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
Peter D, Just a note of thanks. Eight weeks ago, I entered my first RUT strangles, when the RUT was at 625. Tomorrow, I will let them expire, with the RUT at 625 (give or take). I didn't care when the RUT went to 650, nor when it dropped to 590. Easiest, no touch money I've made in a long time.
Judahbenhur
Have been a member for about 6 months or there abouts. Signed up for a quarter at first and then for a year. To me, and it's only my opinion, it's an investment and I have made the membership fees back many times over on the strategy advice. Since joining and implementing the strategy of buy/writes and hedges I have cut my portfolio losses for the year and have a really good chance of going positive this year. If I would have continued down the road I was on, I would still have been fumbling around without a strategy and completely inept in what I was doing. I feel now the strategy is working and I am far more comfortable with the risks I am taking. I still have a lot to learn but I feel the fees have been one of the best investments I have made. The returns have been fantastic. Still have problems with the politics but hey nobody is perfect
DKGuy
I have been around for many years now, was a modest inexperienced investor when I started, and I can honestly say I would not be at the point in my portfolio I am today without the guidance of Phil and JeanLuc and Yodi and all the others I've had the pleased of learning from and, on a few occasions meeting, over the years. Truly been a great experience.
RPeri
Great calls this week!
SNS1
I have been a "silent" member for the past year, and am 1,000 hours into the 10K hours of training (The last week is worth at least 500 hours!). Made lots of mistakes and misunderstood quite a few of Phil's calls, … some actually made money when reversed. The chat (Including the politics) is very engaging (Many great minds with international coverage), and a great companion, while nursing a trade gone wrong, through the night. The webinars (despite technical difficulties) are extremely useful. Thanks for your coaching … it has made me a consistently profitable trader, with a better understanding of what I do not know.
Aquila
Probably the best approach and method I have ever seen for the public and I have worked for some serious traders at the biggest houses doing research. Those guys all have various forms of inside info that you and I do not and cannot have. Davis simply has a great system based on a very deep understanding and experience that gives him market savvy that is very real. A very smart guy and he shares it for a fee. He knows how to use options to great advantage and make money trading.
DowntoEarthThinking
Hey Phil - writing to thank you!
First of all, and I know you have heard this a few times form some others - the portfolio updates you have done - with entries and targets and even margin reqs are invaluable!
I find myself understanding what is done here IN THEORY most of the time..however, there is a much bigger difference in placing and setting up the hedges properly than just understanding…This has been eye opening for me and Ifeel like I just took a major step in trading during the last week.
Bcfla
Phil, those OIH $80 p that you recommended last week for ~$1 are now worth $5.50!
Greg
Phil.... I remember back in March of '09, you stated " Unless you think the country is going to hell in a hand-basket, NOW is the time to do your buying". Do you remember ?
I took your advice, and bought leap $2.00 calls on F, approximately 200,000 shares using the options, for just pennies. Now that was the best Ford I ever owned.... made over $1 mil - thanks go to you Phil. I now drive a Mercedes but still "love" the Ford.
1234Gel
100KP dividend plays - FYI, I'm loving them...thanks, Phil!!! Including the $0.848/share dividend, I am up 100% on my $2.38 net entry on LYG...that's pretty cool!
SSDirk
WOW, glad I went bearish… Phil, thanks for the help on the QID calls yesterday, I turned it into a partial cover rolling down to the Feb 52s selling the 55s 1/2 covered. Sold 1/2 and now lowered my cost basis to $4.38 on the $52s (fully covered).
Texasmotion
Phil – Not that you dont usually, but you have DEFINITELY earned your money this week. THe recommendations have been PERFECT. Selling into the initial excitement (MULTIPLE TIMES), hedges, everything. Im reading this when I get home from work and want to cry b/c I cant trade at work! I might have to start getting up at 3 AM though to catch those trades bc youre killing it then too! May you and yours have a blessed weekend!
Jromeha
You guys gotta give it to phil–the voice of reason yesterday, last nite and this morning.
Corleone
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
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
I have been trading for quite a few years and in good years made about 25%. After joining PSW, I followed closely the PSW strategy and my trading profit for this year is close to 70% to date. For fun, I like to mix in a few "Hail Mary" plays that really worked out well, but overall the simpler Buy/Write strategy, as presented by Phil so often, created the majority of the profit.
Gel1
Took profit on QQQ 57 Puts, bot 40 at $0.07, sold 20 for $0.15 and 20 for $0.32. Thank, Phil
Bobhu
Phil/ et al- Thanks for the answers to my spread questions last night, as I really needed that little piece of knowledge to crystallize my understanding of spreads. Your help is much appreciated and I have been doing really well for the last couple of months with fewer and fewer missteps as I embrace the PSW ways and watching my portfolios grow.
Craigsa620
Phil, 26% on the week for the 20% I day-trade, and since drinking the kool-aid last fall, the whole portfolio has doubled. Have a great weekend !!
JRW III
Great call on expe Phil! Went long 50 shares and sold for a nice profit! And Great call on the nkd shorts as well. I didn't use a stop that tight and was able to cover for a $400 gain. Works been keeping me pretty busy and I'm jealous of all the members who are able to check in here more often! It's almost always quite profitable! Looking forward to Vegas!
Jromeha
Boring trading – Phil/ Thanks to PSW, my yearly covered-writes are on pace for 15%. Add the long puts and well over 20%… and I look at it once a day and never lose sleep over it. Actually doing better than my trading account at this point (Thanks, summer 2013)
Anyway, the point is that anyone with enough money would be wise to do the 20% – 40% stuff and do trading as a hobby…
Arivera
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
Phil - I celebrate today, having reached my goal for the year, trading in sync with your education and guidance, of 1 million in profit. I learned a lot, achieved much, and am profoundly grateful. To be honest, when I set the goal I thought it was daunting, as I have for many years been an investor in equities but did very little with options. Learning and doing has for me been a blast!
I reached my goal by following Phil's strategies - lots of Buy/Writes, covered calls on equities , naked put entries for income production. I did it with 2.5 mil and kept 600,000 in cash in case I got in trouble. I concentrated on stocks (many of my own choosing) that had decent dividends and wrote front month calls against (OTM) which has worked well in this market run. 25% of my gain is in dividends and premium selling, with the balance in appreciation.
Gel1
TBT - Many thanks, Phil. I join you in your opinion favoring the Jan expirations. That's a great play. I can never thank you enough for what I have gained educationally as well as monitarily. Here it is late Sunday evening and I am able to get world class advice, just by asking for it. I feel like I am staying in a 5 star hotel, and room service is just a telephone call away!
Gel1
Phil- I want to let you know that you really helped me make some money this morning when I probably would have lost on my own. I was stuck in doctors waiting rooms most of the morning starting at 8AM. By following the game plan you laid out and using my smartphone, I went short on oil whenever we got to 61.50 and long at 61 waiting for the spikes ahead of inventory. When 10:30 rolled around I was out after selling longs at 61.60 a few minutes earlier. I went short at 61.75-61.80 and voila, rode it down to 60.60 or so. Thank you.
craigsa620
I want to thank you for the FREE LL trade. I This was the first spread trade for me and promised to join your service if I made money. I closed the spread last week and will be joining next week when we return home.
Captain Mogul
Phil – I think I finally figured out your "crystal ball" time frame. You're about 5-14 days AHEAD of what the market is going to do. It's taken me a long time to realize this, but boy it's been profitable. I go in when you recommend something at about 25% allocation, and then add to it each day it "goes the wrong way" Then BOOM, one day it's all good…. The long put list was literally exact in it's timing.
Burrben
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 loaded up big time yesterday on your suggestion of the AMZN September 75 naked puts. They are up 43%!
Money continues to flow into the venture capital industry.
I won't complain.
The money flow should increase as rates stay low and the mantra of alternative investing picks up pace. I can feel that happening.
One big rule change that should really accelerate money flows is the final Volcker Rule:
The Final Volcker Rule[1], which goes into effect October 1, 2020, makes a number of significant modifications that are encouraging for venture capital funds. Most notably, the rule change permits banks to take stakes in venture capital funds that were previously banned, meaning that Wall Street and other banks will soon be able to boost investments in these funds.
Elsewhere…
AngelList came up with a new twist on Venture Capital this year with rolling funds.
As discussed yesterday in my podcast with Chetan of Benchmark, the biggest secret in technology right now is that the TAM of the cloud (total addressable market) continues to expand.
With this growth comes a huge shift in power and MD Gabriel has a great free newsletter and excellent post up titled ‘Power in The Valley‘ that is worth a read.
Over the past 16 months journalists have been scouring through more than 2,000 Suspicious Activity Reports originally sent by banks to the United States Treasury, before being leaked to Buzzfeed and then passed along to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The reports relate to more than US$2 trillion in transactions over the period from 2000 to 2017. Some of these transactions will already have been investigated, and may be legitimate. In the case of the Australian banks, the regulator AUSTRAC has already asked the US Treasury for some of this information.
There are a number of questions raised by this latest episode of bad behaviour by banks. Firstly, why don’t banks have better controls to stop these kinds of transactions from occurring?
With transactions from tax havens, from shell companies, or to countries under sanction why aren’t banks themselves doing some investigation rather than simply passing information along to the US Treasury?
The short answer is that banks make too much money and it is not in their interest to ask too many questions.
An obvious example are the transactions processed by JP Morgan relating to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal which netted the bank millions of dollars in fees despite the obvious questions the transactions should have raised.
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
A second question is why do banks consistently seem to behave so badly?
Australia has seen banking scandal after banking scandal over the last 30 years, with the latest detailed in the report of the Hayne Royal Commission in 2019.
Big rewards, less regulation
I believe the reason the banking industry is particularly prone to scandals is because of the amount of cash sloshing through the system, and the fact that in recent years there have been fewer regulations and less policing than is needed.
Deregulation has been the general trend in finance since the mid-1980s, first in…
Are you a buyer? The sooner the better. Are you a seller? Ask high, and take your time.
Because the boom in suburban real estate was going to happen, beginning this year, pandemic or not. And it could have legs for years. That’s according to my special guest, Logan Mohtashami, who joins me for the latest episode of my podcast – out this morning!
You can listen to the whole thing below, or find it wherever you like to listen to your favorite pods!
And be sure to leave a rating and review – they go a long way!
Fed Chair Jerome Powell looked genuinely troubled as Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona shared her traumatic childhood during yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing. The witness panel included both Powell and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Sinema first asked Mnuchin and Powell if they had ever been evicted from their home. Both said no. She then shared this:
“Well, as you may know, I was homeless for a number of years as a child. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I know the challenges that Arizona families are facing right now and it’s an important perspective for people here in Washington to understand.
“When I was in elementary school, my Dad lost his job and my parents got divorced. We lost our car and our home and we were homeless for almost three years. We lived in an abandoned gas station without running water or electricity.”
The New York Times has suggested that Sinema has embellished this story, but concedes that she and her family did live in an abandoned gas station; that it was a trying time; and that she had the grit to go on to graduate high school at age 16, as valedictorian of her class.
Sinema was making the case that dramatically more stimulus from Congress is urgently needed. She said “According to the Census Bureau’s household Pulse Survey, over 300,000 Arizona families missed their July rent payments. Two-thirds of those households are families with children.” Sinema went on to remind Mnuchin and Powell that Arizona’s unemployment insurance, at $240 a week, is the second lowest in the nation and without Congress passing a continuation of the prior unemployment supplement of $600 a week, the eviction crisis is destined to get worse.
Refinitiv Lipper has been reporting fund flows into and out of the stock market for the past 18 years. According to its most recent report, for the week ended Wednesday, September 23, equity (stock) funds, including both equity mutual funds and equity Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), have now seen a net outflow of money for the sixth straight week.
This week’s outflow from equity funds totaled -$14.9 billion. That’s the largest outflow by far in the past six weeks. It brings the total net outflow from equity mutual funds and equity ETFs to a net outflow of $42 billion beginning with the week ending August 19.
That may not sound like a lot of money in a $35 trillion (as of June 30, 2020) market, but it is if you focus on the word “net.” If you have a long-term pattern of “net” outflows from stocks, it’s going to be tough to move the needle higher, even if you have Nasdaq Whales trying to gin up the market with options. (See here and here.)
So I asked Chetan from Benchmark to come on the podcast and chat about the sector. Chetan is one of the few investors at the absolute center of the open source software industry sitting on the board of Elastic and Mongo DB which are the two large public open source companies. He was also on the board of Mulesoft that was acquired by Salesforce.
Fun Fact: Chetan is originally from India, but he grew up all over the U.S. He’s spent time living everywhere from Utah to Maryland, but has called California home for almost 20 years. (Just don’t ask him to ski)
What’s the Panic About:
One of my goals with this podcast is that both my listeners and I can learn and grow together. And that’s why it was so great to have someone like Chetan Puttagunta on to take the time to share his knowledge about open-source software and its business model. Chetan is a general partner at the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital and is someone with a fantastic eye for early stage investments targeting everything from software to social media to marketplaces. Although Chetan and I haven’t met in-person yet, I’ve been a fan of his work for a while now and have been fascinated to learn more about his work with open-source. With that in mind, in this episode we discuss all things open-source software: what exactly it is, misconceptions, misinformation, how to invest, its role in public cloud companies, and how these ideas go beyond just a…
When hurricanes and other extreme storms unleash downpours like Tropical Storm Beta has been doing in the South, the floodwater doesn’t always stay within the government’s flood risk zones.
New research suggests that nearly twice as many properties are at risk from a 100-year flood today than the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps indicate.
Unfortunately, many of the people living in those properties have no idea that their homes are at risk until the floodwaters rise.
I am a sociologist who works on disaster vulnerability. In a new study, I looked at the makeup of communities in Houston that aren’t in the 100-year flood zone, but that still flood. What I found tells a story of racial disparities in the city. Research in other cities has shown similar flooding problems in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
Poor stormwater infrastructure, expanding urbanization and limited flood mitigation efforts are a few of the reasons why.
Flooding outside the zones
About 15 million Americans live in FEMA’s current 100-year flood zones. The designation warns them that their properties face a 1% risk of flooding in any given year. They must obtain flood insurance if they want a federally ensured loan – insurance that helps them recover from flooding.
In Greater Houston, however, 47% of claims made to FEMA across three decades before Hurricane Harvey were outside of the 100-year flood zones. Harris County, recognizing that FEMA flood maps don’t capture the full risk, now recommends that every household in Houston and the rest of the county have flood insurance.
Harris County, home to Houston, now recommends all households have flood insurance, whether they’re in a FEMA flood zone or not.AP Photo/David J. Phillip
New risk models point to a similar conclusion: Flood risk in these…
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You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and view past webinars here.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s oft repeated mantra this year – that the behemoth Wall Street banks “are a source of strength” in this economic crisis – is melting away faster than a snow cone in July, along with the share prices of these banks. So whom should Americans believe: The composite wisdom of the market or the opinion of a federal regulator whose supervision of these banks has been far from stellar.
The market would seem to have spoken clearly on just how “strong” these banks are. Since the first trading day of the year, January 2, to yesterday’s closing price, here’s the factual reality of just how much common equity capital these banks have bled: Citigroup is down a stunning 48 percent, losing almost half of its common equity capital; Bank of America has lost 35 percent; while JPMorgan Chase, the bank that has perpetually bragged about its “fortress balance sheet,” is down 34 percent year-to-date. And the U.S. is only seven months into what could become a prolonged economic downturn.
The reason Powell has to tippy toe around the Wall Street mega banks’ condition is because, as of June 30 according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Citigroup is sitting on $1.2 trillion of deposits, of which half are foreign and might take flight; Bank of America is sitting on $1.8 trillion in deposits, of which 94 percent are U.S. based; and JPMorgan Chase holds $2 trillion in deposits, of which $1.7 trillion or 85 percent are U.S. based.
As of September 10, the FDIC reports that the U.S. had 5,059 federally insured institutions including banks and savings associations. The three banks named above are holding 30 percent of all deposits held by all 5,059 federally insured financial institutions in the U.S. while representing just 0.059 percent of the number of federally insured institutions.
The 5,059 banks we have today is less than half of the 10,220 banks and savings associations that were federally insured at the end of 1999 – the year that the Bill Clinton administration passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had protected the U.S. financial system brilliantly for 66 years, meant that Wall Street’s…
I almost slipped and bought into the SPAC Renaissance. Almost.
Draftkings looks legit. But Draftkings could have been a true IPO. The SPAC wrapper was beside the point. Chamath and Ackman will probably do something legit, those guys usually find a way to win. Maybe a few others. The rest are / will be garbage. My first impression was right.
Nikola’s stock has now fallen from near 100 down into the 20’s as the guy’s whole story has unraveled. Then the guy stepped down and ran away. None of this had to happen. But Nikola arrived on the markets as the quarry of a Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicle and the hype drowned out the diligence.
In a traditional IPO, you go public by crisscrossing North America (and sometimes Europe and Asia) sitting in front of investment bankers, syndicate personnel, pension fund managers, mutual fund portfolio managers, investment committees, NYSE and Nasdaq exchange officials, family office CIOs and hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other intelligent, skeptical, well-trained professional investors to explain your business. It’s called a roadshow and it’s f***ing grueling. It should be grueling. That’s the point. It’s called vetting.
By selling your company to a SPAC and then taking over an empty shell that’s already public, you skip most of this experience. You only need to convince one investor instead of thousands of investors to fund you. And that one investor – the guy who raised capital in the SPAC – he wants to believe! It’s the opposite of vetting.
The vetting takes place post-deal, when the stock market has its chance to tell you what you really are. It can be a very violent public bloodletting. For Nikola it certainly was.
I wonder if NKLA would have made it through a traditional IPO roadshow. Maybe, but as a small cap IPO from a third-tier brokerage firm. It reminds me of some of the deals I’ve seen placed in my bucket shop days. But in the Big SPAC Era they got the red carpet treatment right away. Never paid any dues. Never had to convince more than a few people that they were legit.
Whether or not Congress will be able to issue another coronavirus relief package or if there will be another round of direct payments is the biggest question nowadays. Although no one has accurate answers to these questions, there are a few truths about the next round of coronavirus stimulus checks.
Truths about coronavirus stimulus checks
The first truth is that everyone wants to send stimulus checks. “Everyone” here means Republican and Democratic lawmakers and President Donald Trump. Both Republicans and Democrats have included stimulus checks in their proposals, the HEALS Act and HEROES Act, respectively. Alt...
“The great masses of men, though theoretically free, are seen to submit supinely to oppression and exploitation of a hundred abhorrent sorts. Have they no means of resistance? Obviously they have. The worst tyrant, even under democratic plutocracy, has but one throat to slit. The moment the majority decided to overthrow him he would be overthrown. But the maj...
Inflation has long been a word that the Federal Reserve uses but the general markets have forgotten about.
Why? Well because it’s been virtually non-existent for years. Key indicators like commodities (i.e. copper) have been in a down-trends and the Materials Sector (XLB) has lagged… until this year.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley hold an end of year press conference at the Pentagon on December 20, 2019 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
With COVID-19 vaccines currently in the final phase of study, you’ve probably been wondering how the FDA will decide if a vaccine is safe and effective.
Based on the status of the Phase 3 trials currently underway, it i...
There are a few times in history when a third party said this US paper (stocks, funds or bonds) is worthless.
Here is two.
1) 1965 Nixon Shock - The French said to US we do not want your paper dollars please pay us in gold. This of course led to the US going off the gold standard.
2) 2007 Bear Stern Fund Collapse - Investors said their funds collateral was worth much less than stated. This of course was the beginning of the great america housing bust of 2008.
In both cases it was stated .."look the Emperor is naked!"... (The Empe...
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...
Money continues to flow into the venture capital industry.
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s oft repeated mantra this year – that the behemoth Wall Street banks “are a source of strength” in this economic crisis – is melting away faster than a snow cone in July, along with the share prices of these banks. So whom should Americans believe: The composite wisdom of the market or the opinion of a federal regulator whose supervision of these banks has been far from stellar.
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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
coordinator for PSW.