I have followed a lot of Phil's picks over the last several years and made money using the exact option strategies he outlines. Of all the contributors on SA, he offers the most actual and ready to implement advice that has put money in my account. Many of us on SA actually are sad when we don't see Phil's postings for an extended period.
Brenteaz
Phil: That NFLX call was awesome. The speed at which NFLX options decayed was precipitous. The blow out spike that allowed me to double and roll my callers to 190(!) and the ridiculous 170 weeklies @3.50 a day away from Op-Ex. The gains I realized in that trade floored me when I took a long at my portfolio value on Friday. What a great way to start the 3rd Quarter.
Kinkistyle
Hey Phil – I ignored your call to sell those AAPL $580s for $1 so not sure whether to thank you or not (just kidding) for my $5 winner. Actually I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, that was an uncanny call.
TheChaser
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
I started with $250,000 in cash as of Oct 1 and have realized gains of $81,000 thru close of business. And that's in an IRA with no margin or naked trades. Whenever you are in Argentina or Chile I owe you a drink. I'm looking forward to it.
Denlundy
Phil - I LOVE these futures trades at random hours! I wasnt able to get in on the 612 part but if I had it wouldve been 130$ (2.6%) on a 5k contract in less than 30 minutes. I know you have to sleep, spend time with fam, ect but Im just letting you know that your posts after hours/late at night has made people who followed them a decent chunk of change. Thank you, we appreciate it!
Jromeha
I picked up one of your recommended Gold plays, the July ABX 30s and sold the Feb 35s, which are now mostly intrinsic value. Is it time to roll these to the March 37.50s, or should I wait this spike out?
Bill Hoffman
Joined last year and and started profitably trading options thanks to everything I have learned here. THANK YOU!!
OnWisconsin
I have an under 50k account that im trading I dont do all the trades but pick and chose to keep diversified.
With what Ive learned from being a member I average $400 to $800 per week trading futures
BertII
Phil: Once again thanks for those inciteful comments, and the old links to Sage's portfolio management (I hadn't read before). I'm an experienced stock trader, but over the last 3 or 4 months have come to appreciate options trading here at PSW, and the consistency of your many premium-selling strategies. It is liberating to have to worry less about getting direction right and being able to generate 5% MONTHLY returns with close to delta-neutral positioning. Much appreciated!
Neverworkagain
Phil - Thanks for the welcoming gift of the POT at a buck
Just paid for this month and my membership is not even 24 hours old!
looking forward to many more - bk
Bjkeck
Kudos on the POT puts! I studied the charts last night and you couldn't have hit the inflection points more perfectly. Since there are often many head fakes in the charts, that was very well done. I know they can't all work this well, but that was an extra unexpected bonus yesterday.
Ocelli7
Phil, I'm up 34x what I paid in fees for your service, and that only counts the trades I didn't think of myself. Thanks!
Barfinger
I am about 1000 hours into learning about investing. While, I have tried other websites along the way, they don't teach or focus on selling premiums and certainly don't have your mindset. Anyway, I have a lot to learn and look forward to the new portfolios.
So, thank ALL of you for being patient and teaching others how to "Be the House and not the Gambler"!
GrassHopper67
10/15/2014: Phil…..been travelling more than not but reading and watching you guys every night. This is to say a big thank you. Even though I don't have the time to trade every day now I set up hedges and base long term strategy on PSW. I now it may sound like BS to some readers but my 401k is down a mere 3%. It hardly gets my attention when I open my brokerage portfolio accounts. And that is by using your longer term hedges and strategies. I don't need to be a day trader to take advantage of PSW. At this time in my life when I cant trade every day……. not losing what we've gained moves front and center. It's just a great feeling to watch your brokerage account hold steady in a sea of red. Thanks Teacher.
Livingfull
Sold out my AAPL mar95 calls. Up over 100% today on them!
Singapore Steve
It was a nice day thanks to your help! Made over $1100 shorting TF every time it came up near 1260 and even more by going long oil before inventory under $46 and then waited patiently for the spike up into the close where I shorted it at 47.70 or so. Phil you gave me a road map and I simply followed the signs along the way.
Craigsa620
I have been here a year, and made most of my money back from the 14K fall. The people here are more than willing to help whe Phil cannot get to it. FWIW - This site is my brokerage firm, I was with Wells Fargo Portfolio and it was costing a fortune to trade, the costs here are more than offset with the data, trade ideas and profits you should make.. and I get a chuckle out of Cap and Phil's rantings on healtcare, guns, oh, yeah, and government….
Pharmboy
Phil/CL-that play made a quick $500 per contract! Took all of 10 minutes! I want to thank you for helping me not just learn a bit about trading, but giving me some confidence and most of all a rewarding "hobby" to look forward to each day. I have had a few mistakes and losses along the way, but I have had some great wins too and I am now consistently making money trading futures and have even learned to go to sleep while holding a losing position knowing that tomorrow is always another opportunity to win again. So thanks again for your help and patience along the way.
Craigsa620
Thanks, Phil. I really appreciate your sentiment and commitment! Just want to thank you for what you do for all of us.
JBaker
I have been here for 8 yrs, and find it the best service out there. There are more eyes on the market in this forum than anywhere, and opinions abound. So, relax, and let the group help you out.
Pharmboy
We are lucky to be in America and it is great to be part of the PSW tribe. Keeps me thinkin' and gatherin' the profits. ~ 42 % gain in my trading account year to date, which keeps me happy. Half to a third of the trading account is reserved in margin capacity that Is not committed. So, again thanks Phil and all of you other members.
Newthugger
SPY/Phil, I took a big swing on January 26th following your advice to another member and bought 1615 contracts of Mar 185/190 BCS on SPY that will expire ITM today paying $290,700 on the $500k bet. I thought it might be fun to see what a winning trade looks like. Great call on your part and looking back it seems pretty obvious.
Sibe14 (premium)
Your discussion during your web seminar on SPX and SDS today was great. It really let me see how you look at the numbers and use the 5% rule to see where inflection points occur and what the bands look like. This was incredibly helpful. I actually sold out of my small short position at a good profit ( which was more a bet on a short term fluctuation rather than a hedge after listening to you) and will look more deeply at my portfolio and how to hedge it. In addition your view on hedging was also very helpful looking at the leverage you can get w/ a small spread, and protect portfolio against a big move against me. Thank you for your sharing this. Very helpful.
Batman
Phil, I meant to post over the weekend, but I was busy having fun . Last week was a very nice week for me, and I wanted to thank you for all that you do. I am pretty much back to cash and really feel like I am learning. I have out performed the $5kp by a very large margin. Thanks again for the service you provide.
Scotbraze
Phil - DIA 107 Calls. As suggested I am taking the money and running to home depot for some shelter supplies! This is the grand finale of several successful trades from you through this roller-coster and as you have further suggested it is time for me to sit back and relax in cash. May even be able to talk my wife into the premium membership after these intelligent trades in a stupid market.
DOStrade
Phil – great calls this past week, esp. friday and monday. in the old days I would have let Prechter et al scare me into trimming my longs and going short at just the wrong time. your feel for the markets is Tiger-esque. CHK, HOV, BX, TLT and XLF are big winners for me today. My biggest up day in a long time. Thanks!
Terrapin22
Cory Booker for President. :) . Thanks for all the good futures guidance Phil! Having one of my best months yet. Account is up 75% YTD!
Traderd
I have definitely learned to take smaller wins early and be happy with that. Lately, I've aimed for $250 profit per day. Doing that daily/weekly x 48 weeks (assuming I take some time off) works out to 60k per year. That's a lot of money!! $250 moves happen all the time if you just wait for them.
It feels like the NFT explosion came out of nowhere. Three weeks ago, almost nobody had heard of Solana. Now it’s got a $53 billion market cap. El Salvador just became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Things are happening fast.
Are they, though? The Bitcoin white paper was written 13 years ago. The first NFT was minted in 2014.
The pace at which progress happens often depends on your view of the world. For example, you know when you see a child for the first time in a few years, and your reaction is, “Oh my god. You got so big.” That makes sense because if you saw them at 2 and then not again until they’re 8, that’s a 300% increase. To the parent who is with them every day, however, the changes can be imperceptible.
Dave Nadig got me thinking about this concept of how fast and slow certain things happen in a new piece about NFTs, saying, “Big, big global change happens much more slowly than technology itself.”
Marc Andreesen wrote about the pace at which innovation occurs in a prescient 2014 article in the New York Times, Why Bitcoin Matters.
A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers.
Political idealists project visions of liberation and revolution onto it; establishment elites heap contempt and scorn on it.
On the other hand, technologists – nerds – are transfixed by it. They see within it enormous potential and spend their nights and weekends tinkering with it.
Eventually mainstream products, companies and industries emerge to commercialize it; its effects become profound; and later, many people wonder why its powerful promise wasn’t more obvious from the start.
What technology am I talking about? Personal computers in 1975, the Internet in 1993, and – I believe – Bitcoin in 2014.
One of the complaints from people not steeped inside the crypto community is that the only use case for these projects
A “Wells Notice” is a letter sent by a securities regulator to a prospective respondent, notifying him of the substance of charges that the regulator intends to bring against the respondent, and affording the respondent with the opportunity to submit a written statement to the ultimate decision maker.
Now, usually it is the SEC that uses terms like ‘sketchy’.
As we say these days on social media …’shots fired’!
I sensed the SEC and Gensler have been gearing up for contact based on Gensler’s social media push. This weekend I wrote here:
The SEC has been quiet for what seems like 1,000 years. Gary Gensler the new head of SEC and of course former Goldman Sachs partner won’t shut up. He has a Twitter account and is having a lovely time sharing all his media appearances. I thought his Twitter account was a good idea at first because it showed he might be listening. Alas, it is just to push his confusing agenda.
While Gensler is on his media tour moving markets looking to help Goldman Sachs, the WSJ has a story about ‘The Social Media Stars Who Move Markets‘.
The U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has a three-part mission: Protect investors. Maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets. Facilitate capital formation.
With Gensler enjoying TV and Twitter, the definition above could [be] just about anything in a world where 100 million new traders and investors have apps and crypto markets are open 24/7.
Prepare for a lot more volatility if you own brokerage and crypto exchanges.
The government even went a step further in promoting the cryptocurrency’s use by giving US$30 in free bitcoins to citizens who sign up for its national digital wallet, known as “Chivo,” or “cool” in English. Foreigners who invest three bitcoins in the country – currently about $140,000 – will be granted residency.
Does making bitcoin legal tender mean every store and merchant in El Salvador will now have to accept digital payments? If more countries do the same thing, what will this mean for consumers and businesses around the world?
As an economist who studies wealth and money, I believe that briefly explaining what legal tender is will help answer these questions.
Legal tender refers to money – typically coins and banknotes – that must be accepted if offered in payment of a debt.
The front of every U.S. banknote states “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.” This statement has been enshrined in federal law in various forms since the late 1800s.
Towards the end of financial bubbles, two things generally happen. First, legitimate ways to put capital to work become scarce as prices outrun expected cash flows. Second, large numbers of traders, who have grown used to seeing everything they buy go up, start chasing “innovations” with exciting stories but (in retrospect) insanely high risks.
One recurring variation on this theme is the “dark pool” or “blank check fund,” which is someone with a well-known name saying “Hey, give me your money and I promise to do something cool with it.”
Today this con is known as a SPAC, for “special purpose acquisition company,” and generally takes the form of a publicly traded shell company that raises money with the intent of buying another company, in effect taking the acquisition target public. In other words, it’s a quicker, simpler version of an IPO, which appeals to the instant wealth mindset that dominates late-bubble markets.
SPACs emerged, boomed, and – inevitably because they don’t add any real value – are now tanking. From last week’s Wall Street Journal:
More than six months after the SPAC craze crested, a broad selloff has wiped about $75 billion off the value of companies that came public through special-purpose acquisition companies, according to a Dow Jones Market Data analysis of figures from SPAC Research.
A group of 137 SPACs that closed mergers by mid-February have lost 25% of their combined value. At one point last month, the pullback topped $100 billion. The analysis doesn’t include companies that hadn’t closed mergers as of mid-February or those that are no longer trading.
Over the same span, an exchange-traded fund that tracks companies that recently went public through initial public offerings slid 12%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 13%.
SPAC declines are concentrated in companies tied to green energy and sustainability, though the damage is widespread. About 75% of the SPACs that have announced deals but haven’t completed them are trading below their listing price. Earlier this year, when the sector was perhaps
Just two days ago, when Ethereum suddenly broke away from the gravitational pull of its bitcoin correlation, we wrote that "Ethereum Blasts Higher, Decoupling From Bitcoin, As Attention Turns To Unprecedented NFT Frenzy", and pointing to the accelerating institutional adoption and surging one-month forward swap, we predicted much more upside for the second largest cryptocurrency which serves as the platform for the latest NFT craze.
Predictably, the post promptly generated the requisite critical commentary among the peanut gallery, where traders are so brilliant they can't be bothered to even consider an outside view. Maybe they should have, because fast forward two days when we find that not only did Bloomberg catch up to what we said on Monday…
… but with Ethereum moving sharply higher this week, the moment it cross the critical resistance level of 3,600 it triggered a furious short squeeze which pushed it just shy of 3,800 - the highest price since May – and just a few hundred dollars away from its all time record high.
And yes, those who were busy explaining why Ethereum is garbage, shitcoin, etc, and why only they know better, would have been 10% richer in just 2 days. But they don't need the money…
Finally, those wondering what happens next, here are three observations.
First, the NFT frenzy is only just starting to move:
Second, the "max gamma" for Ether is far above the spot price and it could send the crypto currency as high as $6,000, if some enterprising market manipulator decided to force a gamma squeeze.
Finally, futures traders remain extremely bullish with the 1 month premium to spot near all time highs, while the ratio of ETH to BTC open interest is now matching record levels, meaning that not only is sentiment shifting even more away from BTC and toward ETH, but that the futures market see much more upside for ethereum in the coming weeks.
NFTs or non-fungible tokens first captured the public imagination when a digital collage by an artist named Beeple sold for US$69 million (£51 million) at Christie’s in March 2021. Since then, there has been an explosion in the use of these units for storing digital content, which are bought and sold using online ledgers known as blockchains.
Since that initial connection with art, we are seeing NFTs being used in numerous other ways. Notably, many are being traded as collectables on exchanges like OpenSea and Rarible. Lately, for example, a series of 8,888 adorable “Pudgy Penguins” made a splash, each reflecting its own unique characteristic, with one selling for a record 150 ethereum (about US$500,000).
Yet whether it is a remarkable piece of digital artwork or a cute digital penguin, NFTs are essentially tradeable jpegs or gifs. Unlike physical collectables, an NFT owner will not be able to display the asset in their home – except on a screen. They might think they could display it on a website, but this isn’t necessarily the case. So what is someone actually getting when they buy an NFT, and what do they truly own from a legal perspective?
The new frontier
To understand NFTs, it is important to understand what is meant by “fungible”. Fungible is derived from the Latin verb fungi, meaning to perform. In the broader context, this means interchangeable and relates to whether something can be exchanged.
Money is fungible, in the sense that you can buy a commodity worth £10 with any £10 note; it doesn’t matter which one you use. On the other hand, NFTs cannot be exchanged like for like with another. They are each one of a kind, or one of a limited edition.
Content sold as NFTs can be created in many ways. It can be computer-generated, which was the…
The last time I wrote about non-fungible tokens, activity peaked a few days later. Like many casual observers, I thought that when the volume dried up, that would be the last we heard about NFTs. At least for a while. Well, it turns out the rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated. NFTs, once again, are on absolute fire.
Remember back in February when a group of investors cobbled together $208,000 for a LeBron James moment. What seemed like an astronomical dollar amount just a few months ago seems quaint compared to some of the numbers we see today.
The most expensive CryptoPunk was bought for $7.58 million. It’s now listed for a cool 35,000 ETH, or $110 million. Most of these transactions happen on OpenSea, which just passed $100 billion in monthly trading volume.
The only thing crazier than how much some of these things are trading for is the speed at which they’re moving. Projects are going from “I’ve never heard of it” to selling for tens of thousands of dollars overnight. A few weeks ago, you could get a Bored Ape for less than 1 ETH. Now you can’t find one for less than 18 ETH ($58,373).
Last week, the token du jour was Pudgy Penguins. Kevin Roose even wrote a piece about it in The New York Times.
This week it’s Ether Rock, or “pet rocks on the blockchain.”
It’s normal to see this stuff and shake your head. I did. I still am. But you have to understand what’s happening here. This is purely a status symbol. There are only 100, and the more they go up in price, the more a purchase conveys that you can afford it. Packy recently wrote about this, saying, “Owning a Punk is a status symbol, like owning a Ferrari or an expensive handbag.”
Can you think of a reason for why Bitcoin wouldn’t go to $100,000?
Don’t say because it’s worthless, it’s clearly worth over a trillion US dollars to lots and lots of people. They may change their minds, but right now, it’s worth what it’s worth. Remember what I said in February: “That sounds stupid, I’m buying some just in case…” is still the vibez.
Don’t say it’s overvalued, because, LOL, based on what? Have you a metric, ratio, formula, rule of thumb, yardstick, comparable or incantation that’s been demonstrably helpful at valuing this instrument in the past or present? I f***ing bet you don’t! You might pretend you do in front of other people, but I know what you say to yourself in your own head once you go home for the day. I am a professional pundit, don’t even try to convince me otherwise. I know what you say about your “models” and all the nonsensical variables that go into them. And then I know what you say to yourself in the shower. The two things don’t match up. Here’s how JC Parets describes using the CNN Fear and Greed Indicator – and its seven non sequitur inputs – to predict the stock market:
Of the 7, I’d argue maybe 2 of them make sense to include in a sentiment composite.
The other 5 are different tools and data sets for completely different purposes.
This is like a Pitcher trying to figure out which pitch to throw a hitter by looking at the color of his shoe laces. Or by choosing your vegetables at the store using the expiration dates in the milk aisle.
What does one have to do with the other?
Nothing.
Here’s my chart of Bitcoin’s price versus the unemployment rate in Holland, apropos of absolutely nothing at all. Show me where on this chart to buy and where to sell:
What’s in your silly little equation to determine the price of an asset that trades…
Back in January 2021, we detailed Morgan Stanley's aggressive expansion of its Microstrategy holdings (whose strategy has shifted towards crypto when it became the first publicly-traded company to convert a substantial portion of its cash holdings to bitcoin), noting that it may be the catalyst that unlocks Bitcoin's door to rapidly crossing the psychological $100,000 level next.
Whereas share buyback announcements pump stock prices higher (whether they are buying them or not) as other front-run the C-suite, Crypto-purchases (on to corporate balance sheets) will create a more aggressive function by keeping cryptos elevated with shorts increasingly uncertain when the next huge buying wave will lift the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum vertically (like today)…
And today we see another entity more aggressively entering the crypto-purchasing wave.
As Decrypt.co's Jeff Benson reports,Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced via Twitter today that the publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange received board approval to add $500 million of cryptocurrency assets to its balance sheet. Not just that, but it'll be placing 10% of all future profits into cryptocurrency.
In February, as it prepared to go public via direct listing, Coinbase published an S-1 filing showing it held somewhere in the range of $365 million in crypto. Of that, $230 million was in Bitcoin, $53 million in Ethereum, $49 million in stablecoins, and $34 million in other crypto assets.
Though it was good enough to rank Coinbase fourth among all companies for Bitcoin holdings, two of the three firms ahead of it – cloud software firm MicroStrategy and electric automaker Tesla – bought their first BTC within the last year; Coinbase has been around since 2012.
Some thought a crypto-native company should have accrued more over that span, although accounting rules and treasury management principles may have made that imprudent.
We recently received board approval to purchase over $500M of crypto on our balance sheet to add to our existing holdings. And we'll be investing 10% of all profit going forward in crypto. I expect this
A transaction that has been missed by major news outlets on the financial disclosure form for Dallas Fed President, Robert Kaplan, is a line item showing that Kaplan made “multiple” trades of more than $1 million in S&P 500 futures.
This is a stunning revelation for a multitude of reasons. First, Kaplan’s financial disclosure form shows that he already had exposur...
Of the three billion genetic building blocks that make us living things, only a handful are uniquely ours. In fact, as Visual Capitalist's Carmen Ang notes, despite our differences on the outside, humans are 99.9% genetically similar to one another.
The sign says it all. The professionals want the public to focus on the words, to scare out the weak hands, but the color of the sign underlines the value in a money printing world, its gold stupid.
Point and figure (PnF) charts draw price waves with the sum of volume per wave. PnF charts high light true accumulation underneath price action. This is why Richard Wyckoff favored PnF charts.
In the charts below we see price moving sideways to down, yet volume on up waves are greater than volume on down waves. At the moment there is no heavy selling on down waves. Or in other words price is being moved down at a low volume expense to allow accumulation at a lower price.
This action represents professionals building their...
TD Bank's host Bryan Rogers interviewed Phil on June 10 as part of TD's Options Education Month. If you missed the program, be sure to watch the video below. It should be required viewing for anyone trading or thinking about trading using options.
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...
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Can you think of a reason for why Bitcoin wouldn’t go to $100,000?
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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
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