Easy Money Monday – Robbing Peter to Pay Portugal
by Phil - December 12th, 2011 8:27 am
That was easy!
Who’d have thought Europe’s problems could be over just like that? Certainly not us, as I was quite skeptical Friday Morning (see yesterday’s Stock World Weekly for the Executive Summary of the Week’s Events). As I noted in Friday morning’s post, we had ended the day on Thursday very bullish – too bullish I decided on Friday morning and I called for cashing out into the weekend at the end of the morning post. In the morning Alert to Members, I repeated:
When in doubt, sell half and, in this case, I want to get back to more cash by the day’s end in the White Christmas Portfolio as the WCP is too bullish and I’m just not in the mood to risk it so we’re not going to be too brave if the "rally" stops or even slows down.
The markets were very kind to us, heading higher all day long and giving us great exits. Heading into the close, we got a bit more bearish and, aside from existing hedges like our EDZ spread (mentioned as our key hedge in last week’s Stock World Weekly), we added DXD (ultra-short Dow) Jan $15 calls at $1.25 but we offset those with short FCX Feb $33 puts at $1.25 in our virtual White Christmas Portfolio, with 10 of those contracts on each side netting a free spread with unlimited upside (with the downside being owning FCX cheaply). As I pointed out to Members, DXD was $18.50 just 3 weeks ago.
At 3:26, just before the close, we added the SQQQ (ultra-short Nasdaq) Jan $16/19 bull call spread for $1.50, which I pointed out had a nice 100% potential upside all by itself but you could also, for example, offset it with things you REALLY want to own if they get cheap – like shorting a GOOG Jan $500 put ($1.20) or an AAPL Jan $320 put ($1.25) or a MSFT 2013 $20 put ($1.10) – the idea is to just thing of what stock you REALLY want to be jumping in and buying if the market throws a 20% off sale. If there’s nothing, then you should be thrilled with the 100% potential gain on the raw spread.
But THAT wasn’t the easy money (I’m not so egotistical that I would guarantee we open lower when it’s…
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DiggGreen Mountain Jitters Continue To Drive Heavy Trading In Options-Land
by Option Review - October 20th, 2011 3:14 pm
Today’s tickers: GMCR, TOT, BP, MSFT & OSK
GMCR - Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. – Shares in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters turned positive earlier in the session, but are now continuing to unravel on the heels of a roughly 25.0% decline in price since hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital presented analysis of the coffee company at an investor conference on Monday. Over the past month, the stock has fallen as much as 45.0% to touch today’s intraday low of $63.26 since reaching the September 20, 52-week high of $115.98. Frenzied trading in GMCR options continues today, following similarly active sessions earlier in the week. Investors are exchanging calls and puts in relatively equal numbers, with puts outpacing calls slightly in early-afternoon trade.
The front month garnered the most attention from options players placing short-term bets on the stock ahead of expiration at the end of the week. Investors hoping the stock has reached a bottom appear to have purchased in- and out-of-the-money calls, and sold puts. Meanwhile, concerned parties wary the stock could extend losses snapped up puts. The bears bought around 1,100 puts at the Oct. $55 strike for an average premium of $1.09 each. These deep out-of-the-money put options may expire worthless at expiration if shares in GMCR fail to drop sharply by the end of the trading week. But, the puts could provide quick profits for some traders if premium on the contracts rises with either volatility or further declines in the price of the underlying. The most active put on Green Mountain is the Oct. $65 strike, where nearly 6,000 puts changed hands against open interest of 1,539 positions. Trading patterns in the puts reveal mixed opinion.
Investors itching for a quick rebound in GMCR purchased October contract calls. More than 7,000 calls have traded at each of the Oct. $70 and $75 strikes. While both buyers and sellers drove volume in the contracts, there does appear to be somewhat of a bullish bias thus far today. Traders long the calls may profit at expiration should the week wrap up with shares in Green Mountain back on track. Overall volume in GMCR options is just under 100,000 contracts as of 2:10 pm on the East Coast.
BP & TOT - BP PLC & Total SA – Big prints in call options on European oil behemoths, BP and Total, shed some light on one strategist’s view of which company’s…
A Put-Selling Taunt For Microsoft Bears
by Option Review - August 12th, 2011 3:38 pm
Today’s tickers: MSFT, ALL & INTU
MSFT - Microsoft Corp. – The June low for shares in computer-maker Microsoft at $23.65 remains the low-water mark despite a 14.6% slump over the last two weeks. The selling pressure stopped on Tuesday with buyers gathering at $24.03 to support the stock. Over the remainder of the week its shares have added a further $1.25 to trade at $25.28. So while the broad market suffered a far worse fate, Microsoft bulls were loading up to the gills. One option investor wanting to make sure he doesn’t miss the boat on Friday appears determined to do better over the next three months. This options trader sold 3,000 put options at the $25 strike price expiring in October at a premium of $1.45. Writing options conveys certain obligations. In this case the investor must pay $25 for shares in the company at expiration if the share price is below the strike price at the time. While that might seem risky given the proximity of the strike price to what buyers and sellers agree Microsoft is worth today, the $1.45 premium means that in the event of having its shares put to him, the investor is effectively setting a purchase price of $23.55 or 10-cents below the June low. The position will also benefit is the broad market stops its vicious gyrations and implied volatility continues to pare its gain. Already today Microsoft’s implied volatility reading slipped by about 10% to a reading of 32%.
ALL - Allstate Corp. – Shares in the giant-insurer missed out on a Friday rally that helped build investor confidence, but one sizeable options trade points to a recovery within five months for Allstate. Its shares were lower by 1% at $25.42 and within just 6% of its very recent 52-week low. At the start of May investors shared confidence in Allstate along with a bullish view of the broader market when both valuations reached a climax. Allstate at the time traded to $34.38. Undeterred by the…
F’ing Thursday – Give Us a Break!
by Phil - August 11th, 2011 8:30 am
Holy cow – when will it end?
As I mentioned yesterday, we were expecting a whipsaw after the morning sell-off and we played that perfectly with bullish trades on the DIA and OIH and, as we move up, we took bearish plays on GLL, TZA and QQQ. All good so far but then we did a little bottom fishing before wising up and shorting USO into the close – just in case. The futures were up 2% this morning at 5am and I had to warn our Members:
Overall, this is too weak to get us over the hump and we are going to have to lean a little more bearish unless we can follow Europe up 2.5% or more. Our charts will turn from "spiking low on volume" to "consolidating for a move below 20%" very quickly if we don’t gets something bullish going by tomorrow.
The Dollar was at 74.64 at the time and it’s only 75.04 now (7:50) but the futures have gone from up 2% to down 1% in less than 3 hours – that is insane! How are retail investors supposed to play this market? The average person does not have the stomach for watching their virtual portfolio’s value go up and down 5% a day – at some point they are all going to pull the plug and walk away. Of course, as I was saying yesterday – that’s just what the Banksters want you to do, assuming they know QE3 is right around the corner, accompanied by a 20%+ market rally into the year’s end.
Anyway, hope is NOT a strategy for the prudent investor so I published another set of Disaster Hedges this morning as it’s time to add a layer to our longer hedges (which are now deeply in the money). I hate to chase these plays but one thing we learned in 2008 is that there may never be a bottom (not in the short run) no matter how oversold you think things may be. Was the market wrong in 2008 to go below S&P 1,000? Well 3 years of subsequent trading seem to indicate that it was – but that did not stop us from dropping 33% lower, to 666 (the mark of the Blankfein!).
Our entire goal in a sell-off like this is to simply preserve our cash. The lower we…
S&P Downgrades US to AA+ – Tied With Belgium!
by Phil - August 5th, 2011 10:22 pm
Uh-oh!
Officials at ratings firm, Standard & Poor’s, said U.S. Treasury debt no longer deserved to be considered among the safest investments in the World. S&P removed for the first time the triple-A rating the U.S. has held for 70 years, saying the budget deal recently brokered in Washington didn’t do enough to address the gloomy long-term picture for America’s finances. It downgraded U.S. debt to AA+, a score that ranks below Liechtenstein.
S&P said "the downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics." It also blamed the weakened "effectiveness, stability, and predictability" of U.S. policy making and political institutions at a time when challenges are mounting.
In other words, the ship is sinking and the captain and crew are doing nothing but rearranging the deck chairs. S&P was supposed to release this report this afternoon (Friday) but the Treasury Department caused a delay by arguing the math the S&P was using (a $2Tn discrepancy). At 8pm, the S&P decided the Treasury was wrong and went ahead and released the report, not only downgrading our Debt to AA+ but giving us a NEGATIVE OUTLOOK as well. Now we have to contemplate what the effect of this change may be…
Let’s first keep in mind that this was expected. In fact, it’s ridiculous how long it took for someone to downgrade us. JPM estimates that $4Tn worth of treasuries are pledged as collateral by borrowers such as banks and derivative traders. The change in status from one ratings agency is unlikely to trigger any immediate covenants (a primer on Sovereign Debt Ratings) but it may take only one more before borrowers are required to come up with many, many Billions of Dollar of cash or securities to keep their creditors at bay – essentially – it’s a margin call on America!
Well, I say this was expected but I mean by us. We cashed out today (see morning post) but Little Timmy Geithner, who blew his chance this week to resign with America’s credit rating intact under his watch, was on Fox News in April SPECIFICALLY stating that there was "NO RISK" that the US could lose it’s AAA rating. Read the article or watch the video –…
Stock World Weekly: Deadlocked
by SWW - July 24th, 2011 12:02 am
Here’s the latest Stock World Weekly. Click on this link to read the full SWW: "Deadlocked" and sign in with your PSW user name and password. (Or sign up for a FREE trial to Stock World Weekly.)
Excerpts reviewing the week and looking ahead
U.S. Debt Ceiling Deadlock
One line of reasoning from the “no tax hikes” crowd is the inaccurate premise that the very wealthy, the top 0.1%, are job creators. If they’re the “job creators,” it might be in the public interest to protect them from excessive taxation – thereby allowing these top 0.1% to spend money on creating jobs. This is incorrect. The overwhelming majority of U.S. jobs are ‘created’ by ordinary Americans when they spend their paychecks. Consumer spending drives about 70% of our GDP. When average Americans are struggling with high unemployment, which recently popped back up to 9.2%, they are reluctant to spend money on anything beyond basic necessities. The broader U6 unemployment number – which includes the underemployed and “discouraged workers” – is 16.2%.
Meanwhile, U.S. companies are not stepping up hiring due to weakness in the economy – there is no demand. As Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics wrote, “Businesses aren’t confident enough, and the longer this goes on, the harder it is to convince them that they should be.” (Dearth of Demand Seen Behind Weak Hiring)…
Let Them Eat Cake
Russ Winter of Winter Watch at the Wall Street Examiner discussed the gap between what people think corporations pay in taxes, versus what they really spend. For example, Microsoft “lowers its effective tax rate a full 7% by taking foreign income to $19.2 billion from $15.4 billion, and lowering US income (and expenses) from $9.6 billion to $8.9 billion. Today MSFT is effectively a 68% foreign operation. In return it gets all the benefits of stimulus and minimizes the costs of supporting the US system…
“Mark Kreiger writes a spot on piece regarding the high end luxury bubble that includes this gem - ‘The social crisis facing the country as a result of the most egregious plundering in modern American history will spell the end of the ‘high end’ theme. Buying into this trend now is like getting long Marie Antoinette’s unsevered
…
The House of Cards that is Apple
by ilene - July 20th, 2011 12:31 pm
Apple bears, don’t get too excited by the title. – Ilene
The House of Cards that is Apple
Courtesy of Howard Lindzon
There is NO way $AAPL will trade at $400 tomorrow.
Apple is barely hanging on. I mean $RIMM playbook, China knockoffs, Droid, $MSFT and $NOK teaming up….need I drone on. For sure the Gateway and Egghead stores will cut into their margins. The self ‘unhelp’ desk at Best Buy is a winner.
There is no way Apple can survive and grow with $78 billion in Cash. That’s barely enough to buy Goldman Sachs which just prints money or gets handed it by the government.
The iPad is awesome but it’s going to kill Mac sales. The ‘Macbook Air’ is spectacular, but if I have an iPad and an iPhone why would I buy one?
iTunes? ya right… I can just pirate the shit or get a Spotify account.
Steve Jobs died in 2010. That’s not him anymore on stage…have you not seen ‘Weekend at Bernie’s?’
Yep.
Disclosure – Long Apple just in case
Make Billion$ 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…
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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
(