Friday Follies – Did Obama Blow Jobs Speech?
by Phil - September 9th, 2011 8:15 am
Obama did not satisfy the markets last night.
Although his $447Bn American Jobs Act is a step in the right direction, $307Bn (68%) of the money is coming in the form of tax cuts and Unemployment Insurance extensions, leaving just $140Bn to go towards the creation of actual jobs. Even if every single dollar of that money went directly towards paying a $40,000 salary – the entire amount would employ just 3.5M people, not even 1/4 of the amount of people who are out of work.
Is that the best America can do? Come up with a jobs program that MIGHT lower unemployment from 9% to 7% over the next year? Of course we won’t create 3.5M jobs for $140Bn because a lot of that money gets spent on parts and materials. It’s certainly not that the projects are unnecessary, it’s just that the scope of the program is too limited to have a substantial impact.
In fact, exactly one year ago, I wrote "Jobless Thursday – America’s Infrastructure Crisis" where I laid out the TRILLIONS of Dollars worth of repair work that MUST be done in this country sooner or later. Why don’t we do them SOONER, while 20M potential workers are sitting on the sidelines? We MUST spend at least $2Tn on infrastructure in the next 10 years so why not spend $400Bn this year and next rather than waiting until the last minute to do anything? The money is all borrowed over time either way but NOW is when people need to get back to work and, of course, if we get necessary projects done now instead of 10 years from now, then we, the People, get to enjoy 10 years of beneficial use out of them. This is not complicated stuff folks, just common sense…
Nonetheless, $447Bn is 3% of our GDP and figure about 2/3 gets spent in the first year so the program SHOULD keep us out of Recession in 2012 – yay for that at least. If Recession is off the table, then the markets are underpriced – now we have to consider whether or not the bill can get past the Republicans in Congress. By the way, if you have not read "Reflections of a GOP Operative" yet, please do – it’s an excellent insight into the current political climate.
We had flipped bearish yesterday, anticipating…
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DiggWednesday Wheeee – Our W’s Are Shaping Up Nicely!
by Phil - August 31st, 2011 8:27 am
Wheeeeeeeeeeee!
Here we go again. We made it through our "Testy Tuesday" and, as you can see from our Big Chart, we hit our goals with 4 of our 5 indexes coming right up to their resistance lines – not bad for support lines we first drew in April of 2009!
As I often say: I am neither Bullish nor Bearish – just Rangeish. Rangeish has been the winning play for us for quite a while. I was on TV August 2nd, where I laid out our plan for the month (20% drop) and we were VERY HAPPY to do our bottom fishing at those -10% lines for the last few weeks and now we are back in a zone of relative uncertainty where we must hold our Must Hold lines.
On Friday, the 19th, we were confident enough in our bottom call (I led the post off with: "We are now officially getting silly" as the futures tanked that morning) that we shorted EWG puts in the morning post and shorted the VIX at $42.50 with a VXX spread that’s already up 1,433% but well on track to double that.
Also in that morning post (and this is just the free stuff!) I put up a bullish trade idea on XOM at $70 that is obviously doing very well (XOM $74 yesterday) as well as calling for longs on the Futures at Russell (/TF) at 650, Nasdaq (/NQ) at 2,050 and Oil (/CL) at $80. If you didn’t play those bullish, don’t look now because you might cry…
Once the market opened that day, we added an aggressive play on HPQ in our $25,000 virtual portfolio, buying 20 Sept $26 calls for .60 (now .93, up 55%) and paying for them by selling 5 Sept $23 puts for $1.57 (now .20, up 87%). That trade was net $415 and is currently worth $1,760 – up 324% in two weeks.
We are able to do that when we take advantage of the very high VIX (which we expected to go down) as well as taking specific advantage of HPQ coming off disappointing earnings but it’s not the charts — it can NEVER be the charts that tell you to buy a stock that is plummeting – it’s FUNDAMENTALS!
We also picked up TIE that afternoon and an aggressive upside play on the Russell…
Make Billion$ With StockTwits (and Win a Free Quarter!)
by Phil - July 9th, 2011 4:34 pm
Billions!
That’s right, if you followed Philstockworld on Stocktwits this past month and followed our trade ideas, you could have made Billions of Dollars. Not bad but that’s only a tiny portion of what you get at PSW every day. Needless to say, we’ve had a good month but it’s no fun being right if nobody knows it so let’s review a month of Tweets and also make it worth your while to send others to Our StockTwits Link and follow us there.
For the month of July, every new follower will be entered in a random drawing and one will be selected to win a free 1-year subscription to the PSW Report – our twice-daily Email that gives you access to all of our non-Premium posts as well as Stock World Weekly. If you are already a paying PSW subscriber and win this drawing, we will give you a 3-month extension of your Current Membership Level instead added to your current subscription.
If you are a Member and your friends subscribe and tweet us your name – one of those named members will also be the winner of a 3-month extension of that member’s current level. The more friends you have, the better the chances to win!
We’re doing this because we need to build up our social networking presence so I’ve been tweeting more in June. You can go to our StockTwits site and see all 45 Tweets posted since June 1st (there are many also before that) but I’m just going to review the ones that were less generic (we auto-tweet my posts) to give you an idea of what kind of value your friends can get out of this free service:
philstockworld Phil Davis
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Stock World Weekly: Fireworks! Our 12 Dow Plays Make $6,720 in 2 Weeks!
by SWW - July 3rd, 2011 11:54 am
$6,720!
Not bad for our little newsletter… On June 19th, we published this list of 12 bullish trade ideas on the Dow in the weekend edition of Stock World Weekly that are already up $6,720 in just two weeks! How’s that for value?
The July $119/116 bear put spread was still at .90 on Monday, well after we flipped bullish (the "Bernanke Bottom" was called by Phil on Thursday Morning, June 22nd and reported in last week’s SWW) so a nickel loss on that side (5% or $50 on 10 contracts), which was well offset by the following gains:
- AA July $15 puts sold for $0.63, now $0.09 - up $540 (85%)
- BAC 2013 $7.50 puts sold for $0.60, now $0.61 – down $10 (1.6%)
- CSCO Jan $14 puts sold for $0.92, now $0.60 - up $320 (34%)
- DIS July $37 puts sold for $0.55, now $0.06 – up $490 (89%)
- GE 2013 $15 puts sold for $1.40, now $1.16 – up $240 (17%)
- HD Aug $32 puts sold for $0.82, now $0.17 – up $650 (79%)
- HPQ Jan $31 puts sold for $1.60, now $0.93 – up $670 (41%)
- INTC Jan 2013 $20 puts sold for $2.71, now $2.24 – up $470 (17%)
- MMM July $87.50 puts sold for $0.71, now $0.07 - up $640 (90%)
- MSFT 2013 $22.50 puts sold for $2.75, Now $1.94 - up $810 (29%)
- VZ 2013 $35 puts sold for $5.10, now $3.82 – up $1,280 (25%)
- WMT Jan $50 puts sold for $2.05, now $1.43 – up $620 (30%
That’s a total profit of $6,720 on these 12 positions in just two weeks. As our daily readers know, Phil called for cash on Friday so short-term bullish plays like these were taken off the table as we flirt with potential disaster next week.
If, however, the weekend goes smoothly and the markets maintain their bullish bent – we have all this lovely cash to deploy next week (and there are two brand new bullish trade ideas in this weekend’s edition of Stock World Weekly) and that BAC play still hasn’t made it’s money yet while GE is up "just" 17% so far – so both of those trade ideas are still ripe for new entries but, as Phil likes to say:
"Never worry about getting back to cash – I’m sure we’ll find something to trade tomorrow."
Click here for the latest Stock World Weekly: Fireworks
We hope you and your family have a very happy holiday weekend.
All the best,
Ilene & Elliot
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Testy Tuesday – Dow 12,000 or Dow 11,500?
by Phil - June 14th, 2011 8:26 am
Are we "still too heavy"?
That was what I said about valuations back on May 4th, when we set new watch levels. $96 was our goal on oil, we hit that and went long yesterday. Of course, in our upside-down Wonderland Market, falling oil prices are somehow BAD for the Transports and we thought we accounted for that with our 2,448 target but they failed that last week and fell another 125 (5%) since then. Similarly (easier to write than say), the Nasdaq blew through our 2,700 line and bottomed out at 2,639 yesterday (-2.25%) but the Russell has been the biggest surprise, leading us all the way down to 773 in yesterday’s action before bouncing back to lucky 777.
As we expected yesterday, the Dollar was sacrificed on the altar of keeping the markets from going to Hell in a handbasket – dropping all the way from 75.20 to 74.80 (0.5%) which gave us only a flat market but the 74.60 line held in overnight and we’re back to 74.80 and now the pre-markets are wondering why they gained 0.75% in overnight trading. Oil popped all the way back to $97.80 before failing spectacularly back to $96.50 but we have stayed on the sidelines so far, waiting to see if we can establish a new (hopefully lower) range to trade in.
We did take a poke at higher oil prices with the USO July $39 calls at $1.10 and they finished the day right at $1.10 so very dull so far but we figured oil might be good for a pop into Wednesday’s inventories. We also shed most of our bearish bets on yesterday’s dip and flipped fairly bullish but we haven’t done a lot of bottom fishing yet as our main plan is to use a fake market rally to cash out the longs we have left and flip short into the holiday weekend. As the moment though, I have noticed that the Dow has been holding up much better than it’s peers and we have that lovely 12,000 line to use as a stop so let’s construct a short hedge that pays big bucks below 12,000:
Notice how the Dow is holding up better than the other indices. Part of that is a flight to safety as several Dow components are considered "safety stocks" like KFT, MCD, JNJ… But, in the long haul, they all fall down eventually so we…
Tuesday – Testing our Reference Levels (as predicted!)
by Phil - May 17th, 2011 8:36 am
Wheeeee – this is fun!
It’s always fun when the market does what you predict it’s going to do. Last Wednesday I said we were going to see a pattern in the indexes that was going to look like the "M" in the McDonald’s arches and Stock World Weekly did a nice job of illustrating it this weekend, which I put up in yesterday’s post as well. At no point did we change our mind but we did change direction as we bounced around within a fairly tight intra-day trading range but our macro picture remains intact and now those patterns are looking very obvious on the charts.
In last Thursday’s post, I had mentioned: "those Ms are going to look dangerously sloppy (more bearish) if they can’t at least round out the top today" and that’s where we are now, with sloppy M’s that may not even hold our reference levels, which were our old breakout levels that we had hoped would support the broader rally.
Of course we didn’t have much adjusting to do (which is why we’re just having fun with day trades) while we wait for the pattern to complete because it was the Wednesday before that, on May 4th, when I called the bottom on the Dollar and, therefore , a top on the market.
Right in the main post (which is Emailed to Report-level Members and above at 8:30 every weekday) I suggested the TZA June $37/42 bull call spread at $1. This one is going very well as TZA is already at $36.65 and the spread is at $1.35, up 35% in 2 weeks – now THAT’s a hedge! Our offset to that was to sell the weekly RUT $825 puts at $1.15 and they did, as expected, expire worthless that Friday which made the whole trade a free ride with a .15 credit and up 1,000% so far. Notice how that’s a great cover because if the RUT went up, for sure we keep the $1.15 and we have a free hedge but if it went down but held our levels (it did) we still get a free hedge and, if it went down and exceeded our expected range, then we have $5 coming to us from the spread to help pay for a roll.
Other hedges we took that day in Member chat were GLD Aug $135…
Weekend Reading – Reviewing the Reviews
by Phil - January 1st, 2011 8:28 am
I am still trying to get more bullish.
I was thinking about writing something cute like I resolve to get more bullish but that would be wrong. I try, in my own humble way, to "get" the market right. That means I am not bullish or bearish but Truthish (to further botch Stephen Colbert’s use of the word) and, as Buddah says: "There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." Confucious reminds us that there are three methods by which we may learn wisdom: "First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
In that spirit, we will spend the day in reflection so that we are better able to start on that long road to the truth so that we will be better able to imitate the things that will work in the year to come while trying to avoid making mistakes that will give us bitter experiences.
This post is not about me – We had a fantastic year and I’ve already given some outlook for 2011 back on the 19th in that weekend’s "It’s Never too Early to Predict the Future" and our current position is short-term bearish in the Jan-April time-frame, looking for a pullback to at least 1,200 on the S&P and possibly back to 1,150.
After that, we are expecting a return to steady gains but without the irrational exuberance we’re currently experiencing. So no, I am not bearish – I simply think we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. Since we don’t know where the rally train will stop, we have our "Breakout Defense – 5,000% in 5 Trades or Less" from Dec 11th, which were a set of very bullish, highly levered plays where a little bet can pay off a lot if we simply hold our long-established breakout levels.
How much is "a lot"? Well my GE trade idea, for example, was to sell the 2013 $12.50 puts for $1.10 (net $1.15 in ordinary margin according to TOS) and to use that money to buy the 2012 $17.50/20 bull call spread for .95, which was a net .15 credit on a $2.50 spread that was on the money at the time. GE has gained about .75 since the 11th and…
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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
(