hil, I hit my targets for the year in my 401K (thanks in no small part to your site), so I cashed out of all positions a couple of weeks ago. Feels good... I'm conservative with this money –looking for 2% per month, which i've been able to do… thx.
Lunar
Best year I've ever had…sitting on a 52% YTD return. I would also echo Nat's shout out for Phil's talent. I've been a member for the 6 years or so. Just stay true to the strategy I've learned over the years of selling premium, keeping the bulk of my portfolio in long-term buy writes ("armchair" trades).
JJennings
Phil/ I hope the next 5 year bear market will be as much fun and as profitable as this 5 year bull market. For those who survived 2008/2009, and who imbibed the wisdom of PSW, what a time it has been. Good to have you by my side. I think you are selling yourself short – you need to triple your prices :)
Winston
BTW Phil, I wanted to relate a conversation I had with my business partner yesterday. I told him that I have been much more relaxed about my investments ever since I joined your site. It's funny how a 15-20% cushion does to your nerves. My returns have increased dramatically and my risk diminished. Many thanks for the guidance and patience. Good thing I am doing better financially as you might have increased my life expectancy as well!
StJeanluc
Thanks for the oil tip Phil: Bot & sold the USO May 29 calls for net $125. Not bad for few minutes work.
JWick1981
Hi Phil,
Thanks for the free disaster hedge ideas. I implemented variations of two of them on SDS bull call spreads and EEM bear put spreads (haven't done the TZA yet) and they really hedged my short term longs nicely today. Makes it seem a lot less like gambling.
You are the man (of the people)!
Howard Roake
Thanks for you guidance – Your "student" will be passing on the McMuffins and having Lobster dinners tonight!
Aquila
I did the same thing via your logic (sold puts that is). I glanced one time and they were already up 15% which is considered a good return for an overnight hold in most circles. This is PSW though and to us it's just another day…
Kwan
Thanks to Phil (again) for the lessons on the art of the roll, selling premium and hanging tight under fire (particularly in the first hour of trading-MADNESS). Watching you manage the $25KP has really helped my trading in a big way.
Oknoman
I have been with this site since the beginning and i have learned more the past 3 years than the previous 10. Information and great commentary are abound. The traders on the site are second to none and my portfolio has benefited greatly.
Kustomz
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! How will I ever do anything else in my life that will compare to the wild ride you get trading an ultra etf in the most volatile sector in the stock market the day before option expiration?
Matt1966
Phil is a fundamentalist to his fingertips. His ability to value a stock goes well beyond p/e, as he understands the essence of many businesses, what gives them value and how they make their money. As such, his recommendations are invaluable to a investor who takes a value-oriented approach.
Zeroxzero
WOW, look at DRYS go. Nice call on the entry the other week Phil. I got 200 at $6.66 and sold a 7.5 call for $.50, then on the tear today sold another 7.5 call for $1. This should puts me in at an average of $5.91 and called away at $7.5 for a profit of $300+ after commisions. Once again another Phil trade pays for this months membership.
Craigzooka
I am not a user of phil's site now, but was for a couple years. His advice and information is excellent. Perhaps even better, you get access to real-time trades of additional traders on his site (OptTrader, etc) and the other members who post what they are buying and selling. Overall, its a very valuable information tool. Expensive, but paid for itself many times over. I did not renew my membership because I switched jobs and did not have time to trade nearly as much.
XRTrader
The strategy you have laid out pretty much mirrors much of my trading activity. I also mix in some momentum plays and "drop dead" bargains that come across my radar. My YTD trading profit is 63%. Back in March when Phil said "unless you think the world is coming to an end, then NOW is the time to start taking positions in Buy/Writes with the VIX so high." I jumped in with both feet - ( thanks, again Phil)
Chaps
As a retired stockbroker from a major Canadian brokerage firm, I can tell you I would never had access to these type of trade ideas, especially the hedges.
Just closed out a July TZA 40/45 call spread today for a 271% gain in less than a month. I would have normally let that run but yesterday Phil commented to another member something to the effect that "you put down a $1 for a $5 upside, now that you are up 250% you have $2.5 in and you are hoping for a double."
Just closed out a USO July $38 put that Phil suggested yesterday for a 49% one day gain.
Thanks,
Bob
RJK
Don't expect to get rich quick here, but you can get easy 30 - 50 % per year, just by buying good stocks at discount (as we often discuss), selling monthly premiums of calls and puts.
Tchayipov
Phil - Your logic not only makes sense, but it made a lot of premium profit for me over the past 12 months. I have recovered much of the massive equity losses of last year. My Monday play is the sale of long term puts on FXI. Love the premium!
Gel1
I doubled down on our USO June $35 puts on Tuesday afternoon and listened to your posting yesterday and sold 1/2 midday and the rest I sold (luckily) at the top of the market yesterday with the last 1/4 of my contracts at 100% return in less than one day!
Samlawyer
Way back did 20 of your suggested short BP Jan 11 26 P @ 4.3 now .85 — sold half. this am —
paid for a years sub AGain!! thank you very much!
Ban2
Being on this board is better than successfully completing the Times crossword. Phil's panoply of comments manage to excite, illuminate, frustrate, exasperate, confuse, enlighten, outrage, invigorate and stupefy (and that's par for the morning session only!). But goddammit, it's addictive, informative and when it all goes right extremely profitable.
Winston
Wishing Phil and all fellow PSW members a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2017! Thanks to all of you for your insights and comments which help make me a better investor every day. Wishing everybody the best of luck for 2017
Learner
Peter D: great write-up for Short Strangles, Part 1, looking forward to Part 2, particularly the adjustment part.
RMM
GMCR – Just bought back my Jan $90 callers on GMCR for a nice $10,000 gain. Thanks for the recommendation Phil! It was nice to cash in on a momo.
Palotay
/NKD- Kownichiwa Cowboy!! One week of patience and scaling in and out pays off. This is a testament to Phil's fundamental analysis with the PSW technique. Thanks Phil.
JohnO
Phil is a master at keeping you laughing, as well as making you money. - It is like " laughing all the way to the bank!"
Gel1
Thanks, Phil. I really appreciate your sentiment and commitment! Just want to thank you for what you do for all of us.
JBaker
Phil I have been telling you for a while how I feel like I am really understanding you now and thanking you. Well today may have been my most successful futures trading day since I began here and the week has been spectacular! It has just seemed so easy when you give us a range and I execute properly. Thanks once again for teaching me to fish. My portfolio gained over 10% this week which is just amazing.
Craiga620
Thanks Phil, for banging the table on getting short and getting to cash. Usually when this happens in the market I am freaking out but I actually made money this week thanks to you. That HOV trade was a great way to re-deploy some of my cash.
Julian
I started with $250,000 in cash as of Oct 1 and have realized gains of $81,000 thru close of business. And that's in an IRA with no margin or naked trades. Whenever you are in Argentina or Chile I owe you a drink. I'm looking forward to it.
Wells Fargo bank analyst Mike Mayo appeared on CNBC this morning to paint a rosy picture for how banks would be treating the Fed’s less than dovish statement yesterday. Mayo said this about the banks:
“Back in the 70s or even 1994 the inflation caused unrealized securities losses, derivatives losses, asset/liabilities mismatches. So too much inflation is hell for banks. But we think what’s happening now is a dose of heaven. And so higher rates sooner can allow banks to finally earn more money on all those deposits that they’ve gathered. And so this means that assets reprice faster than their liabilities.”
What actually priced much faster than either assets or liabilities were the share prices of the mega banks on Wall Street. The cheery words had barely left Mayo’s tongue before the biggest banks on Wall Street went into a sharp swoon. His employer, Wells Fargo, fared worst of all. By 12:39 p.m. this is where things stood: Wells Fargo (WFC) was down 4.79 percent; Citigroup (C) was off by 4.22 percent; Bank of America (BAC) had lost 4.11 percent; Morgan Stanley (MS) had given up 3.93 percent; Goldman Sachs (GS) shaved 3.33 percent while JPMorgan Chase gave up 2.92 percent.
While it’s now pretty easy to get a COVID-19 shot in most places in the U.S., the vaccine rollout in other parts of the world has been slow or inconsistent due to shortages, uneven access and concerns about safety.
Researchers hope that a mix-and-match approach to COVID-19 vaccines will help alleviate these issues and create more flexibility in the immunization regimens available to people.
Around the world, different pharmaceutical companies have taken different approaches to developing vaccines. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna created mRNA vaccines. Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson went with what are called viral vectors. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is protein-based.
So mixing vaccines could mean more than just switching manufacturers – like from Pfizer for dose one to Moderna for dose two. You might be tapping into a different way to stimulate your immune response if you opt for a first dose of AstraZeneca and a second dose of Moderna.
On May 26 Bloomberg News reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened an investigation into Archegos Capital Management and its bank lenders. Archegos is the family office hedge fund that had blown up in late March, causing a total of more than $10 billion in losses to mega banks including Credit Suisse, UBS, Morgan Stanley and others.
Archegos had obtained leverage of as much as 85 percent on its heavily-concentrated stock trades from some of its banks, in brazen violation of the Federal Reserve’s Regulation T which sets margin for stock trading at a maximum of 50 percent on opening trades. In addition, the banks were holding the stocks in their own names (while shifting losses and gains to Archegos under a derivatives contract called a swap) thus denying the public the knowledge of the true owners of these stock positions under 13F public filings with the SEC.
This kind of tricked-up derivative contract accomplished two other things as well: it allowed the banks to avoid the Volcker Rule that bans them from owning a hedge fund while still letting them loan out their balance sheet to a hedge fund and collect lucrative fees along the way. It also allowed the banks to ignore their own internal broker-dealer rules on making margin loans against concentrated stock positions. There is also the riveting question as to just who was paying the capital gains taxes on these stock trades. (See Did Archegos, Like Renaissance Hedge Fund, Avoid Billions in U.S. Tax Payments through a Scheme with the Banks?)
In late March, when Archegos couldn’t meet its margin calls with the banks, the banks had to panic sell the stocks they were holding, pushing down the prices of the stocks in some cases by as much as 50 percent.
From news reports, it might sound like the fossil fuel industry is on the defensive after a landmark court ruling and two shareholdervotes challenging the industry’s resistance to curbing its greenhouse gas emissions.
But how much power do decisions like these really carry when it comes to pressuring the industry to change? As an academic who studies climate finance and is familiar with climate litigation, I think there’s something else at work here.
Pressure from the courts
This latest flurry of speculation about the future of the industry began on May 26, 2021, when a Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its emissions 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels. That includes emissions from vehicles that burn Shell’s gasoline, something for which the oil industry has never been held legally liable.
Digging deeper into the court’s decision, it is clear that the judges paid attention to science. The court agreed that greenhouse gas emissions pose a significant risk to the climate and that only so much more carbon can be released globally if the world hopes to avoid warming the planet by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels – the limit agreed to globally under the Paris climate accord. The court held Shell partly responsible for this increase.
The decision appears to hinge on a violation of the Dutch Civil Code’s “unwritten standard of care,” which, according to the court, means that “acting in conflict with what is generally accepted according to unwritten law is unlawful.” Shell “must observe the due care exercised in society,” the court wrote.
After the ruling, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden wrote on LinkedIn that his company would accelerate its emissions reduction strategy, but ‘for a long time to come we expect to
CONCERNED ABOUT U.S. APATHY toward Ukraine, the American attorney Victor Rud, in his capacity as chair of the foreign advisory council for the Ukrainian National Association, composed a letter to the incoming Secretary of State:
I am writing concerning the ongoing developments in Ukraine.
Even though Ukraine is the largest European country, the size of Germany, England and Hungary combined, it has been forever a terra incognita for Americans, citizens and policymakers alike. That, together with Ukraine’s sudden and stunning appearance on the international scene, requires a studied reassessment of America’s mindset about “Russia” that has dominated for now almost a century. This is especially so because, regardless of the result of the upcoming elections in Ukraine, the U.S. will be confronted by ever increasing and sophisticated attempts by Russia to suborn that country.
Putin’s soul is of an unrepentant CHEKIST who matriculated from the same school as Pavel Sudoplatov. Pavel was a key player in the Soviet penetration of the Manhattan Project…and was a killer, among the “wet tasks” organizing Trotsky’s assassination. Infinitely more consequential to the United States, though your predecessors were oblivious to its implications, was Sudoplatov’s organization of the assassination of Ukrainian political and military leaders in what he described as a 75-year war between Ukraine and Russia….The war continues.
Rud did not write this to Antony Blinken this past January. He wrote it to Condoleezza Rice in December of 2004.
Sixteen-plus years later, the only thing that has changed is the Russian occupation of the Crimea. Putin remains unrepentant. American policymakers remain oblivious, if not flat-out complicit. Ukraine remains essential. And the war continues.
To make sense of the situation playing out in the geographical center of Europe, we must understand the history of, and between, Ukraine and Russia. As the latter has spent the last century and a half in a concerted, systematic attempt to erase the history of the former, this is not always easy.
Federal Reserve officials signaled they expect to raise interest rates by late 2023, sooner than they anticipated in March, as the economy recovers rapidly from the effects of the pandemic and inflation heats up.
Their median projection showed they anticipate lifting their benchmark rate to 0.6% from near zero by the end of 2023. In March they had expected to hold it steady through that year.
This is bad news how?
Do you want interest rates at zero and emergency bond buying programs to go on forever, regardless of economic conditions? Have you been struck by lightning, sir? Fallen on your head in recent days?
“Progress on vaccinations has reduced the spread of Covid-19 in the United States. Amid this progress and strong policy support, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened.”
That’s Chair Powell, resetting expectations as he should. Ignore kneejerk stock market reactions and sudden swings in sentiment. Things are getting better, extraordinary stimulus is going away, rates will normalize.
I’ll be on CNBC’s Closing Bell today at 3:45pm today, bringing my own particular flavor of calm, rational market commentary to the table. Pull up a chair.
Corporate media outlets like Bloomberg News, the CBS news program 60 Minutes, and CNBC have been seduced into obsequious behavior when it comes to Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, despite the fact that Dimon has presided over the most unparalleled crime spree in the history of U.S. banking. Between 2014 and September of last year, JPMorgan Chase has been charged with five criminal felony counts by the U.S. Department of Justice. The bank admitted to all five counts. (See the bank’s detailed rap sheet here.)
Despite this crime spree and endless probation periods followed by more crime, Dimon has further seduced federal bank regulators into allowing his unrepentant behemoth to become the most systemically risky bank in America. That assessment is not our opinion. It is the assessment of the federal government based on hard data.
The National Information Center is a repository of bank data collected by the Federal Reserve. It is part of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), which was created by federal legislation to create uniformity in the examination of U.S. financial institutions by the various banking regulators.
Each year the National Information Center creates a graphic profile of banks measured by 12 systemic risk indicators. The data used to create these graphics come from the “Systemic Risk Report” or form FR Y-15 that banks are required to file with the Federal Reserve. To measure the systemic risk that a particular bank poses to the stability of the U.S. financial system, the data is broken down into five categories of system risk: size, interconnectedness, substitutability, complexity, and cross-jurisdictional activity. Those measurements consist of 12 pieces of financial information that banks have to provide on their Y-15 forms.
The most recent data for the period ending December 31, 2019 indicates that in 8 out of 12 measurements – or two-thirds of all systemic risk measurements – JPMorgan Chase ranks at the top for having the riskiest footprint among its peer banks.
To put it another way, the largest bank in the United States with an apparent insatiable appetite to commit felonies is also the riskiest bank based on other key metrics.
In the spring of 2013, the S&P 500 made a new all-time high for the first time since October 2007. Around that time, I remember seeing people use the b-word to describe what was happening.
The chart below, which shows Google searches for “Stock market bubble,” validates my memory.
Stocks have been rising over the last decade because businesses have been making more money for their shareholders. That sounds overly simplistic, but that’s just about all you need to know.
Last week Howard Silverblatt tweeted that for the first time, S&P 500 quarterly cash-flow will exceed $500 billion.
You don’t have to be Captain Sherlock to find bubbles today. They’re hiding in plain sight. But just because there are bubbles in the stock market, that doesn’t mean the overall stock market is in a bubble.
I spoke about this and much more on the newest edition of The Compound and Friends with Josh and Sam Ro.
When President Joe Biden took Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup for a test drive in Dearborn, Michigan, in May 2021, the event was more than a White House photo op. It marked a new phase in an accelerating shift from gas-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles, or EVs.
As an environmental historian, I see this moment as pivotal because unlike EVs from manufacturers like Toyota or Tesla, the electric F-150 does not entirely rely on green consumer choice. It places the electric vehicle transition squarely in the hands of mass-market consumers who don’t choose cars based on environmental considerations, and who are buying far more light trucks – pickups, sport utility vehicles and minivans – than cars today.
The century of gasoline
America’s 20th-century affair with gas-powered cars was not inevitable. From 1890 through about 1915, vehicles powered by horses, coal, electric batteries and gasoline jockeyed for position on U.S. streets. And electric-powered vehicles had some clear advantages. Many consumers feared that gas-powered cars were prone to explode, and there was no nationwide fueling infrastructure.
But World War I combined with a moment of technological convergence that favored the internal combustion engine. Massive new petroleum discoveries in Texas, and later in the…
It wasn’t just politics that led to Netanyahu’s ouster – it was fear of his demagoguery
Benjamin Netanyahu sits in the Knesset before parliament voted June 13, 2021, in Jerusalem to approve the new government that doesn’t include him, Amir Levy/Getty Images
There is something Shakespearean about Benjamin Netanyahu’s downfall.
As in a scene from “Julius Caesar,” who was assassinated by Roman senators, Netanyahu was deposed by his former underlings, the leaders of the three right-wing parties that have joined the new government – Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Gideon Sa’ar, all of whom once worked for Netanyahu.
If two of these men had remained loyal to Netanyahu, as they had been for years, then he would still be in power today.
Instead, Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has finally been dethroned. “King Bibi,” as his devoted supporters hail him, ruled Israel for a total of 15 years, including a short stint in the 1990s. He returned to power in 2009, and for the past 12 years he dominated Israeli politics and came to personify Israel in the eyes of the world.
But while personal grudges and political rivalries largely due to Netanyahu’s preening personality have no doubt played a key role in his ouster, they do not fully account for the unyielding opposition he has engendered.
Thousands of people take part in spontaneous celebrations in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, Israel, after the Knesset voted on June 13, 2021, to oust longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Guy Prives/Getty Images
When the private tax returns of billionaires were leaked to a left-wing group, liberals and conservatives reacted very differently. Liberals fell for the political trick and immediately said that the tax code was unfair and the rich should get a tax hike. Conservatives saw through the conspiracy and wanted answers on how the Deep State at the IRS could, once again, have so much unchecked power for political purpo...
While it’s now pretty easy to get a COVID-19 shot in most places in the U.S., the vaccine rollout in other parts of the world has been slow or inconsistent due to ...
Gold tends to slump at the start of the US summer, and will Basel 3 make a difference this year?
Basel 3 has removed a large chuck of paper shorts off the LBMA, of course this is for the banks only, the hedge funds can continue to suppress gold with paper shorts. The true effect of Basel 3 may not be known for some month.
A typical pattern in the metals is a smash down just before a major rally, consider this:
June is TD Bank's Option Education Month, and today (Thursday, June 10) at 1 pm EST, Phil will speak with host Bryan Rogers about selling options and various option strategies that we use here at Phil's Stock World. Don't miss this event!
If you want to get your hair cut outside of your home in the United States, the job has to be done by a licensed worker at a regulated business. The same thing applies to plumbers, electricians, home inspectors, real estate and insurance agents. They all require a license and are subject to regulatory scrutiny.
Likewise, commodities like corn, sugar, wheat, lumber and oil are all traded on regulated exchanges which are overseen by a federal regulator.
But, for reasons that have yet to be explained to the American people, when it comes to the $1.7 trillion cryptocurrency market – which is effectively a con-g...
Is Crude Oil about to blast off and hit much higher prices? It might be worth being aware of what could be taking place this month in this important commodity!
Crude Oil has created lower highs over the past 13-years, since peaking back in 2008, along line (1).
It created a “Double Top at (2), then it proceeded to decline more than 60% in four months.
The countertrend rally in Crude Oil has it attempting to break above its 13-year falling resistance as well as its double top at (3).
A successful breakout at (3) would suggest Crude Oil is about to mo...
The past year has underscored that challenge. The pandemic has not just affected investment returns – it’s also had serious implications for charitable activities and the ability to fundraise. For some organizations, it’s even raised doubts about whether they can continue to operate.
Finding ways to generate long-term, sustainable returns for ...
The Suez Canal: A Critical Waterway Comes to a Halt
On March 23, 2021, a massive ship named Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal, completely blocking traffic in both directions. According to the Suez Canal Authority, the 1,312 foot long (400 m) container ship ran aground during a sandstorm that caused low visibility, impacting the ship’s navigation. The vessel is owned by Taiwanese shipping firm, Evergreen Marine.
Our Adaptive Fibonacci Price Modeling system is suggesting a moderate price peak may be already setting up in the NASDAQ while the Dow Jones, S&P500, and Transportation Index continue to rally beyond the projected Fibonacci Price Expansion Levels. This indicates that capital may be shifting away from the already lofty Technology sector and into Basic Materials, Financials, Energy, Consumer Staples, Utilities, as well as other sectors.
This type of a structural market shift indicates a move away from speculation and towards Blue Chip returns. It suggests traders and investors are expecting the US consumer to come back strong (or at least hold up the market at...
The numbers of new cases in some of the hardest hit COVID19 states have started to plateau, or even decline, over the past few days. A few pundits have noted it and concluded that it was a hopeful sign.
Is it real or is something else going on? Like a restriction in the numbers of tests, or simply the inability to test enough, or are some people simply giving up on getting tested? Because as we all know from our dear leader, the less testing, the less...
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...
The economy is recovering faster than had been expected as recently as this spring. Great reason to panic, apparently.
Corporate media outlets like 
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.
