Moronic Monday – Still No Deal?
by Phil - July 25th, 2011 8:29 am
This is amazing, isn’t it?
Our "leaders" still can’t work out a debt deal with just 7 days left until the Government shuts down (and we’re already at the end of our bonus time as Treasury has been juggling the books for three months just to allow us this much). I wrote extensively about this over the weekend so we can move on – just as we moved on in Chat yesterday evening when my 6:09 pm Alert to Members was to go long on the Dow Futures (/YM) over the 12,500 line (now 12,543, up $215 per contract), Russell (/TF) at 830 (now 831.80, up $180 per contract) and, of course, shorting oil (/CL) below 99.50 (now $98.97, up $530 per contact) so the winner of the morning is oil! Congrats to all the players with a lovely start to our week!
On the whole, we were just protecting our bearish bets as I remained very grumpy into the weekend on Friday. Those of you who followed our suggestions from Friday’s post were no doubt pleased because, at the time, we were short the Dow Futures at 12,720 and the Russell Futures at 842.60 with $1,100 and 1,260 moves from there to Sunday night’s flip-flop respectively.
We also picked the S&P (/ES) short at 1,346 (now 1,331) and the only one that isn’t working is the Nasdaq (/NQ) – back at the same 2,415 we had in Friday Morning’s Futures. Well, it’s not the only one – gold went over our $1,605 shorting target this morning, after giving us a quick gain on Friday. This is not good for our GLL August $22 calls (.40 on Friday) or our ZSL Sept $11/15 bull call spread at $2, offset with the sale of SLW Sept $44 puts for $1.20 for net .80 on the $4 spread but a nice re-entry opportunity today – if you are still a believer.
We’re more agnostic now. We were bearish into the weekend expecting pretty much what happened – NOTHING, and now we’re waiting to see what actually happens and how the markets react. The Shanghai Composite freaked out this morning and dropped 3% – only saved by the closing bell as the Government moved to shut down counterfeit Apple Stores and bullet trains went off the rails. The Hang Seng wasn’t as worried –…
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn 
del.icio.us
DiggFickle Friday – Google Goes Down as Costs Inflate
by Phil - April 15th, 2011 8:19 am
Well who’d have thunk it?
The cost of doing business is rising and GOOG happens to be one of those businesses that lacks pricing power as their rates are generally set through an auction process and their users have to VOLUNTEER to pay more money to advertise. Most advertisers on Google are on fixed budgets, like MSM advertisers and Google has done a great job of replicating that model. Why then, should it be surprising if a maturing Google begins to look more like a traditional media outlet than a dot com company with exploding growth?
Don’t get me wrong, we love Google long-term but we did short them as well as BIDU into Google earnings as we felt Google would disappoint enough to spook BIDU investors as well. We’re taking the short money and running and looking for some bullish plays now – the drop from $630 last month to $545 today is plenty of froth blown off the top for us to get long-term interested again. As you can see from the tag cloud of the Conference Call, growth is still there, especially in mobile display ads (Android a bit disappointing) and no major negatives. I’m not going to write a whole thing about GOOG though, there are thousands of people doing that and our Members know well enough where I stand. I’m more interested in examining the bigger picture.
We expected Q1 earnings to be rough and we’ve already seen FDX, NKE, ORCL, RIMM, FAST, FCS and AA struggle so hopefully you don’t have to be hit on the head with another whole week of earnings before you get a little more cautious. Next week we hear from C, HAL, LLY, TXN, BK, GS, INTC, IBM, SYK, USB, VMW and YHOO on Monday and Tuesday and then we’re off to the races with hundreds of companies reporting each week for the rest of the month. Our job in the first few weeks of earnings season is to get a feel for the quarter and, so far, that feeling is rough.
It’s all about inflation, of course and don’t say we didn’t warn you about that one! We went more bearish up at those 100% lines we’ve been watching and now the question really is – how bad was it? Inflation is, after all, our long-term BULLISH premise. We don’t think corporations…
Will We Hold It Wednesday – Back At Our Bottoms
by Phil - July 21st, 2010 8:27 am
Wow, what a ride!
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we expected the Russell to lead us higher and we picked up both IWM and TNA out of the gate but, of course, we like our leverage so my 9:46 Alert to Members was:
Bottoms WERE: Dow 10,200, S&P 1,075, Nas 2,200, NYSE 6,800 and Russell 620. As I said yesterday, "don’t forget there’s a 5% drop to support below these levels).
For now, we’ll be watching the 2.5% lines at Dow 9,945, S&P 1,048, S&P 1,145, NYSE 6,630 and Russell 605.
My working theory is RUT is weakest because they are getting killed by cut-off of unemployment checks. That means that an upside play on the RUT could go very well in case they extend benefits today. I like TNA $37 calls for $3.20 and IWM $63 calls at $1.25. These are risky of course because if the extension is defeated we could go further down so take quick profits off the table on half to make a buffer and make sure you do have some disaster hedges.
We bounced right off those 2.5% lines and got our $3 copper signal at 10:24 so we knew we were good to go as we took those calls plus GOOG, BAC, GS, QQQQ, IBM, TXN, AAPL, WFR and BIIB. Other than BIIB, which is a long-term spread, all of our shopping was done by noon and the rest of the day we just said "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" as the market went up and up and up – and they haven’t even extended the unemployment benefits yet!
I have been saying we need to keep an eye on copper $3 during this whole market breakdown as $3 copper is NOT the right price for a Global Depression, which is what the market has been pricing in and at 10:24 as copper hit our bull target, I said to Members: "Copper $3! That’s like the little snapping sound when the bear takes the bait in the bear trap." Now we are back testing our "bottoms" which, as I said yesterday, are really the middles of our 5% Rule range but our view of earnings season so far is that we shouldn’t be in the lower end of the range and the recent action, as I summed it up in yesterday’s post, was silly.
Now things…
Tech Wreck Tuesday – IBM and TXN “Disappoint”
by Phil - July 20th, 2010 8:13 am
Wheeeee – this is fun!
Well, it’s fun when you have disaster hedges anyway. I already sent out an Alert to Members this morning reminding them that there’s no point in having disaster hedges if you don’t use that money to buy on the dips, though. Yesterday we added downside, leveraged plays on SDS (2) and DXD and our focus short was on NFLX (last week it was MA, and that went very well) along with our usual DIA Mattress play. That shifted us a bit negative as we failed to hold our watch levels and now we are sadly looking all the way down to those low closes of: Dow 9,686, S&P 1,022, Nasdaq 2,081, NYSE 6,434, Russell 590, SOX 332 and Transports 1,905 as a possible re-test if things get really ugly.
On July 3rd I laid out "5 Plays that Make 500% if the Market Falls" and, fortunately, we didn’t need them as we took off on Monday but they are still good plays and a little cheaper now than they were when we last tested our bottoms. If you are not well-protected – I strongly suggest you read this post and at least be ready to initiate a hedge if we can’t turn this morning around. As with most day’s lately – it’s all about copper and the $3 line…
That being said, I do think we will turn this morning around eventually - because IBM is down $7 and the Dow moves about 8 points per $1 of component value so that’s hitting the Dow for 56 points all by itself. IBM’s earnings were great but revs missed, in large part due to currency issues. BRIC revenues were up 22% for the company, despite the crap exchange rate.
TXN got whacked too on their report that profits nearly tripled on a 42% jump in revenues (not kidding). "Demand has continued very solid and very broad-based," said Ron Slaymaker, the company’s vice president of investor relations.
Mr. Slaymaker said the biggest positive surprise in the period was stronger demand from companies that buy industrial equipment, which have rebounded much slower than consumers from the recession. One notable area of weakness, he added, was sales of chips used in cellphones. TI has long been a major supplier to handset-maker Nokia Corp., which in June lowered its second-quarter forecast.
The company reported net income for the period ended
…
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…
Weekend Wrap-Up, Still Trying to Get Bullish
by Phil - March 14th, 2010 5:20 am
I’m having writer’s block this weekend.
Usually when I can’t think of what to write it helps me to go over our virtual portfolios so I started this morning reviewing the Buy List but I didn’t get far because it was silly. Of 43 plays on the buy list, 39 are doing well – too well in fact to the point where it’s hard for me, in good conscience, not to say let’s kill the whole thing and get back to cash as we’re up about 20% in 2 months and that’s just ridiculous – most people would call that a good year and go on vacation.
The Buy List was 100% bullish and we did catch a good bottom on our early February entries. I was gung ho bullish then because I felt comfortable that the 10,000 line on the Dow would prevail and that we were good for a run back to the top (10,700), following, more or less, the pattern we had in 2004 (see original post for charts). Well that’s pretty much what’s happened since then but that’s not making me happy because I see no reason we won’t complete that pattern and begin falling off a cliff shortly.
As you all know, I’m not a big fan of TA, or patterns for that matter but the reason I started looking for patterns was to try to get a handle on how long market could really keep going up before falling victim to exhaustion. To me it seemed we weren’t at that point on Feb 6th but now that we’ve put in that big push back up – if we can’t punch up to new highs on all our indexes then I do think it’s time for the markets to take a break.
.jpg)
Clearly I’ve been too bearish for the past couple of weeks and we are now 224 points over 10,400 on the Dow which is where I turned bearish as the January data made me lose faith in our ability to get back to 10,700. I should have stuck to the TA because we’re a lot closer to 10,700 than we are to 10,400. With the Russell and Nasdaq exploding to their own new highs. You can see though, from the above chart, why I do want to wait to see the NYSE, Dow and S&P confirm this move up – it’s not far now!…
Long-Term Bullish Spread Unfolds On IBM
by Option Review - January 25th, 2010 4:39 pm
Today’s tickers: IBM, XLF, TXN, XLF, CTXS, EBAY, HAL & FITB
IBM – International Business Machines Corp. – A long-term bullish transaction on IBM suggests one investor is positioning for a significant boost in share price at the computer services firm by expiration in January 2011. IBM’s shares are trading 0.75% higher this afternoon to $126.47. The optimistic trader purchased a ratio call spread on the stock, buying 5,000 calls at the January 2011 $135 strike for an average premium of $6.24 apiece, and selling 10,000 calls at the higher January 2011 $150 strike for a premium of $2.33 each. The net cost of the ratio spread amounts to just $1.58 per contract. Thus, the trader accrues profits if IBM’s shares rally 8% over the current price to surpass the breakeven point at $136.58 by expiration next year. Maximum available profits of $13.42 per contract amass only if shares surge 18.60% to $150.00. IBM’s shares must increase to a new 52-week high in order for the investor to break even on the transaction. The current 52-week high on the stock is $134.25, attained back on January 19, 2010.
XLF – Financial Select Sector SPDR – Option traders continue to initiate bearish strategies on the financial ETF today despite the 0.90% rebound in shares of the underlying to $14.31. Earlier we reported a June $14/$10 ratio put spread, which established downside protection beneath a breakeven share price of $13.30. This afternoon we observed a similar transaction take place. Another pessimistic investor purchased an even larger ratio put spread in the June contract. It looks like this individual bought 27,500 puts at the now in-the-money June $15 strike for an average premium of $1.52 apiece, spread against the sale of 55,000 puts at the lower June $12 strike for about $0.39 each. The net cost of the ratio transaction amounts to $0.74 per contract, and provides downside protection beneath a breakeven share price of $14.26.
TXN – Texas Instruments, Inc. – Chipmaker, Texas Instruments, is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results after the closing bell this afternoon, and although analysts expect the firm to post profits of $0.49 per share on a 19% increase in sales, option traders initiated near-term protective plays. Shares of the semiconductor company are up 1.80% to $23.52 ahead of earnings. One investor established a bearish risk reversal by selling 5,000 calls at the February $24 strike for a…
Wild Weekly Wrap Up – Only Halfway Through January!
by Phil - January 16th, 2010 8:29 am
Wheee, what a ride!
The week can be neatly summed up by my 1:35 comment to Members in yesterday’s chat, summed the week up quite nicely as I said: "So funny, a whole week of gains I thought were ridiculous wiped out in 4 hours." Of course it’s easy to laugh when you play the market correctly – as I had said in the morning post, we had cashed out into Thursday’s run up and planned on going bearish through the weekend but it turned out we got our sell-off early, jumping the $100K Virtual Portfolio, for example, up 12% in one day – enough to send us back to cash rather than risk a weekend reversal.
We laid the groundwork for this little sell-off in last weekend’s posts as we put up an aggressive Buy List for Members but in my regular weekend post we emphasized the need to cover our buys with "Disaster Hedges" as we were heading to the tops I had predicted when I published the "Last Charts of the Decade," where I set resistance target of Dow 10,457, S&P 1,135, Nasdaq 2,314, NYSE 7,389 and Russell 638. As you can see, I pretty much hit them on the head, other than the Dow but that’s because our year-old 5% rule calculations did not account for the change in the Dow that replaced C and GM with TRV and CVX, who added about 100 Dow points since their inclusion so we started using 10,549 this month and we’ll make it 10,557 for today’s chart, which makes perfect sense looking at this group (I added the Transports as they are fell right off our 2,000 target, giving us the early warning that things were not right):
As you can see, the 5% Rule rules! I will apologize for being such a grump this week but the rally was really starting to annoy me as it was so blatantly forced up through our levels without a proper test that is was really getting me down about the markets. I don’t mind that the markets are manipulated, that’s been going on since markets were invented – it’s stupid and destructive manipulation that bothers me, the kind that, long term, destroys more investor confidence than it builds and squanders capital resources on the "wrong" companies (and now, ETFs!).
In this case, very precious investor capital is being steered into commodities, which is…
PSW Rewind of 2009 – The First Quarter
by Phil - January 1st, 2010 2:42 pm
Thursday’s close was very exciting, wasn’t it?
Well it sure was for us as my 10:01 Alert to Members was a play on the DIA Jan $103 puts at .56. Thanks to the late afternoon dip, they finished the day at .90 (up 60%) after peaking out at .95, a very nice win to close off the year. That was the only Alert trade all week as this market has been too tough to call and we don’t make trades just for the hell of it. I had been sniping at DIA puts all week expecting a pay-off but Thursday it finally came together.
Of course, I also strongly advocated hedging on Thursday morning and listed 4 trade ideas in the morning post to hedge ourselves against the possibility of just such a drop so don’t say you haven’t been warned. Whether there will be follow-through on Monday or a full reversal remains to be seen and, even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you here because this is a review – predictions are another article entirely.
We treaded very cautiously into last year because our PSW Holiday Retail Survey was not looking very pretty so it was no surprise to us, on Dec 26th, when we got some horrific retail reports. These are, of course, the same reports that we "beat" this year – but not by much. Dec 29th was Monday and Israeli jets attacked Hamas targets in the Gaza sending oil flying up to $48 a barrel. That gave us a nice commodity rally into the close of the year but January 2nd was a Friday and we decided (fortunately) to take the money and run on our long plays, holding open our main cover of SKF Jan $120s at $4.35, which hit $80 later in the month (up 1,732%) and USO Feb $32 puts at $3.40, which hit $10.50 in the Feb dip (up 208%) so, on the whole, not too differently positioned than we are now, coming into the new year. Visually 2009 looked a little like this:
January – Waiting for Obama, or Something, to Change
We began January much the same way we ended December with my Wed Jan 7th comment being: "We call it "Testy Tuesday" for a reason and our 5% rule was tested twice during the day but the market failed to…
October Overview – When the Goblins Come Home to Roost
by Phil - November 1st, 2009 8:15 am
What a crazy month we had!
The Dow began the month of October at 9,712 and finished the month of October at EXACTLY 9,712. Now I don’t want to say the market is manipulated but… No, I’ve got nothing, there are no buts – the market is totally manipulated! Either that or you believe that the random outcome of tens of millions of traders around the globe trading hundreds of billions of shares of stock would just so happen to begin and end the month within .50 after going as low as 9,378.77 (on the 5th) and as high as 10,157.94 (on the 21st). So that is literally a 1 out of the 779-point swing coincidence to hit that 9,712 nail on the head.
At PSW we couldn’t be happier about this frankly. As I often say to members: We don’t care IF the game is rigged, as long as we can figure out HOW the game is rigged so we can play along. We were bearish in our September 27th Wrap-Up when I predicted that Earnings season would bring about a "Return to Fundamentals." We targeted retrace moves of Dow 9,512, S&P 1,020, Nasdaq 2,030, NYSE 9,496 and Russell 556 – all of which we hit the following Friday.
That week I highlighted my fundamental market concerns and Monday (9/28) my topic was "6 Unemployed People Per Available Job," Tuesday I said "Consumer Confidence is Key," Wednesday we caught the turn perfectly as I predicted "End of Quarter, End of Pump," and Thursday, October 1st was the day that "REIT’s Turned Rotten" – which was something we had been playing for during the September rally so we were thrilled with what is NOW the 2nd worst down day of the month. That was the day GS decided to agree with me that REITs were over-valued and gave us a signal that the Gang of 12 were no longer all on the same page. Friday, the 2nd, we were back to looking at the Jobs numbers when I asked "Is Anybody Working for the Weekend."
We could not have been more pleased with what was the worst week in the market since then end of August, which was a,most as bad at the beginning of July (are you beginning to see a pattern?) and I said that Friday: "Just like any good roller coaster, market plunges can…
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Chinese
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
(