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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DiggSuper Tuesday Committee Failure – So What?
by Phil - November 22nd, 2011 7:43 am
Long live the Debt! In case you are voting in the next election – here are 12 people to get rid of. Much as I may blame one party over another for this failure, they all deserve what’s coming to them for A) Pretending they were going to accomplish something and B) For not now getting up and making very strong statements denouncing the corruption in politics that make it impossible for Congress to do the Nation’s business anymore.
In case you happen to be a Fox News viewer, I will try to keep this VERY simple because, as it turns out, we now have definitive studies that prove Fox News MAKES YOU STUPID. Of course, it is possible that only stupid people watch Fox News but I know many people who think they are smart and watch Fox News so I have to blame Fox News here as do researchers at Farleigh Dickenson University who found "The results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all." As I can tell you from raising my own children to be good citizens:
The biggest aid to answering correctly is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which leads to a 6-point decrease in identifying the protesters as Republicans, and a 12-point increase in the likelihood of giving the correct answer. "Jon Stewart has not spent a lot of time on some of these issues," said Cassino. "But the results show that when he does talk about something, his viewers pick up a lot more information than they would from other news sources."
Watching Fox News, by the way, led to an 18-point disadvantage (out of 53% of all respondents) in being able to answer questions like "Were Egyptians successful in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak" or "Has the Syrian uprising been successful" but that was a Fox viewer’s area of expertise compared to having a clue of what is going on in American politics other than "Obama sucks." Tied with Daily show viewers for best informed were NPR supporters but, sadly, only 21% of Americans get their news from NPR and only 18% from the Daily Show while 64% list Fox News as one of their frequent news sources.
In another study, World Public Opinion, a project managed by…
Friday Follies – Did Obama Blow Jobs Speech?
by Phil - September 9th, 2011 8:15 am
Obama did not satisfy the markets last night.
Although his $447Bn American Jobs Act is a step in the right direction, $307Bn (68%) of the money is coming in the form of tax cuts and Unemployment Insurance extensions, leaving just $140Bn to go towards the creation of actual jobs. Even if every single dollar of that money went directly towards paying a $40,000 salary – the entire amount would employ just 3.5M people, not even 1/4 of the amount of people who are out of work.
Is that the best America can do? Come up with a jobs program that MIGHT lower unemployment from 9% to 7% over the next year? Of course we won’t create 3.5M jobs for $140Bn because a lot of that money gets spent on parts and materials. It’s certainly not that the projects are unnecessary, it’s just that the scope of the program is too limited to have a substantial impact.
In fact, exactly one year ago, I wrote "Jobless Thursday – America’s Infrastructure Crisis" where I laid out the TRILLIONS of Dollars worth of repair work that MUST be done in this country sooner or later. Why don’t we do them SOONER, while 20M potential workers are sitting on the sidelines? We MUST spend at least $2Tn on infrastructure in the next 10 years so why not spend $400Bn this year and next rather than waiting until the last minute to do anything? The money is all borrowed over time either way but NOW is when people need to get back to work and, of course, if we get necessary projects done now instead of 10 years from now, then we, the People, get to enjoy 10 years of beneficial use out of them. This is not complicated stuff folks, just common sense…
Nonetheless, $447Bn is 3% of our GDP and figure about 2/3 gets spent in the first year so the program SHOULD keep us out of Recession in 2012 – yay for that at least. If Recession is off the table, then the markets are underpriced – now we have to consider whether or not the bill can get past the Republicans in Congress. By the way, if you have not read "Reflections of a GOP Operative" yet, please do – it’s an excellent insight into the current political climate.
We had flipped bearish yesterday, anticipating…
Income Portfolio – Month Four – Stormy Weather!
by Phil - August 13th, 2011 7:57 am
Riders on the storm
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm
What a crazy couple of week’s we’ve been having! Very fortunately, in last month’s update of our virtual income portfolio, we had already cashed out $33,084 – more than enough to take us through our first 8 months (our planned $4,000 a month to live on). We did that using just $200,000 of our $1M in buying power ($500,000 portfolio), staying very conservative and waiting for a bigger dip than the one we had had in June.
Well, here we are! We are now 10% below June’s bottom and we did do a little bottom fishing, adding positions in WFR, SONC, IMAX, VLO, OIH, TBT and HOLI – positions we’ll be reviewing below. To a large extent, we followed the strategy I called "Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There" during this sell-off although it was (and still is) a nail-biter as we tested my August 2nd prediction of the "worst-case" scenario of a 20% drop from the top.
We stuck to our guns this week and had a lot of fun playing the wild gyrations with our short-term betting but the Income Portfolio is an exercise in managing a "low-touch" portfolio – one that does not require us to make daily adjustments. I am aware that can be frustrating for people who stare at the markets every day but that is what our short-term trade ideas are for in Member Chat. That goes for people who are retired or semi-retired too. You don’t HAVE to play every day – or any day for that matter but you do need to work one week a month and that would be this week – the week of…
Falling Up Friday – Closing the Week GREEN!
by Phil - August 12th, 2011 8:20 am
In case you were on vacation, here’s what you missed:
The Dow is down 2.6% for the week, the S&P is down 2.3% and the Nasdaq is down 1.2%. Very likely, by the end of the day, these losses will be erased and we should have a nice, green close. For some reason (can’t imagine why) the VIX went up to 45, where we shorted the Hell out of it. One trade idea we had was on Wednesday Morning, where we sold the Aug $45 calls for $1.45 against the Sept $45 calls at $1.40. Even yesterday that one was looking good with the Augs down to .85 and the Sept $45s still $1.30 so the net .05 spread turned into net .45, a nice 800% gain in two days.
On Wednesday afternoon, Nicha had a great idea to short VXX as well, so we did the Sept $36/32 bear put spread at $2.50, selling the Aug $38 calls for $1.55 for net $1 on the $4 spread. Those Aug $38 calls have already dropped to $1 and the bear put spread is $2.60 so that’s net $1.60 – up 60% in two days on that one. This is why we ALWAYS sell into the initial excitement. On the whole, we have been TRYING to follow my philosophy, which I reminded everyone of of in last Friday’s Member Chat, of "Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!" – which is still some of the best crisis management advice I can give people.
What does our Big Chart look like since last Friday?
Wow, those were four very silly days, weren’t they? As I noted above, we’re down about 2.5% for the week but the week isn’t over and we could still turn this puppy around and do you know what that would be? It would be a VERY bullish bottom candle on a weekly chart! In fact, if we can finish August back at that +5% line (a 10% gain into the month’s end), THAT would form a VERY bullish candle on a MONTHLY chart.
So Greece blah, blah and Italy, blah, blah and Merkel, Sarkozy, B-B-B-Bennie and the Fed, Inflation, Deflation, Unemployment, Debt and Taxes – whatever… Just wake us up when it’s over and we’ll consider pulling our cash off the sidelines. Meanwhile, as I lectured Members in…
Will We Hold It Wednesday – 1,333 or Bust (as usual)
by Phil - July 20th, 2011 8:13 am
Here we go again!
We blew right though our expected bullish levels of Dow 12,500, S&P 1,317, Nasdaq 2,775 and Russell 825 but failed to make 8,300 on the NYSE so, as usual, our biggest and most difficult to manipulate index is holding us back – flashing a warning sign while the other indices scream for us to "party on." Fortunately, as I mentioned in yesterday’s morning post, we had already gone aggressively bullish with the SPY Aug $128/131 bull call spread at $1.83, selling the Sept $120 puts for $1.57 and that net .26 spread is already net $1.86 – up 615% since I posted the trade idea at 12:53 in Monday’s Member Chat.
It’s good to have a few aggressive trades like this to take advantage of market bounces. Before that we had taken the SSO Aug $51/53 bull call spread at $1.05, selling the Sept $44 puts for $1.07 for a net .02 credit at 10:46 in Member Chat (the SPY play was for late-comers who missed out on SSO). The Aug $51/53 spread finished the day yesterday at $1.35 but the real win comes from the short $44 puts, which fell to .70 so the .02 net credit is now a .65 net credit for .67 total profit, up 3,350% in less than 48 hours. See, options are fun!
The only other trade ideas from Monday were a long-term bullish play on RIMM (selling 2013 $22.50 puts for $4.20) a long futures play on the Russell Futures (/TF) off the 810 line (now 835) and I reiterated our bearish spread on CMG as I felt they would disappoint on earnings (they did). Yesterday we picked up a long-term longs on GLW, RYAAY and WFR, half covered our FAS longs (iffy so far), took a poke at shorting the DIA that worked for a quick 10%, shorted oil with a DUG spread (futures too scary) and picked up another short spread on CMG – selling 3 Aug $330 calls for $16 ($4,800) against 2 long Dec $360 calls at $18 ($3,600) for a net $1,200 credit – those should be nice winners this morning!
In the afternoon we flipped more bearish and picked up 10 SPY weekly $133 puts at $1.15 ($1,150 of our virtual dollars) for our $25,000 Virtual Portfolio and those are probably going to hurt this morning as the Dollar has been…
Which Way Wednesday – Wherefore Art Thou QE3?
by Phil - July 13th, 2011 8:29 am
China is still rolling along and the Fed says "maybe" on QE3.
That was all it took to get us to yesterday’s highs but we took the money and ran at 2:24, when I told Members in Chat "DON’T BE GREEDY!" As I had mentioned in yesterday’s post, our Morning Alert to Members put us long on Dow Futures (/YM) at 12,400 and Nasdaq Futures (/NQ) at 2,350, which made vast sums of money of course with the Dow up well over 100 points at the time. During Member Chat yesterday, we took advantage of the early dip to go long on TBT, FAS, WFR and QQQ while killing our short positions on USO, EDZ and FXI (see Monday’s post) as they had a great run and WE ARE NOT GREEDY!
Of course we have our bull call spreads from last week so we’re pretty bullish BUT still cautious because our indexes are not holding their lines – especially the always-troubling NYSE, which did not hold the "Must Hold" line and when we name a line "Must Hold" well, it MUST be held!
The other thing I said to Members at 2:24 in yesterday’s Chat was:
Keep in mind this rally has 100 Dow points to go just to get us back to Friday’s close (12,660) so don’t be impressed with less (S&P was 1,344, Nas 2,860, NYSE 8,411 and RUT 852).
At the moment, we’re not even getting a 50% bounce of this morning’s bottom and Friday’s close was way below Thursday so it’s very easy to give us a "rally" by tanking the Dollar and floating rumors of MORE FREE MONEY but, for now – it does nothing to change the greater reality.
That’s good advise for today as well. A mere hint of QE3 does not change the cost of Italian debt, nor will it help our Treasury sell $21Bn worth of 10-year notes today at 2.9% (what kind of idiot would trust our Government to give them back Dollars with less than 3% interest to guard against inflation?), nor will it employ people and we ABSOLUTELY know that QE3, if done like QE2, is going to…
Smart Virtual Portfolio Management – The $25,000 Virtual Portfolio
by Phil - January 22nd, 2011 12:18 pm
Options Sage submits:
“Never risk what you do have and do need on what you don’t have and don’t need”
Smart virtual portfolio management is a world apart from conventional virtual portfolio management. While conventional virtual portfolio management offers generic guidelines to diversify capital, smart virtual portfolio management is tailored to your personal circumstances. We have, in the past had similar articles on managing $10,000, $100,000 and $1M Virtual Portfolios. This article is a variation of the $10,000 article in preparation for our new 2011 Member Virtual Portfolio with the goal of turning $25,000 in into $100,000 over the next 12 months. Phil is, of course, proposing an aggressive stance but, after turning $10,000 into over $30,000 in just 7 months in the prior virtual portfolio – let’s just say we are confident it can be done.
Although this article focuses on prudent strategies for a $25K virtual portfolio, many less conservative investors are likely to find the strategies addressed throughout suitable for their own virtual portfolios – though the % allocations will differ as we will see in Phil’s virtual exercise. No matter what your risk tolerance, a virtual portfolio comprising some relatively conservative trades is always prudent!
Phil once commented that, when trading a $10,000 virtual portfolio, “every $100 counts”!
Capital should be allocated judiciously in a small virtual portfolio. NEVER allocate a majority of your capital to any single trade. Dedicating 20% of your virtual portfolio to relatively conservative trades (shown below) is appropriate but exceeding 30% is far too risky when dealing with limited capital. With a $25K virtual portfolio, it becomes increasingly imperative to be right first time. Financial constraints limit your ability to scale into trades at different threshold levels and that makes timing critical unless….
Unless you figure out how to trade without requiring perfect timing of the market! Those of you trading along with Phil’s earnings spreads have already seen some of the ways we take advantage of stock movement, whether they go up, stay flat or even drop to some degree…
Strategy A: The Covered Call – With a Twist – Making 44% in Just 13 Weeks
Instead of placing the short call out-of-the-money in the conventional format, the short call is actually placed in-the-money.
C closed…
Weekend Reading – Reviewing the Reviews
by Phil - January 1st, 2011 8:28 am
I am still trying to get more bullish.
I was thinking about writing something cute like I resolve to get more bullish but that would be wrong. I try, in my own humble way, to "get" the market right. That means I am not bullish or bearish but Truthish (to further botch Stephen Colbert’s use of the word) and, as Buddah says: "There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." Confucious reminds us that there are three methods by which we may learn wisdom: "First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
In that spirit, we will spend the day in reflection so that we are better able to start on that long road to the truth so that we will be better able to imitate the things that will work in the year to come while trying to avoid making mistakes that will give us bitter experiences.
This post is not about me – We had a fantastic year and I’ve already given some outlook for 2011 back on the 19th in that weekend’s "It’s Never too Early to Predict the Future" and our current position is short-term bearish in the Jan-April time-frame, looking for a pullback to at least 1,200 on the S&P and possibly back to 1,150.
After that, we are expecting a return to steady gains but without the irrational exuberance we’re currently experiencing. So no, I am not bearish – I simply think we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. Since we don’t know where the rally train will stop, we have our "Breakout Defense – 5,000% in 5 Trades or Less" from Dec 11th, which were a set of very bullish, highly levered plays where a little bet can pay off a lot if we simply hold our long-established breakout levels.
How much is "a lot"? Well my GE trade idea, for example, was to sell the 2013 $12.50 puts for $1.10 (net $1.15 in ordinary margin according to TOS) and to use that money to buy the 2012 $17.50/20 bull call spread for .95, which was a net .15 credit on a $2.50 spread that was on the money at the time. GE has gained about .75 since the 11th and…
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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...
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