD is currently at $146.74, that spread is currently $674 in the money and carried a $116 premium BUT – for about 1/2 the cost of an ounce of gold, if GLD gets to $160 (approximately $1,600 an ounce) then that spread is worth $2,000 – a $1,210 gain on that same $100 move up in gold!
What’s the catch?…
Fibonacci Rules – Sometimes, the Old Ways Are the Best!
by Phil - February 19th, 2011 9:59 am
Crazy stuff, right?
If you have never before paid attention to Fibonacci Retracement Levels, I would strongly consider paying attention to the S&P chart below. This chart shows, 2 years later, a consolidation and breakout that could have been predicted in March of 2009. That’s right, if you asked a Fibonacci technical guy where the S&P was going to consolidate on March 10th of 2009 – he would have said: "Assuming that yesterday was the bottom and coming off our high of 1,576, then I would say we will consolidate between 1,014 and 1,229."
Leonardo of Pisa (and independent republic at the time) was born in 1,175 and died at the ripe old age of 65. Pisa was a city of about 10,000 people – a mixture of Muslims, Christians and Jews. Construction on the great tower began in 1,173 and was not completed until 1,319 (so don’t complain about modern union jobs!) but they knew that it was listing in 1,178 so the point is: Leonardo was born in a small town that had a huge architectural problem.
Fibonacci’s father was a State customs worker (essentially overseeing floor trading) and encouraged his son to take up studies in mathematics which, at the time, included learning Hindu Vedic math, which was the foundation of modern algebra and which Fibonacci came to greatly respect, saying:
The knowledge of the art very much appealed to me before all others, and for it I realized that all its aspects were studied in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence, with their varying methods; and at these places thereafter, while on business. I pursued my study in depth and learned the give-and-take of disputation. But all this even, and the algorism, as well as the art of Pythagoras I considered as almost a mistake in respect to the method of the Hindus.
Thus Fibonacci became the driving force by which Hindu-Arabic numerals came to replace the Roman ones. Fortunately, at the time, the arts and sciences were still supported and he found the favor Emperor Frederick II, who funded his studies – even though they didn’t make him any money (imagine that!). Fibonacci did not invent Fibonacci numbers (it was probably India’s Pingala in 200 BC), he just realized they could be applied to natural growth and regression sequences and, as it turned out,…
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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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