TGIF – Saved by the Bell or on a Highway to Hell?
by Phil - November 18th, 2011 8:10 am
Wheeeeeeeee, what a ride this week!
Since we went bearish on Tuesday afternoon, the Dow has dropped 450 points. That pushed our White Christmas Portfolio over the top (as we flipped bearish, of course) with a virtual balance of $26,075 including $2,565 of unrealized gains on our still-open (and still bearish) positions. That’s up $11,075 (73.7%) from our $15,000 start on October 24th and we’ll be getting back to cash and going for another $10,000 (our original goal) before Christmas.
How did we do it? We teach keeping trades short and simple in a choppy market as we stick to our trading range. Trades in the WCP were very much like the trade ideas I published Wednesday morning, from our Tuesday Member Chat at 3:21. As we had a little BS rally Wednesday afternoon, many of the trades were still makeable that day. In fact, in Seeking Allpha, where the post didn’t even go up until later that morning, Jamesbwood was able to take advantage of the XOM $77.50 puts at .14 (less than our original entry) and took a double off the table at .28 – a 100% day trade!
All of those trades ideas are great examples of the kind of trades we look for in our White Christmas Portfolio (our current, virtual, short-term portfolio) – ones we can get quickly in and out of with nice gains. We were quite satisfied with our oil shorts and cashed those out yesterday and, had President Obama followed my advice and sold those 140M barrels for $100 (could have gotten $102), he could have bought them back yesterday at $98.50 for a quick $210M profit – enough to pay for at least an hour’s worth of the deficit! Percentage-wise, he would have been better off subscribing and taking those trade ideas from our Member Chat. Those Wednesday morning trade ideas were:
- GOOG $625/620 bear put spread at $3.10 is a nice downside play – figure risking $1 to make $1.90.
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GOOG is at $600 and this spread will likely expire at $5 today – up 61.3%
- MMM $82.50 puts are $1, also a good trade for a crash tomorrow.
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MMM finished the day at $80.43 and the $82.50 puts were $2.35 – up 135%
- WYNN $130/125 bear put
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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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The $25,000 Virtual Portfolio – Halfway to $100K!
by Phil - July 9th, 2011 6:39 am
Here we go again!
After a very wild ride tracking our VERY aggressive virtual portfolio, we closed out the first half with $53,942 – up 115% for the first half of the year and, since we put $11,630 back in the bank above $25,000 from last year’s $10,000 virtual portfolio, that brings us to a grand total of $65,722 – up 555% from the $10K we started with last year. Our goal in this small, aggressive virtual portfolio is $100K but forget the extra $15,722 – as I said last week, that’s our starting basis with a nice profit so we put that back into nice, safe, conservative investments (like our Income Virtual Portfolio) and that leaves us $50,000 to play with.
Our first week of trades has already been very interesting. Make sure you to read the original post and the update if you haven’t already to get an idea of what we are trying to learn by following this "hyper-aggressive" virtual portfolio model – especially last quarter’s lesson on taking those profits off the table and working on those losers. Our "biggest loser" of last quarter was, of course, FAS and those Aug $23 calls hit $5 last week (we are already out), which is $40,000! Anytime you can roll and DD a position in a $25,000 virtual portfolio that eventually cashes out for $40,000 – you will probably come out well…
The problem is mainly in learning how to stick with a position like that and that requires a lot of conviction because there were dozens of opportunities to panic out with a loss and that’s why we practice this kind of trading – you need to get the experience in playing these out over time so that you can learn to BELIEVE in the strategy and, even then, it should only be used in places where you REALLY have a very good reason to believe a stock or ETF will, eventually, come back sharply enough to make all the work pay off – because it’s a LOT of work!
Of course, no one makes 100% every six months by taking it easy, right? Practice, practice, practice with virtual trading until you get comfortable with the strategies and, even then, use them sparingly. This aggressive virtual portfolio is meant to be a small part (10% or less) of a larger, more conservative virtual portfolio, like our nice,…
Options Players Flock to Wynn Resorts
by Option Review - April 1st, 2011 10:58 pm
Today’s tickers: WYNN, AVL, LLTC & GM
WYNN - Wynn Resorts, Ltd. – Options traders are placing bullish bets on the casino resort operator this morning with shares in Wynn Resorts surging 6.6% to an intraday- and more than three-year high of $135.59. Shares in the Las Vegas, NV-based company, which operates Wynn Macau in China, rallied sharply after casino revenue in Macau jumped 48% over the previous year, topping $2.5 billion in March. Options investors flocked to Wynn Resorts, as well as other casino resort operators with ties to Macau, right out of the gate this morning. Near-term bulls are dominating activity in Wynn’s options in the first half of the session, exchanging roughly 2.8 calls on the stock for each single put option. April contract calls are most active just before 12:00pm in New York, with overall options volume nearing 29,000 contracts against total open interest on WYNN of 140,493 contracts. Some bullish players picked up in-the-money call options, buying more than 1,100 calls at the April $130 strike for an average premium of $4.99 each, and purchasing some 1,400 call options at the April $135 strike at an average premium of $2.31 apiece. Near-term optimism spread to the higher April $140 strike where another 1,375 calls were scooped up for an average premium of $0.99 a-pop. Investors long the April $140 strike calls make money in the event that the casino operator’s shares rally another 4.0% over today’s high of $135.59 to surpass the average breakeven price of $140.99 by April expiration day. Finally, more than 1,800 call options changed hands up at the April $145 strike on open interest of just 256 contracts in the first half of the session. It looks like the vast majority of these calls were purchased at an average premium of $0.48 each. Call buyers at this strike profit in the event that WYNN’s shares jump 7.3% to exceed $145.58 at expiration. Wynn Resorts, Ltd. is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings after the closing bell on April 28, 2011, well past the expiration on April contract options.…
Take-Off Tuesday – Playing the One-Way Market
by Phil - January 11th, 2011 8:28 am
Up, up and away!
It’s Super Market! Strange index from another reality, who ignores bad news and achieves p/e multiples far beyond those of rational markets. Super Market, who can break resistance on low volume, move higher without consolidation and who – disguised as a genuine Price Discovery Mechanism, an actual indicator of the true-value of listed companies – Instead fights a never-ending battle with rational thinking and negative data because, in America, the market is only allowed to go one way!
OK, I got that sarcasm off my chest, now we can cheer-lead. Go Russell 800 go! Is today finally the day? After a rational-looking sell-off yesterday on very legitimate concerns over the fact that Portugal is now borrowing money at over 7% interest (a rate that would cost the US over $1Tn in interest annually), we had essentially a "Free Money Day," where the market goes up and up and now we have even better futures, where another 0.5% is being tacked on in early trading (7:30).
Let’s embrace the positives first and foremost. Both Japan and China have now stepped up to assist the 17-member EU to beat back high rates by pledging to actively participate in this week’s bond auctions, the first of the new year. The IMF (mostly the US) has also pledged to backstop loans – all this is giving the Euro a nice 0.5% bounce that has knocked the dollar down to 81, which is down 0.6% from yesterday’s open so of course our markets are up 0.6% – THATS WHAT ALWAYS HAPPENS!
What doesn’t always happen is the Nasdaq punching through the 2,700 mark on the back of AAPL’s run to $345 as the expected announcement of the Verizon IPhone is pushing Apple’s expected 2011 earnings past the $20 per share mark so $340 (p/e 17) sounds almost conservative compared to BIDU (p/e 87), AMZN (p/e 74) or NFLX (p/e 71) and, if you think about it, Apple has a search engine, sells things on-line and has Apple TV, which does Netflix’s job so if Goldman Sachs can call Netflix the "killer app" for tablet computers – what does that make Apple TV, which is designed to run off the IPad and includes Netflix as just one of its offerings?
The Wednesday before last, we made shorting the AAPL 2013 $175 puts at $8 the base for buying…
Monday Market Movement – “Like Moths to a Flame!”
by Phil - November 29th, 2010 8:01 am
"Investors are drawn to China like moths to a flame." – Neil Woodford
That’s a great quote. Neil is the head of investments at Invesco, running the UK’s largest investment fund with a decade of 15% average returns under his belt so let’s take the man seriously for starters. Mr Woodford’s concerns coincide with figures showing that food prices in China were 10.1pc higher in October than in the same month last year – a level of inflation not seen since mid-2007. This is deepening concern that China’s economy is now starting to overheat.
"I do not deny that in the long term an economy like China will grow much more rapidly than the West. But I think one has to be very careful about correlating growth necessarily with economic opportunity, and opportunity to make money," said Mr. Woodford.
And so it is that the moths are all drawn to the light, even as it burns them. For they are blindly drawn to its grace, hitting their heads about the light, destroying their senses, going without food, and becoming easy prey to those that hunt them. Even those few moths that will get within the embrase of the light will burn unable to escape, ever.
There was no escape for Ireland this weekend as the IMF and EU pinned the country down and forced them to swallow a $130Bn aid package at (get this!) 6.7%. $17.5Bn of this money is to come out of Irish pension funds all just to make sure Bill Gross doesn’t lose any of the money he lent to Ireland! I honestly cannot tell you who is the more vile, despicable villain in this debacle. Is it the banks, who started this mess with their idiotic lending practices? Is it the lobbyists and lawmakers, who turned Ireland into a tax haven for EU Corporations and destroyed the economy by funneling tax breaks to the wealthy? Is it the Irish Government, who stupidly bailed out the failing banks with guarantees that put the nation on the hook for more money than their entire GDP. Is it the bondholders, who drove up the cost of financing Ireland’s newfound debt to levels that threatened to break the National Bank or is it the EU & IMF, who are effectively playing the role of loan sharks, borrowing $100Bn at…
Long-Term Bullish Strategies Detected in Gamestop Corp. Options
by Option Review - October 4th, 2010 5:27 pm
Today’s tickers: GME, CHE, PENN, JPM, MED, SLE & WYNN
GME - Gamestop Corp. – Bullish options strategies were initiated on the video game retailer today despite the 0.70% dip in the price of the underlying shares to $19.86. One long-term optimistic individual employed the use of a three-legged combination, selling puts to buy a call spread, in order to prepare for a rebound in Gamestop’s shares by April expiration. The investor purchased 3,000 calls at the April 2011 $20 strike for a premium of $2.13 each, sold 3,000 calls at the higher April 2011 $24 strike for premium of $0.72 apiece, and shed 3,000 puts at the April 2011 $16 strike at a premium of $0.81 a-pop. Net premium paid to initiate the spread amounts to $0.60 per contract. Thus, the trader is poised to profit should GME’s shares rally above the effective breakeven price of $20.60 by April expiration day. Maximum available profits of $3.40 per contract are safe in the investor’s wallet if the video game seller’s shares jump 20.85% over the current price of $19.86 to exceed $24.00 by expiration. Finally, a 3,000-lot October $20/$24 strike call spread traded around the same time as the three-legged transaction. Open interest in the near-term calls is sufficient to cover today’s volume. The investor responsible for the October contract activity may be rolling the spread up to the April contract and adding the short puts to provide additional financing on the bullish stance.
CHE - Chemed Corp. – Shares of the provider of hospice care as well as various consumer services such as plumbing and sewer cleaning via its Roto-Rooter segment slipped 2.00% to $55.34 as of 3:40 pm ET. Investors with a near-term bearish view on the stock appear to have sold 2,000 calls outright at the November $60 strike to pocket premium of $0.55 per contract. Call sellers keep the full premium received on the trade as long as Chemed’s shares fail to rally above $60.00 by expiration day next month. Investors could…
Bearish Player Unfurls Butterfly Wings on Financial Select Sector SPFR Fund (XLF)
by Option Review - June 29th, 2010 4:25 pm
Today’s tickers: XLF, CMA, LYV, WYNN, MRVL, AVP & PX
XLF – Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF – The familiar shadow of a put butterfly spread appeared in the August contract on the XLF, an exchange-traded fund designed to provide investment results that correspond to the price and yield performance of the Financial Select Sector of the S&P 500 Index, suggesting shares of the fund may continue to decline in the next couple of months to expiration. Shares of the ETF are currently down more than 3.7% to $13.96 with 25 minutes remaining ahead of the closing bell. The bearish put butterfly spread involved the purchase of 10,000 now in-the-money puts at the August $14 strike for a premium of $0.62 apiece [wing 1], and the purchase of 10,000 puts at the lower August $12 strike for a premium of $0.17 each [wing 2]. The investor sold 20,000 puts at the central August $13 strike for a premium of $0.32 a-pop [body]. The net cost of the pessimistic play amounts to $0.15 per contract, thus preparing the investor to make money if shares slip beneath the upper breakeven price of $13.85 ahead of expiration day in August. Maximum available profits of $0.85 per contract are safe in the investor’s piggy bank if shares of the underlying fund decline another 14% from the current price of $13.96 to settle at $12.00 at expiration. Options implied volatility on the XLF jumped 17.5% to 35.96% by 3:38 pm (ET).
CMA – Comerica Inc. – Shares of the financial services firm edged 3.45% lower to stand at $37.25 with just 20 minute remaining in the trading session. Bearish investors dominated activity in CMA options this afternoon, with nearly all of the day’s volume centering on the put side of the field. One investor purchased a debit put spread, buying 7,500 now in-the-money puts at the August $37.5 strike for a premium of $2.50 each, and selling the same number of puts at the lower August $32.5 strike for a premium of $0.80 apiece. The net cost of the spread amounts to $1.70 per contract, and prepares the investor to make money should Comerica’s shares decline another 3.90% to breach the average breakeven point to the downside at $35.80 by expiration day in August. Maximum potential profits of $3.30 per contract are available to the responsible party if CMA’s shares plummet 12.75% from the current…
Weak Weekly Wrap-Up – Charting Uncertain Waters
by Phil - May 8th, 2010 5:43 am
I’m just doing a quick wrap-up this week because, surprisingly, it MIGHT be time for a new Buy List!
I had said to Members on Cinco de Mayo, in our 5% Rule Review, that if we broke below 1,155 we would retrace all the way to 1,100 with our 5% Rule resistance points around 1,100 at 1,155, 1,114, 1,100, 1,073 and 1,045. We actually spiked as low as 1,066 on Thursday but finished the week at a very sad 1,110 as we watched for that "weak bounce" zone to be broken all day. This does not bode technically well for the markets next week but I told Members we would have to give the markets a pass for the day. Based on the uncertainty of the weekend, we can’t expect a lot of capital commitments ahead of the EU decision. After all, we’re in cash – why shouldn’t other smart funds be too?
When I predicted we’d hit 1,000 on Wednesday, I did not think it would be on Thursday! The markets are now negative for the year and the S&P has spiked almost to the Feb low of 1,044 (and our lowest close was 1,056). That’s right, these 5% Rule numbers are the SAME ones we used back then and it’s the same series we used to measure our winter run at the end of last year. We expect a bounce here, hopefully at least a test of 1,155 on a relief rally if Greece is "fixed" yet again on Monday but we’re not going to be too impressed until we’re over that line.
Still that means it’s time to at least lay out a new Watch List, which is the prelude to a Buy List – giving us a list of stocks we’d like to get into at lower prices. Our last Member Watch List was back in December and by Feb 6th we had our famous Buy List, which we triggered at Dow 10,058 for a very successful run through March 18th ("Bye Bye Buy List!"), when we closed 2/3 of the positions and we have since cashed out the rest as I got more and more worried about the rally, finally calling for all cash last week.
Speaking of last week, for those of you who say I don’t pick enough straight stocks – I listed 33 short trade ideas from my unofficial "Sell List" last Friday (4/30) when the Dow was way up at 11,167…
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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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