Which Way Wednesday – Fed Edition
by Phil - September 21st, 2011 8:28 am
Strap in folks, it’s going to be another wild ride!
As you can see from Doug Short’s S&P chart,we are about to slam right into that collapsing 50-day moving average, now at 1,223.40 – right about where the S&P topped out on yesterday’s morning spike. Unfortunately, the Nasdaq topped out and headed down before the other indexes got a chance to complete their up cycle and the Dollar rose back over the 77.50 line and tanked the market – exactly as we predicted it would at the bottom of yesterday morning’s post.
Of course, I can’t MAKE these things happen – I can only tell you what’s going to happen and give you trade ideas to help you profit from it. I mentioned that we had picked up 10 DIA 9/30 $115.75 calls in our virtual $25,000 Portfolio at $1.05 on Monday and they topped out at $1.75 (up 66%) but we took a non-greedy exit at $1.45 in the morning spike (up 33%) and we switched to 20 QQQ 9/30 $57 calls at .45 in the afternoon sell-off. So, we made $350 off a $1,050 investment and then we spend $900 but now we have 20 contracts instead of 10 but we also have $450 in cash so now risking just $600 of our original investment on the much more volatile Fed day.
Another trade idea we like ahead of the Fed that’s still playable is 20 FAS weekly $13/14 bull call spreads at .38 ($760), selling 10 JPM Oct $28 put for .55 ($550) for net $210 invested on the 20 $1 spreads. The worst-case on this spread is owning JPM for net $28.10, which is 13% off the current price and the best case is a $1,790 profit (852%) in a week. That sounds like a lot but options let you do funny things like at 11:30 in Member Chat, we saw PCLN making new highs against news that we thought was not actually that good for them on closer examination. Our trade idea to take advantage of that was:
If you want to play PCLN bearish – it’s very risky but the weekly $565/555 bear put spread is $6 and you can sell the $565 calls for $4.70 for net $1.30 on the $10 spread. Oct $620s are $4.10 so your bet is
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Digg$25,000 Virtual Portfolio – Month 7 – Profiting from Chaos!
by Phil - August 8th, 2011 6:23 am
Wheeeeeeee, this is fun!
There’s nothing like an active virtual portfolio to get you through a rough market. The last update to our very aggressive virtual porfolio was on the July 28th, when I said to Members "On the whole, we’re pretty short so we’ll be either adding longs or cashing in shorts tomorrow to get a little more even into the weekend but still bearish if there’s no debt deal." There was, of course, no debt deal that week and the next morning I said in our Member Alert:
Volume is not very high – this is a retail panic so far. If you have short positions, strongly consider put tight stops on them (this includes the $25KP and Income Virtual Portfolio) as they put plenty of cash in your pocket and we can always find another layer of shorts if the RUT can’t hold 775.
Needless to say, the RUT failed (10% ago!) and we stayed generally bearish. At the time we "only" had $57,760 of virtual cash (after starting with just $25,000!) with $960 worth of unrealized losses in our remaining, mostly bearish positions. How do you think that worked out? That’s right, possibly our biggest gains of the year! In the last two weeks, we closed the following positions as the markets collapsed around us:
- 10 USO 8/5 $36 calls at $1.35, out at $2.35 – up $1,000
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Magical Monday – All “Fixed”!
by Phil - August 1st, 2011 8:11 am
Oh what BS!
Still, it’s BS we expected, isn’t it? What did I tell you in Friday Morning’s post? I said: "Our plan for the day (as we’ve been short all week) is to get back to cash for the weekend but I’m sure we’ll find some speculative upside plays (like USO at $37) to play (we already went long on Silver in the Morning Alert to Members)." I followed that up with my 9:40 Morning Alert to Members, where my specific trade ideas for the morning, while the market was plunging, were:
- USO Next week $36 calls are $1.45 so 10 of those in the $25KP with a stop at $1.20.
- TNA Aug $69/73 bull call spread is $2 and you can sell the $51 puts for $1.20 and that’s my favorite index play at the moment. Of course any bullish offset would work but this one is focused on the RUT and betting it won’t drop another 8% by Aug expiration (725).
How’s that for a bottom call? That was right into the panic lows and, at 9:48 I reiterated my call right at the dead bottom, saying to Members: "Volume is not very high – this is a retail panic so far. If you have short positions, strongly consider put tight stops on them (this includes the $25KP and Income Virtual Portfolio) as they put plenty of cash in your pocket and we can always find another layer of shorts if the RUT can’t hold 775."
At 9:50 my trade idea was selling PCLN weekly $545 calls at $3 which expired worthless that day for a 100% gain. At 9:52 we picked up the weekly (that day) QQQ $57 calls at .72 and we had a 100% gain on those by 11. At 9:56 we went short on the VIX with the Aug $19 puts at $1, at 10:16 we even made 5 bullish adjustments to our fairly conservative Income Virtual Portfolio, including selling 50 DIA Aug $116 puts for $110 ($5,500) and we’ll be pulling those right off the table this morning – but I’m getting ahead of myself…
At 11:25 we went for a Jan bull call spread on UNG and at 1:20 I put up my last long trade idea of the day, selling YRCW Jan $1 puts for .70 for a .30 net entry on the trucker. …
Two Trillion Dollar Tuesday – Still No Deal!
by Phil - July 26th, 2011 3:22 am
Hey buddy – would you like to buy a rally?
For just $2,000,000,000,000 I can give you a 2% pop on the S&P, what do you say? Am I talking about QE3? No, QE3 would be cheap compared to the gang-rape that the Dollar is enduring this week at the hands of the Europeans, the Australians, Canadians, the Swiss (all-time high today) and the Japanese – who have been taking their turns pushing our beloved dollar down to the ground and having their way with it. Not a pretty picture? How about picturing the loss of 2% of your net worth in 5 days?
That’s where we are this morning as $2Tn of US wealth has been extracted this week (via political dithering over our debt ceiling) and shipped overseas in the form of relative buying power for or foreign friends while our stock indexes and commodities "rally" – which is to say they re-price higher to reflect the lower buying power of the currency they are priced in – the ever-declining green-back.
As you can see from the above charts, which are our major indexes and oil adjusted for the Dollar – we’re critically close to failing our 20-day moving averages for the first time since early June, when the markets went into free-fall – also on the heels of an end-of-month run-up that took the S&P from 1,311 to 1,345. 1,345 just so happens to be where we topped out last week and where we topped out yesterday and where we popped to on the futures early this morning (3am, of course) as the Dollar was shoved a full percent lower in overnight trading.
![[Futures Trading, U.S., Composition by Type of Futures Contract, 1970 to 2004]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Futures_Trading_Composition.jpg)
We were all over this, of course, and I sent out a 3:55 am Alert to Members saying:
Dollar bottomed out at 73.69 and that should be it for our 3am "rally" with the RUT (/TF) at 835.6 and S&P (/ES) at 1,340, Dow (/YM) at 12,600 and Nas (/NQ) at 2,435 – all make good shorts here as long as the Dollar goes no lower (and I’ve already started the morning post with a chart that shows how dangerous this is getting).
We rode that puppy hard – all the way down to RUT 830 at 5:30 (up $560 per contract), S&P 1,331 ($450 per contract), Dow 12,530 ($350…
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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Technical Tuesday – Twelve Thousand Two Hundred or Bust!
by Phil - June 7th, 2011 8:11 am
Our winning streak continues!
With 335M barrels of oil still on fake order at the NYMEX, yesterday’s early morning short play at $100.60 gave us a ride back to $99 and that was good for as much as $536M pre-market. In the morning post, I said "hopefully we’ll get another crack at shorting oil at $100 or higher" and we did – right at the open – and that was good for a ride back to $99 for another $335M of potential gains (just following through with last Thursday’s plan to break the NYMEX speculators).
We took the money and ran on those USO June $40 puts at $1.40 (up 22%) in Member Chat at 10:53 but the next rebound in oil didn’t quite get to $100 ($99.88) and we missed the run down to $98.50, which is where it’s sitting this morning.
Of course, we don’t only short oil… In my 9:58 Alert to Members I, of course, reminded them that oil was at $100 and shortable again but we also grabbed the QQQ weekly $56 puts for .33 and those finished the day at .55 for a 66.6% gain (the mark of the Blankfein), which is not bad for 6 hour’s work (or so I am told). We also had a more complicated spread with DDM offsetting SPY as a sort of arbitrage on two spreads.
Thanks to David Ristau’s guest appearance in Member Chat pre-market, where he mentioned he was jumping on our short oil bandwagon, we selected HAL for a short trade in Member Chat at 10:10 along with our planned PCLN short play (mentioned pre-market in the morning post) and both of those were, of course, huge winners already so thanks for HAL David!
It wasn’t ALL bearish, we went long on XLF as it hit $14.90 with some short put sales along with a very long-term bull play on HOV but we took a loss bottom-fishing on IWM as the June $79 calls stopped us out after falling from $2.07 to $1.95 (down 5.8%) but we had to try something long to get a little balance or risk being too bearish. Our bullish sentiment didn’t last long though and we decided to short the Nasdaq futures at the 2,300 line at 11:42, those gave us a spectacular run down…
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…
Testy Tuesday – AAPL Rebalancing in May May Keep the Nasdaq from 2,800 Today
by Phil - April 5th, 2011 8:18 am
The Nasdaq is finally rebalancing!
That is good news but not so much for Apple, Inc., whose current 20.49% weighting in the index will be cut to 12.33% on May 2nd. This explains a lot of the strange movement in the Nasdaq as apparently the cognescenti have already begun jockying their positions – trying to guess which of the 100 stocks in the Composite Index will curry some of AAPL’s lost favor.
Perhaps the the moves up in fellow 4-letter stocks like PCLN ($25Bn market cap), NFLX ($13Bn), OPEN ($2.5Bn), BIDU ($50Bn) and GMCR ($9.4Bn) don’t seem quite so crazy in light of the 40% reduction in AAPL ($314Bn) – take the money out of one bucket and you HAVE to fill up the others!
This does make me feel better as there may actually be a rational reason for NFLX having a p/e of 82 despite the fact that they have a completely indefensible service that already has competition from several on-line clones as well as big boys like AMZN, not to mention every cable and satellite company in America. Why does WFMI, a GROCERY STORE, trade at 41 times it’s projected 2011 earnings in the middle of the worst food inflation in US history? It’s not just because rich people are stupid and will overpay for anything because they hate to have people think they can’t afford stuff – it’s because their market cap is $11.4Bn and if you take 40% of AAPL’s $300Bn and distribute it around the Nasdaq – then WFMI get’s $1.2Bn of additional allocation.
That’s not exactly how it works but that’s the effect. A $1Bn Index fund who follows the Nasdaq has $205M of AAPL stock (20.49%) and, after the reweighing, they are to have $123M of AAPL stock. The other $82M does, in fact, get distributed to the other Nasdaq stocks according to the new weightings. Do you think that doesn’t distort the markets? Of course, that doesn’t "just" affect the Nasdaq – AAPL is a heavyweight in all the indexes.
The special rebalancing of the NASDAQ-100 Index will be enacted based on index securities and shares outstanding as of March 31 – now it is very clear why the MoMo stocks were jacked up like crazy into the end of Q1 – now the market manipulators have guaranteed bagholders for their stocks come May 2nd! On…
Fuggedaboutit Friday – Dip? I Didn’t See No Dip?
by Phil - February 25th, 2011 7:38 am
Dip Buyers of the World unite! You have nothing to lose but your 401Ks…
Ah, could there be a more thorough perversion of Marxist ideals than not only confiscating a portion of the workers’ wages but using that money to actually pay for the means of production in exchange for infinitesimal, powerless shares of ownership? It’s BRILLIANT but that’s the stock market, we had that back in 1848 when Marx penned his little Manifesto but what we didn’t have – what should really have old Karl rolling over in his grave today – is union busting. And it’s Union Busting by the Government no less!
While the hunt continues for runaway Democrats, state Senator, Robert Jauch, a longtime Wisconsin lawmaker, said Thursday that – despite rumors that some of his colleagues had returned to the state, "everybody is outside of Wisconsin . . . all of us." Jauch criticized what he called the "police state mentality" of Republicans in the Capitol and took issue with Walker’s assertions that Democrats who had fled the state were abandoning their duties. "I’m doing more from the Land of Lincoln to communicate with citizens in my district than he is," Jauch said, adding that the Senate Democrats talk regularly and are "trying to reach out through back channels to see what the solution could be. This governor has dug himself in – that’s very clear."
While the Capitalist tools at Forbes are already cracking the Cristal and celebrating the demise of unions, it is more likely that (like many hair-brained Republican schemes) – defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory because, even if Walker’s Republicans don’t back down (and they will), they have already reignited the National Labor Movement in much the same way that 8 years of George Bush polarized the usually disorganized Democratic opposition and led to a rout in 2008. This is not about politics though, this is about investing and who will control the country in 2012 is indeed something to consider.
Another thing to consider is, if they do take away collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin – the next Global city you see erupting into riots may be the one by your house. That’s how pissed off the Democrats are now and you’d know this if you ever spoke to one or read one of their "liberal" publications, like the…
Monday Market Momentum – Prices Go Parabolic
by Phil - February 14th, 2011 8:22 am
Two percent!
That’s how much the price of EVERYTHING has gone up IN AMERICA since Christmas Day, just 6 weeks ago. This is according to the very reliable Billion Prices Project at MIT, which collects pricing data every day from online retailers using a software that scans the underlying code in public webpages and stores the relevant price information in the database. The daily online index is an average of individual price changes across multiple categories and retailers that provides real-time information on major inflation trends.
In other words, this is not Bernanke’s BS – THIS IS REALITY FOLKS – and reality is NOT GOOD! We’re talking parabolic short-term moves that you know and I know and the data shows is absolutely happening. Yet the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America tells us over and over and over again that it is not happening.
He tells us that inflation was down in 2010 from 2.4% in 2009 to 1.2% last year and that he sees no inflation. In fact, he is basing his mathematical models on it and directing our nation’s policies on this basis and he is conducting the most dangerous monetary experiment in the history of the Universe – ALL BASED ON HIS PREMISE THAT INFLATION DOES NOT EXIST!
But, what if it does? What if every other nation on Earth, including now even Japan, who see 3, 4, 6, 8, 12% and 20% inflation are not wrong and it is, in fact, Ben Bernanke who is wrong. I would not be as worried if The Bernank got on TV and said: Inflation is heading up to double digits, which is our plan but that’s not at all what he’s saying. This means either the Chairman of the Federal Reserver is either lying right to our Congresspeople’s faces, under oath, or that he is a clueless policymaker with his finger on the button of a weapon that can wipe out the wealth of nations – that can kill tens of millions of people through starvation and can just as easily wipe 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...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(