$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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DiggMagical 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. …
Monday Market Madness – Gold $1,600 Edition
by Phil - July 18th, 2011 8:28 am
As we expected on Friday morning, the EU stress tests were not good.
My comment to Members at 3:41 on Friday, as we had an "incredible" (as in NOT credible) rally into the close was: "Notice how we went down on very heavy volume but we went up on two massive spikes – one at 2:45 and on at 3:05 and the rest was just suckers being reeled in to follow the move who got sold right back into. I’m still liking SQQQ, Aug $22/23 bull call spread is .55 now and you can sell the $21 puts for .50 for net .05 on the $1 spread. LOL – CNBC is surprised. Bill says "Hey, look at that, a rally in the last 20 minutes!" It’s only surprising when there isn’t one…"
After the bell, we discussed the fact that you can still trade the index puts after hours and the QQQ weekly (7/22) puts at .70 looked attractive too. That left us a bit bearish going into the weekend (as planned) so last night (yes, Sunday) I sent out a 10:16 Alert to Members to with trade ideas to go long on the Futures (Down, S&P, Nasdaq and Russell) while taking the short position on oil (/CL) at $97.50 and gasoline (/RB) at $3.15. By midnight we had our highs for the morning and at 2:49 am I commented it was time for the 3am trade (bullish on markets as the Dollar pulls back) and we set our stops at 4:46 and went back to bed and the market topped out 20 minutes later and gave us yet another bullish reload back at our levels – NOW, at 8am.
What were the bullish levels? Today there were for futures crosses above 12,375 on Dow futures (/YM), 1,306 on the S&P futures (/ES), 2,345 on the Nas (/NQ) and 623 on the RUT (/TF). We’re not to proud to make the same play over and over and over again – as long as it keeps working, right? This is the great thing about futures trading – it lets you make little adjustments to your virtual portfolio LONG before the rest of the market is in play. Had the markets gone straight down – we would not have needed to chase as we took the aggressive puts into the close but, as they found a floor…
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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Thrilling Thursday – Can We Make Another Billion Today?
by Phil - June 2nd, 2011 7:42 am
Wheeeee!
$1,129,860,000! That’s how much money was made shorting 376,620 NYMEX contracts at $103 yesterday, as we planned! Congratulations to those of you who got your share playing along with us and, to the manipulators who got stuck with the bill – screw you bastards, we have your number and we’re going to ring it now! I called a cash-out at the $100 line in Member Chat as 2.9% was more of a drop than we expected in one day and we will re-load on the bounce as we cross back below the $100.50 line – as discussed in this morning’s Member Chat - assuming the Dollar has bottomed out at 74.35.
This isn’t complicated people – what’s the 2.5% line off of $103? $100.425. That’s where we’ll look for oil to consolidate but below that line we’ll be comfortable with our shorts again, looking for those next legs down to $98.88 (down 4%) and then $97.85, where we will once again look for a 20% retrace to $98.88 and then a nice short there when it fails. So come on – you can play along at home – don’t miss out on making the next $1.129Bn!
Meanwhile, what’s a 20% bounce off a $3 drop? 60 cents, right? Where did oil bounce to in the futures? $100.60? This is not rocket science folks… We teach these little tips to our Members every day at Philstockworld. Sure you may find it disturbing that the chart we drew up (above) in early April is hit almost to the penny on the NYSE yesterday (2 months later) as it halted right on our red line – but that just shows us that Bots are running this market (as we keep telling you) and it also means that we can rely on our ranges and that makes it EASY to make good trading decisions.
Also in Member Chat last night, I reviewed 8 short put ideas (bullish) that can net us over $3,000 in 15 days if we get a bounce and hold our "Must Hold" levels. This is the nice thing about hedging – we make money on the way up OR on the way down and, when we are trading in a range – like we hopefully will this summer – then we make money both ways on a regular basis! Let the market manipulators play their…
Wishful Wednesday – If Only We Could Hold It
by Phil - May 11th, 2011 7:58 am
That didn’t take long did it?
We’re right back to our 5% lines, which I predicted yesterday would be tested (and failed) so today we find out if I am half right or all right – hopefully it’s all right because we pushed our short plays to the lines and added a short on oil with USO May $41 puts, which we added yesterday afternoon for .95 at 2:30 and finished the day up a nickel. We are expecting the oil inventories to show some demand destruction at 10:30 – analysts are predicting a net 1Mb build, with a 1.6Mb increase in oil and a 300,000 barrel decrease in gasoline and distillates. A build in either gasoline or distillates will indicate pricing is hurting demand, despite whatever oil number comes up so that’s what we’ll be watching.
Yesterday, in the morning post (never miss one with a $1.90 per day Annual Report Membership!), I mentioned the TBT weekly $33 calls at $1.55 would make a good long and those finished the day at $1.87 (up 20%) but they looked good enough to keep into the close and we expect trouble in today’s 10-year auction so we’re being greedy and going for $2.15+, which will make a nice 40% gain in 2 days.
To make sure you don’t miss our next trade idea – today I will give you a trade idea that can knock 20% to 69% off the $695 Annual PSW Report Membership: You can buy 10 QQQ May $60 puts for $1 and sell 10 QQQ May $59 puts for .48 for net .52 ($520) on the $1 ($1,000) spread (it’s the net that matters, not the price of each leg). The maximum gain on this trade is $480 if the Qs finish below $59 next Friday and, if you stop your loss at net $400 (.40 per contract) that limits you to $120 lost and, if this trade loses money, let me know and I’ll give you 50% off an annual PSW Report Membership, which will save you $347.50 so net $127.50 (20%) saved on a Membership – even if the trade doesn’t work. If it does work – you are honor-bound to subscribe, of course!
What we are expecting, between now and Friday, is for the chart above to form a pattern that will look like the "M" in the McDonald’s arches,
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Wary Wednesday – Groundhog Was Wrong but Fisher Sees Inflation
by Phil - March 23rd, 2011 8:29 am
We are having yet another snow storm in New Jersey.
So much for trusting small rodents to forecast the weather but at least one of the rats at the Fed is finally seeing the shadow of inflation as Dallas Bank President, Richard Fisher said every single one of the 50 business executives he speaks with on a regular basis is looking to raise prices to consumers.
"That concerns me," says one of our nation’s top monetary strategists. The regional bank chief said he personally surveys about 50 businesses, more than most of his colleagues at the Fed, and that the position on prices is “without exception, in every sector in every size, whether they’re public or private.”
While I guess we should applaud Fisher for being the first Fed Governor to recognize inflation in our economy – I suppose I should also point out to the Fed that there is a preponderance of evidence that indicates, at this point, that the Earth is not flat – just to help them get caught up with the rest of us. Still Fisher is somewhat of a prodigy among the slim pickings we have when selecting from Fed brains:
Barring some extraordinary circumstances I cannot foresee, I would vote against the QE3 or even a tapering of the current program. I don’t think it’s necessary, It’s now up to the fiscal authorities to provide the right incentives for businesses to hire more American people, Our job is done. Now the pressure and the job is in the hands of our elected representatives who have the only power to tax and to spend.
TAX and spend?!? Oh no he didn’t! That’s Liberal Commie talk if ever I heard it and, if the Fed is going to base their own policy on the assumption that this Government will either tax OR spend – then we are already doomed because the Keynesians left the building last November and are unlikely to be invited back in until we have our own nuclear melt-down to throw money at (or if the banks need money, of course).
Speaking of melt-downs, the iodine in the Tokyo water supply has been deemed "unsafe for infants." While not certain, officials said they suspect that the airborne iodine had drifted over rivers that feed Tokyo’s water system and had come down in recent…
Fickle Friday’s Jobs Report
by Phil - January 7th, 2011 8:29 am
I don’t know what the Jobs will be but I’m betting on disappointment.
I had said to Members yesterday that I liked the Jan QQQQ $56 puts at .77 and the Weekly (next week, not today) QQQQ $56 puts at .53 as good ways to play a jobs miss. My comment in Member Chat was that I felt the ADP figures pushed expectations up significantly higher and now we would be much more likely to disappoint with almost any number short of 250,000 jobs added.
The key is the seasonal adjustments but there was already some very disturbing jobs numbers in the Gallup Poll, which came out last night and showed unemployment RISING from 9.3 to 9.6% in December and, even worse, the number of Underemployed workers shot up from 18.5 to 19%, just 0.5% lower than we were in January of last year.
Gallups Job Creation index showed no improvement in December but it is holding +10, which is the best net level we’ve had since October of 2008. So we have ADP going one way, yesterday’s unemployment numbers were flat and Gallup says things are getting worse. 8:30 will be very interesting indeed.
While we wait for the number, let’s take a look at last week’s post to see how things are tracking. Monday morning I mentioned we liked FCX short at $120 (a trade that was reiterated Tuesday morning) as we felt the run in copper was overdone. It was a rough week but FCX is down at $116 now so we’re on track at the moment of course we took a spread in chat, which was the Feb $119/110 bear put spread at $3.60, selling the Jan $120 calls for $3.60. That spread is now $4.60 and the calls have dropped to $2.30 for a nice net $2.30 gain already.
I said that $90 was already ridiculous for oil and we shouldn’t go any higher. We picked up the USO Feb $40 puts on Tuesday morning in Member Chat at $2.10 and those are now $3.70 so a nice $1.60 gain there, which is about the same as if we had just shorted the stock as it dropped from $39 that morning to $37.68 now. That’s where puts are very useful, you don’t have to commit as much as a short on the stock, you limit…
Thoughtful Thursday – The True Meaning of Christmas
by Phil - December 23rd, 2010 8:19 am
Why it’s almost Christmas Eve, Mr. Scrooge!
The Global markets are closing for the weekend and we’re bound to have a very slow day – if you are waiting for a Santa Clause rally on today’s trading, you are very likely to be disappointed. Today is a day for relaxation and reflection. Remember, the words of Jacob Marley, who said:
Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!
Marley was a man who worked and worked until the day he died and regretted it every day after. If you don’t believe in an afterlife and you don’t believe in leaving behind the World a better place than you found it, at least find some time for yourself so people don’t call you "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner" after you’re gone.
I was inspired this morning by a post on Barry’s site titled "Give and You Will Receive" listing 13 good ways we can all give every day. ’Tis the season of giving and goodwill to all man and all that and my children just completed their annual ritual of wrapping up all the toys they are done with to give to children who need them more than they do. It’s a little thing, but if you want your kids to learn the benefits of charity, actually parting with things they like or liked and physically giving them to kids who clearly appreciate it is much more gratifying than writing a check to some anonymous organization. The same goes for volunteering some time (and money!) at a local shelter and helping some people come in from the cold for a nice, warm meal – it makes you appreciate your family dinner a LOT more!
Anyway, end of commercial. Let’s just see who’s being naughty and who’s being nice this morning. We have quite a bit of data today with November Durable Goods at 8:30 (which have been tailing off) along with Personal Income and Spending. 2010 has NOT been an exciting year so far with monthly gains of about 0.4% but, on the bright side, there were only small negative months but this report only covers November and will not…
Fiscally Irresponsible Friday – Proles Swallow $858Bn in Debt for $ 613 and Some Magic Beans
by Phil - December 17th, 2010 8:18 am
Good job Congress!
Way to bend of and take it from your new Republican Masters! Not since Jack sold his cow for some magic beans has a deal like this been made by our "leadership" where families earning between $35,000 and $64,000 go $7,800 further into debt to get a $613 tax break while families earning between $5M and $10M get $38,590 and families earning $50M to $100M get $380,590 and families (or Corporations, of course) earning $500M to $1Bn get $3,859,000 or about 12,590 times more than the average middle class family but, then again, they deserve it because – they are that much better than you are!
Face it, unless you are in an income category where your tax benefit has 5 digits, you are what George Orwell (who worked in England’s Ministry of Propaganda) called a "Prole." In "1984" the Proles (proletariat) were the vast majority of the populace, the working class of Oceana. Though the proles are the majority, they are unimportant. The Party explicitly teaches that the Proles are "natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals". As one of the Party Leaders observes: "the relative freedom of working-class people is merely a symptom of the contempt in which they are held".
It is not only the Party which regards the Proles as unimportant: the arch-enemy, Goldstein, dismisses them too, referring to the divisions of High, Middle and Low people, in which the Low are essentially destined to remain powerless. This attitude has much in common with the one Huxley shows in Brave New World—the lower castes are mindless enough to be satisfied with little, and can be relied on not to be troublesome.
You’re not going to be any trouble are you? Enjoy your $613, little people. That’s what, about a month’s worth of gasoline and cable TV? Congratulations on your voting acumen – you certainly have gotten the Government that you deserve! I apologize because I had mischaracterized the tax cuts as being fairer to the Middle Class last week, when I said it was only an outrage. I thought that families earning $50,000 would be getting $900, not $613, but it turns out that 12,590 times $287 is another $3,613,330 that could be given to a Billionaire and they NEED that money to buy stuff that might create a job while you would only…
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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
(