Hedging Your Way To Healthy Dividends – Part 2
by Phil - May 24th, 2009 7:46 am
Time to get a little more conservative…
In Part 1 of this post, we talked about the potential long-term value of taking a chance on companies that used to pay dividends but don’t at the moment. In addition to the 7 selections we had last Tuesday, I would urge members to keep on the lookout for additional prospects we can discuss as the long-term benefits of catching these stocks at the lows can be amazing! This was the same logic that led me to pound the table back in March on C, BAC, WFC, JPM and even the hated GS – stocks that have tripled or better in just 3 months.
We had a very easy time selecting those stocks as we were able to hedge our entries and our long-term logic was that, at those low prices, we could be fairly sure of producing a good option income even if they never restored the dividends but the kicker was the possiblility of owning, for example, C at $1.50 down the road when they go back to paying $1 per year dividends. Imagine having a year’s salary put away on stocks that pay you almost a year’s salary every year in dividends alone!
Don’t worry, you didn’t miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we just have to work a little harder at the moment. As I noted with our LYG example, there are still beaten-down financials that are worth a look and today we’ll look at 2 more of our 21 Tuesday selections (one now, one later) and go over the trading plans for those positions. Note that the LYG trade ties up just $1,035 in cash to make (hopefully) $1,465 in year 1 with a commitment of $3,535 if you end up owning all 1,000 shares on Jan 15th.
By making sure you are on top of these figures, a person making $30,000 a year who has $5,000 in an investment account count take a modest 6-month gamble like this. If this trade pays off, $5,000 becomes $6,465 and 500 LYG shares are secure (about $2,500 worth) or, at worst, you have 22% more cash for the next trade. The next trade secures another potential dividend payer and if every 6 months you can secure just another $2,500 worth of dividend paying stocks for under $2,000 then in just 10 years, investing just 10% of a $30,000 annual salary, you could, very conservatively, have $50,000 worth of…
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DiggChannel Checkers Experiment
by Insider Scoop - May 20th, 2009 2:17 am
Trading Experiment with Jason at Channel Checkers
Channel Checkers’ research indicated that Target is going to have a good quarter, while Game Stop is not. Is there a way to devise option strategies to benefit from this research? Here’s Channel Checkers research with option suggestions by Phil. Let’s see how it works.
May 20th Update: Target trade would have been successful, we’ll evaluate the GameStop trade tomorrow after their earnings.
Target
Business Strong in 1H for Target. Positive outlook.
Ticker: TGT
Questions We Asked:
1.Do you think the weak housing market and weak economy are hurting business at your location?
2.What is the top selling brand of women’s clothing right now?
3.How is business at you store currently?
4.Do you have excess inventory of any particular product or brand of product that will go on sale or discount soon?
- 53% of respondents stated that the weak housing market or the weak economy overall was hurting business at their store location. 47% said these macro factors were not affecting sales at their store location.
- Mossimo was the top selling women’s brand according to 37% of respondents. 30% said it was Merona and 7% said Isaac Misrahi was the top women’s brand.
- Another surprise in this survey was that 50% of respondents reported business as “above average” at their store location while another 27% said business was “very strong”. 20% reported business “Average” and 7% reported business as “Below Average”.
- 44% of respondents did confirm there was excess inventory of some items like digital cameras and women’s tops while 66% said there was not any excess inventory at their store location.
Conclusion of Channel Check: Retail appears to be making a come back in 1H 2009 thus far. Perceptions of business levels by store representatives is solidly positive. Inventories are not “lean” but are not excessive either. We suspect Target may show solid top line results without a large impact from discounting tied to excess inventories.
Catalyst for stock movement:
TGT Reports Earnings on 5/20/09 Before the Market Open
Example: TGT -- Let’s say we did this trade and see how it comes out tomorrow morning: "Jan $41 calls are $5.40 and should make over 20% if TGT has good earnings and breaks over $44. As they are calls, the risk is no more than $5.40…
Trade Rewind: Anatomy of Our Winning Ag Plays
by Phil - May 16th, 2009 8:28 am
A lot of mail we get from people interested in our service had the question: "Are option trades as easy to follow as stock trades?"
I think the quick answer to that is yes for straight options and no for spreads but like many things that are worth doing, they are worth learning. I’m going to start a new teaching series here so we can analyze some trades after the fact as practice may make perfect but it also pays to go over our winners as well as our mistakes as finding out where we went right is as important as finding out where we went wrong. Trading has, of late, become much less about the merits of the particular stock and more about the timing of your entries as good stocks and bad stocks can move up and down 5% on any given day.
One of the things we like to do is watch for overbought sectors to short. We had been taking pot-shots at POT all week as it was really running away with itself and on Thursday I discussed with members how the whole sector was getting overbought and, in Friday morning’s post I said: "I advocate more shorts into the open if they insist on this ridiculous pre-market pump (down just .25% at 9 am), especially in the over-hyped Agriculture industry, which could not be up for stupider reasons," which neatly summarized my outlook on the sector.
We got exactly the pump action we wanted in the morning and I sent out a 10:34 Alert to Members, sensing that we were topping out on the run in the indexes and I recommended the following plays:
Big disconnect with DBA and AGU, MOS and POT now. It’s a little crazy to do a day trade but the POT $115 puts have .20 in premium at $6.10 and you can sell the $110 puts for $2 if it turns against you. I like the June $90 puts on them for $1.95, looking for $1 and rolling up if it goes the other way at .85 per $5.
AGU July $40 puts are $1.05. MOS $50 puts are a fun day trade for .10 but you need to get 3/4 out at .15 and leave the 1/4 or 1/2 out at .20 and 1/2 out at .30 if you get that lucky but consider the .10
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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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