Full Throttle Friday – Dollar Dive Does Bears In
by Phil - December 2nd, 2011 8:28 am
Oh what fun this is!
Now the ECB is lending the IMF about $200Bn, which the IMF can lever up to lend Eurozone countries another $500Bn and that’s before the Fed and the BOJ and all the other partners in World Crime get together and pump even more money in. Nothing gives the old Futures a shot in the arm like MORE FREE MONEY and, interestingly enough, the ECB handing out cash Boosts the Euro, now over the $1.35 line.
This is, of course, FANTASTIC for our Monday trade ideas, which were:
FAS Dec $48/55 bull call spread at $3, selling the $40 puts for $2.40 for net .60 on the $7 spread. 5 in the WCP on that one. (Now net $4.95 – up 725%)
FXE Dec $132/135 bull call spread at $1.20, selling the $129 puts for $1.10 for net .10 on the $3 spread. (Now $1.45, up net 1,350%)
JPM Jan $25 puts can be sold for $1.20 (Now .65 – up 45%)
AA 2013 $7.50 puts can be sold for $1.28 (Now $1.05 – up 18%)
VLO June $17 puts can be sold for $2.05 (Now $1.40, up 32%)
- Gasoline (/RB) futures at $2.55 (Now $2.62 – up $2,940 per contract)
Now I know that these are the kind of results you get every week so, whatever you do – don’t subscribe to our Newsletter! Why would you want these ideas EMailed to you every morning before the market opens? If they make you money, then you have to pay taxes and paying taxes is evil, right? Premium Membership is sold out but you wouldn’t want to get trade ideas live during market hours anyway. Less than $2 per day, however, gets you our Annual PSW Report Membership and you are able to read our full posts every morning, as soon as they are published.
Speaking of Premium Memberships, congrats to all who followed us last week as it was a doozy! You can tell from our titles (and our Stock World Weekly Newsletter does a great recap of the action each week and is included with that Report Membership) how we turned bullish over the week:
Keep in mind, these are titles that go out in the "In Progress" posts that…
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DiggBulls Eye Rebound For Shares In Toyota, Sony
by Option Review - September 9th, 2011 2:11 pm
Today’s tickers: TM, ANF, MUR & SNE
TM - Toyota Motor Corp. – A bull call spread on automaker, Toyota Motor Corp., sees the stock potentially rallying nearly 11.0% by October expiration. Shares in the Japanese car company fell 2.4% this morning to $67.70, bringing the stock’s total decline since July 21 up to 20.0%. The bullish spread on Toyota involved the purchase of 2,500 calls at the Sept. $70 strike for a premium of $1.90 each, and the sale of the same number of calls up at the Sept. $75 strike at a premium of $0.49 apiece. Net premium paid to initiate the spread amounts to $1.41 per contract, thus positioning the investor to profit should TM’s shares rise 5.5% over the current price of $67.70 to surpass the effective breakeven point at $71.41 at expiration. The spread prepares the options player to pocket maximum potential profits of $3.59 per contract at expiration in October should shares in the automaker jump 10.8% to trade above $75.00. A third leg of 2,500 calls in play on TM today suggest that the investor responsible for the debit spread may also be adjusting a previously established bullish stance on the stock. The 2,500 calls exchanged at the Sept. $72.5 strike for a premium of $0.13 each may be a closing sale. Open interest in the Sept. $72.5 strike call indicates the same number of contracts were purchased for a premium of $1.81 each back on August 22. Those calls were marked as part of a spread. Perhaps the investor is giving up on the near-term pop required to push those calls in-the-money by next Friday, in favor of the October call spread. Options implied volatility on Toyota rose 7.5% this afternoon to stand at 33.17% by 12:55 pm ET.
ANF - Abercrombie…
Potential LBO for Kinetic Concepts Fuels Flurry of Options Activity
by Option Review - July 6th, 2011 5:38 pm
Today’s tickers: KCI, ACN, TM & YZC
KCI - Kinetic Concepts, Inc. – Options on the medical technology company sprang to life this morning on a more than 14.6% move up in the value of its shares to $67.38 the highest shares have traded since 2006. The stock rallied on reports the company is in talks to go private in a leveraged buyout and may be worth around $5 billion excluding debt. Traders populating Kinetic options focused mainly on calls, buying and selling in- and out-of-the-money calls in the July, August and September expiries. Mixed trading patterns observed thus far today contrast with more one-sided open interest patterns in now deep in-the-money July contract call options. Investors who appear to have taken long call positions in June are now holding far more valuable contracts. Open interest patterns in the July $60 and $62.5 strikes, the largest blocks of call open interest on Kinetic Concepts, caught our eye. It looks like traders purchased the majority of the 645 open call positions at the July $62.5 strike during the second half of June for an average premium of $0.19 a-pop. These calls are now more than 21 times as expensive following the sharp rally in the price of the underlying. The July $60 strike call has some 1,700 open positions and it looks as though most of these are long calls purchased in the first week of June at an average premium of $0.68 per contract. In just over four weeks, call buyers have seen the value of their positions sky-rocket up to the current asking price of $6.40 apiece.
ACN - Accenture PLC – Put volume on the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company jumped today, with more than 45,000 put options having changed hands on the stock by 11:30…
Large Prints in Energy SPDR ETF Put Options
by Option Review - March 12th, 2011 11:53 am
Today’s tickers: XLE, TM, MHS & QCOR
XLE - Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF – Options volume on the XLE jumped following the opening bell this morning with most of the activity concentrated in April contract puts. It looks like one big player kicked things off in the first 20 minute of the session by unraveling a massive bear put spread on the fund. Shares in the XLE rose sharply today, gaining as much as 1.95% in early afternoon-trade to hit $75.27 by 12:20pm. The trader responsible for the largest put spread print certainly seems to have a keen sense of timing, initiating the debit put spread near the XLE’s top, and taking the spread down this morning ahead of the intraday move higher. The investor appears to have initiated the spread back on February 28, 2011, when shares in the XLE reached a session-high of $78.69. The big player sat with the trade, watching shares hit fresh highs as uncertainty over turmoil in the Middle East and its effect on the price of oil continued to flourish, until the price of XLE shares started their decline on March 7. The fund’s shares fell 7.2% to today’s low of $73.03 in the 3 weeks since the trade was established, pushing the long-leg of the puts in-the-money. Today, the trader anticipated the bounce higher in XLE shares and ditched the bearish position by selling at least 66,000 in-the-money puts at the April $75 strike for a premium of $2.79 each, and buying the same number of the lower April $70 strike puts at a premium of $1.00 apiece. Given an approximate purchase price on the original spread of around $0.98 per contract on February 28, it looks like the put player walks away with net profits of $0.81 per contract by taking the trade down this morning. The unraveling of the transaction may be a sign this trader believes shares in the XLE are set to rise higher, at least through April expiration.…
Massive Delta Neutral Position Signals Bearishness at Jacobs Engineering Group
by Option Review - January 26th, 2011 4:23 pm
Today’s tickers: JEC, GLW, TM & AKS
JEC - Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. – The third-largest listed U.S. engineering company popped up on our scanners today after one option strategist initiated a big delta neutral position using a large number of long-dated, in-the-money put options tied to more than 1 million shares of the underlying stock. Shares in Jacobs Engineering Group increased as much as 7.3% during the first half of the session to secure a new 2-year high of $53.10. JEC reported weaker-than-expected first-quarter results before the market opened on Tuesday, but increased earnings guidance for the full year. A spate of target share price increases and ratings upgrades from a number of analysts helped shares in Jacobs Engineering higher today. The investor responsible for nearly all of the volume in options traded on JEC today seems to be taking a contrarian view on the stock, positioning for bearish movement in the price of the underlying, while not entirely standing in the way of the rally or bullish sentiment. The trader appears to have shelled out a total of $67.127 million ($11 million for the puts, $56.127 million for the stock) to purchase 1,060,000 shares of the underlying at $52.95 each, and 20,000 in-the-money put options at the July $55 strike for a premium of $5.50 apiece on a 0.53 delta. The position may work in the investor’s favor if shares move sufficiently higher or if shares fall, however, the potential for the greatest gains lies to the downside because the value of the puts will grow much more quickly and offset any losses incurred on the decline in share price. Shares in JEC are soaring at their highest in two years but this put player is prepared to make out handsomely if the good times should come to an end.
GLW - Corning Inc. – Bullish options traders are dominating the scene at Corning this morning with shares in the glass maker now extending gains realized after the firm’s earnings report on Tuesday. Corning’s…
Thursday Thrust – Just Buy the F’ing Dips!
by Phil - December 2nd, 2010 8:04 am
It’s very sad when you can get your best financial advice from cartoon characters.
I apologize for the language but this video pretty much says it all. As the man in green says: "Buy the f’ing dip, you f’ing idiot." That’s the entirety of the market strategy we are being trained like Pavlov’s dogs to follow. Also as the man says "Now, don’t forget this only works if you go out and tell all your friends and family to do the same. That way, when they are buying more expensively than you, you can sell back to them and collect your money."
Of course it’s a Ponzi scheme but it’s a gigantic, legal one and the best thing about it is that the Government FORCES everyone to play so you never run out of suckers. When there is a lack of actual new sucker/investors to put money in, the Government steps in with stimulus or buys equities (QE1) or buy Treasuries from the banks so they can have free capital to buy equities with (QE2). They debase the currency and drive inflation higher while talking it up even more so and virtually penalizing people for saving money and not shopping. In this way, the US Government places a tax on every single citizen through a systemic devaluation of their lifetime accumulation of wealth as well as unfavorable savings and inflation conditions that are aimed to force money into equities and commodities.
What is the logic to this? Well, none if you are a government that actually cares about the long-term benefit of 310M people but we haven’t had a government that was "for the people" since they put two in the back of Kennedy’s neck so why complain about it now? What we should be doing is celebrating the sheer stupidity of the situation and enjoying the ride as this stock market roller coaster clacks up the tracks – towards a drop that is certain to have investors screaming all the way down but, for now, let’s listen to what the Bernanke Bears have to say in their latest cartoon about the Bank America crisis with WikiLeaks as well as their advice on NFLX and CRM:
Now, what could be more simple than that? Just take all your money out of bank stocks and put it into NetFlix. Well, maybe not NFLX as we…
FinReg Friday – Goldman Gets a Wrist Slap and BP Stops the Flow!
by Phil - July 16th, 2010 8:24 am
Dip, what dip?
I didn’t see any dip, what dip are you talkin’ about? Oil spill? I don’t see no oil spilling, do you? Goldman did what? They’re regulating who? Fuhgeddaboudit! That’s right markets, move along, nothing to see here. In fact, exactly as we predicted since the market first started dropping – it’s all just noise in between options expiration days, a way to traumatize the retail suckers who run in and out of positions under the direction of their chosen media messiahs. Clearly most market analysis is nothing more than "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
If you think this chart looks a little like someone is laughing at you – you are not being paraniod. This smiley face pattern is bought to you by the chart painters at GS and the rest of the Gang of 12 and their media lapdogs who push and pull the markets around on a daily basis. I asked back on the 6th, when I very accurately called for a "Turnaround Tuesday – Will CNBC Apologize to America?" as I pointed out the ridiculous degree of negativity that had contributed to the mini crash, which I had predicted on Monday the 21st, when my 9:40 Alert to Members said:
Good morning!
I have to go with my gut initially and stick to our plan, which is roll up the USO and DIA short plays (rolling the open puts to higher strikes) and, if the Dow holds 10,500 and USO holds $36 ($80 oil), we’ll have to sell June puts and roll our puts to a longer month – hoping for a post-holiday sell-off.
Upside levels are 50 dmas at: Dow 10,600, S&P 1,140, Nasdaq 2,350, NYSE 7,130, Russell 683, SOX 366 (already over), Transports 2,130, Oil $78 and Gold $1,200 (already over). Anything less than that is just a move to the top of our range and then we can expect a nice pullback by Wednesday.
Obviously, it’s a great time to add some disaster hedges, I now like selling TZA $6 puts for .45 and buying the TZA $6/8 bull call spread for .50 and that’s net .05 on the $2 spread so even if you have to margin $3,000 for 10 short TZA puts, the $450 you collect plus another $50 buys you $2,000 worth of downside insurance.
I like those DIA June
…
Thursday Already? This Week Is Flying By!
by Phil - July 8th, 2010 7:55 am
Woops – blink and you miss an opportunity in this market (see David Fry’s chart).
This is where we (fundamental analysts) have a great advantage over the TA crowd. We don’t need to wait for "confirmation" of some pattern to tell us when to buy. I tell members that waiting for TA signals is like going to a store and seeing your favorite jeans on sale for 30% off but then refusing to buy until you see other people buying them – by which time you often miss your chance as they sell out.
TA people don’t believe stocks have a "value" outside of what the "trend" says the value is. If I say: "Hey, you can buy C for $3.65" they don’t say "How much can I buy?" they say "which way is it heading?" If I say: "BAC is down to $13.50 and you know that includes MER for FREE!" they say "yeah but they are forming a right shoulder." I’m not a contrarian – really, I’m not. I just believe things have actual long-term values.
I told Members to run out and buy Toyotas on sale (cars, not the stock) when they had the big recall because it was a known issue so the new ones wouldn’t have problems and and meanwhile dealers were giving all kinds of crazy incentives. A Camry that was worth $30,000 on Monday is a good deal at $25,000 on Friday isn’t it? Should you stand at the dealership and say "Well, I like the Camry but the price is forming a right shoulder pattern and I can extrapolate that the price will be $15,000 if it breaks the trend-line from 1987." If you said that, people would think you were an idiot, right? Why should a stock be different?
On Monday I detailed my 9 Favorite Dow Plays (+WFR to make 10) and not only do we look for stocks that are already "on sale" but we have a coupon, in the form of our FABULOUS Buy/Write Strategy, to give ourselves an additional 20% discount off today’s low prices. How can people say no? Yet they do say no to net 50% discounts on Dow components and I do get frustrated as it’s obvious to me that it’s a barrage of media negativity that scares people and keeps them on the sidelines, just when a stock sale is reaching it’s peak discount.
We’ve been very fortunate to…
Tumultuous Tuesday – Funds Tend to Short Ten-Year Treasuries
by Phil - May 4th, 2010 7:55 am
Societe Generale is out with the latest edition of their hedge fund watch and in it we see that they’ve found hedge funds to have the "shortest position EVER on bonds."
Well, ever is since 2005 but still, hedge funds now have more than 270,000 short contracts on the 10-year Treasury Bond and that’s not even counting PSW Members and their TBT positions (ultra-short the 20-year) so we are either twice as smart as hedge funds or twice as dumb – either way, it looks like it’s coming to a head!
SocGen also reports large short positions in 30-year TBills too with a net short there of about 100,000 contracts and the Bank concludes that funds are also "strong net sellers of the Yen (50K net short) and buyers of US Dollars." Short positions in the Euro are being reduced now that we’re near my $1.30 target but this is a critical line for the Euro and we could still break 10% lower if it doesn’t hold, I mentioned our Euro play in the Weekend Wrap-Up so I won’t get into it here but what a day we had yesterday already!
According to Market Folly, hedge funds are also now net sellers of equities with long/short equity funds are now around 25% net long, which is definitely below their historical average of 35-40% net long. Folly also sees that, according to CFTC data, many hedgies have been adding to shorts in S&P futures. Whether they are simply selling longs to lock in some profit or making a market timing call, one thing is clear: hedge funds are definitely cautious in this market. Following the funds has been profitable this year as they are up 13% year-to-date after the Hedge Fund Generals Index was up 69% last year.
PSW members did their best to avoid temptation yesterday despite the "rally" (that failed to make it back to Thursday’s highs on low volume) and despite the "fabulous" auto numbers that CNBC et al could not stop fawning over. Indeed the statistics were so good they were – RIDICULOUS – Chrysler up 25%, DIA up 18.8%, F up 24.7%, GM up 6.4%, HMC up 12.5%, Hyundai up 30%, Kia up 17.3% and TM up 24.4%. This caused me to comment to Members:
OK, now I may be an old fuddy-duddy but I’m counting less than 1M cars sold in a month in this group and it seems to
…
Mega Earnings Monday – 1,000 Reports This Week!
by Phil - April 26th, 2010 8:21 am
What a crazy week this is going to be!
Pre-Market we’re hearing from BLK, CAT (are we building stuff?), EXP, HTZ, HUM, LO, TUES and TZOO and later we will hear from BSX, CHH, OLN, RSH, RCII, TXN (major) and my "friendbuddypal" Cramer’s TSCM (if they are not delayed). Revenues at The Street have crept back up this year in a recovery that pretty much mirrors the market. The company does pay a nice 2.6% dividend, which works out to a nice $200,000 bonus on Jimmy’s 2.1M shares (6.7% of the company) so you know that bonus will be a priority for the company. Cramer was BUYBUYBUYing his own stock at $2.41 in January but sadly they have no options to hedge… They might make a nice pick-up after earnings if they disappoint and head back to $3 or less.
I’m full of useful information on hundreds of stocks right now because I’ve been researching our new Buy List but I’m not pleased with what I’ve been seeing so far and this week’s tidal wave of earnings, with 1,000 companies reporting means we’re in no hurry to dip our toes in the water. I told Members this morning I should probably be working on a Sell List, as it’s much easier to find companies I want to short than ones I want to buy. Even in the Weekly Wrap-Up, we featured a 1,900% downside hedge on the Russell to offset the 566% plays and other bullish plays we’ve begun to reluctantly take, just so we don’t feel too silly in this runaway market.
If you have never watched Jim Cramer discussing the sleazy, manipulative ways he used to game the markets – you really must take 10 minutes and watch this video, where Jim explains how any immoral bastard with $10M can yank the entire futures market around at will. He prefaces one of his favorite strategies with "this is blatantly illegal but.. I think it’s really important… these are things you MUST do on a day like today and if you are not doing it, maybe you shouldn’t be in the game." Are you playing the game or are you being played?
The biggest game ever played may be unwinding as we speak. Bloomberg reports that foreign-exchange profits from carry trades are disappearing as differences in central bank interest rates fail to increase fast enough to compensate for swings in…
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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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