Philstockworld September Portfolio Review
by phil - September 18th, 2020 8:24 am
$1,199,597!
That is DOWN $195,130 for our paired portfolios for the month, but still up over 100% for the year. We have a very large, very volatile bet on Tesla (TSLA) that we're riding out and that let both to last month's huge gain and this month's huge loss but last month showed us the massive potential the position has as it's currently net -$881,087 so, if TSLA ends up between $300 and $380 in January (now $450), we stand to almost double our entire portfolio on that one position.
I was going to say I don't like the super-volatile positions but that's not true – I do like them as we're selling TONS of premium to people who think stocks go up or down forever and have no rules but I DON'T like them in margin-limited portfolio or in portfolios that aren't miles ahead and can afford to take chances. Not only can we afford to take a chance this year but we're also locking in our 100% gains using TSLA as it pays us almost as much to the downside ($881,087) as our entire Long-Term Portfolio (LTP) is worth ($1,043,965)!
But, spoilers, let's just take a look at where we stand and move on from there. As we expected, the Fed and Congress have fired their stimulus guns this week and the reaction from the market has been a big shrug as evidenced by the shouldering down move in the S&P 500 this week:
While that's going on, Donald Trump's victim count is hitting 200,000 but that's nothing compared to what we're about to see as our kids finish their second week at school as two weeks is just about the time when it's already too late and local Governments realize what a huge mistake re-opening too early has been. While we know Trump doesn't care about California and New York having 100,000 combined deaths this year, he'll be losing 60,000 voters in Florida and Texas as well.
Early indications are that sending the kids back to school is already becoming a "super-spreader" event for the whole country and 50,000…
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Philstockworld August Portfolio Review
by phil - September 13th, 2020 8:21 am
$1,394,727!
That's up $260,972 (23%) since June (up 132% for the year) as of Augst 18th and yes, I've had a very busy summer and haven't kept up on the review summaries – sorry. Honestly, if it wasn't for the virus, I'd be on a cruise this summer – we decided the market was too high on Memorial Day and now it's after Labor Day and we're even higher so yes, we made good money staying home but, on the whole, I would have much rather have spent the summer with my family enjoying Europe, wouldn't you?
That was our plan, we were supposed to go to Scandanavia on a 14-day cruise and I was really looking forward to it but, like most plans this year, they've been cancelled and, like most things this year, the markets have completely ignored it. We've been ignoring the market for the past month and our main LTP/STP combination is pretty rock-steady at $1.4M and we cut about 20% of our positions in August, raising more cash and making our downside hedges more effective (as they are the same but we have less to protect).
We had one nice dip but nothing too exciting and it's back to school I've been worried about as I think it's been a huge mistake but it's only week one – so not too many results are in yet. This week is also the big "Quad Witching" quartely expirations for options and Futures contracts so things could get crazy and we'll be doing our portfolio adjustments this week – probably aiming for even more CASH!!! (have I mentioned how much I like CASH!!! lately?).
Not only that but the Fed makes their announcement on Wednesday and Powell speaks at 2:30 that day AND we have the Retail Sales Report at 8:30 Wednesday as well. Have I mentioned how much I like CASH!!! lately?
So here's what we were thinking 30 days ago and stay tuned this week for our Live Portfolio Adjustments (Member Only):
Short-Term Portfolio Review (STP): No point in riding out the dip if we don't have to so we're going to raise more CASH!!! and there are plenty of great stocks to buy, like WBA, INTC, BA and…
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PhilStockWorld May Portfolio Review
by phil - May 27th, 2020 7:36 am
$1,133,755!
That's up $30,884 for our paired portfolios and just off our high of $1.2M – where I said we should just cash out and quit for the year – up 100% since October. Since that's a boring way to spend the next 6 months – we decided to hedge the STP a bit more and let most of our LTP positions run but it was mission accomplished at May expirations (15th), to be flat(ish) to April (17th) as the S&P 500 finished 17 points lower for the earning period, which we were very worried about.
As it turns out, the market shook everything off and now, as of yesterday's close (26th), the LTP is up 51.6% at $757,943 and the STP is still at $577,225 so now we're at $1,335,168 so our plan worked perfectly! And what was the plan? To keep the longs we felt would be making a recovery AFTER we got to see the earnings reports and AFTER we got a glimpse of how the Lockdown was resolving itself. You know – WITH FACTS! Facts are nice, they are very helpful in investing but sometimes you need to wait for clarity – a lot of people are not good at the waiting part…
Using hedges to park our portfolios more or less in neutral (back in April) while we waiting for more facts gave us the breathing room to relax and read and think about what trends mattered and that helped us make better decisions in May and now we're way past the previous highs. And what are we going to do now? HEDGE IT TO LOCK IN THESE GAINS! See, these quizzes aren't hard…
Short-Term Portfolio (STP) Review:
So hedging, hedging is key to maintaining our portfolios. Our Long-Term Portfolio, which started the year at $500,000 had recovered well in our last review and was sitting at $542,305 almost a month ago and, since then, the S&P 500 has gone from 2,750 to 2,950 and our LTP has popped to $649,193…
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PhilStockWorld April Portfolio Review – Putting Our Strategies to the Test
by phil - April 18th, 2020 11:19 am
$1,102,871!
That's the combined value of our paired Long-Term and Short-Term Portfolios as of yesterday's close! We began the STP with $100,000 back on October 1st and the STP was up to $153,498 in our January 7th Portfolio Review but the positions were turning into longer-term positions (because we kept the losers we had been working on) so we added $350,000 to the STP and renamed it the LTP and then we created a brand new STP with $100,000 on Jan 17th with the primary objective of hedging our LTP positions.
This all came on the heels of cashing out our last round of Member Portfolios back in October, when the LTP/STP combo hit $2,606,756 after two very bullish years and we decided the markets were just too toppy to risk that much money so we cut back, deployed just $100,000 in the STP (also some other virtual portfolios were created) and, when that started going well, we got brave enough to deploy some LTP money – but only a fraction of what we had cashed out because the markets WERE STILL TOO TOPPY!
Keep in mind that the title of our October 2nd Review was: "PhilStockWorld September Portfolio Review – Cashing out of this Crazy Market!" in which I said:
Hedging a $1.7M LTP would be very expensive and what if next time we didn't time the turn in the STP and instead blew the turn and lost money there as well as the LTP. Then we'd be back to $2M and needing to make 30% to get back to $2.6M and what if it's hard to make money next year or what if we have another crash and the market is down 40% – it's just too much to risk vs. putting $2.6M safely on the sidelines and simply looking for new opportunities.
Did I know that a viral pandemic would be the catalyst that would take down the global markets? Of course not, but I did KNOW FOR A FACT that valuations were stretched and we had made a ridiculous amount of money in our Long-Term Portfolio (based on…
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PhilStockWorld March Portfolio Review
by phil - March 24th, 2020 9:43 pm
What a crazy fist quarter it has been!
We cashed out our last set of winning portfolios back in September, as I did not trust the market into Q4 but the market kept going higher so we had too much FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and we started playing again in October – albeit with much smaller amounts. Our Long-Term/Short-Term paired portfolios had hit $2.6M after starting at $500,000/100,000 on Jan 2nd, 2016 and it was becomming too difficut to hedge so I said at the time:
Hedging a $1.7M LTP would be very expensive and what if next time we didn't time the turn in the STP and instead blew the turn and lost money there as well as the LTP. Then we'd be back to $2M and needing to make 30% to get back to $2.6M and what if it's hard to make money next year or what if we have another crash and the market is down 40% – it's just too much to risk vs. putting $2.6M safely on the sidelines and simply looking for new opportunities.
Well, here we are, at the bottom of that 40% sell-off and, as expected, we're having to pull a bit more cash off the sidelines as some of our new portfolios got crushed. This is going to be an odd review because we made more than one adjustment in the past two weeks on some portfolios and I'll do my best to consolidate all the moves here. The bottom line is we got a lot more aggressive around March expirations (20th) and yesterday (23rd), as the market hit rock bottom, we went gung-ho bullish in our LTP and Butterfly Portfolios in anticipation of a massive Congressional Bail-Out Package.
Hopefully, that provides a catalyst to form a floor at the 40% off line and we can consolidate between here and the 20% off (the top) lines, which is where the market should be in the first place – the rest was just fluff – that's why we cashed out in September – at S&P 3,000!
Short-Term Portfolio Review (STP) (3/19): $282,168 is up 182% so…
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PhilStockWorld January Portfolio Review
by phil - January 27th, 2020 7:25 am
$644,380!
No we didn't make $500,000 – we actually lost about $9,000 in the past month as the TSLA trade blew up on us but that's our grand total now as we finally started a new Long-Term Portfolio (LTP) with $500,000 along with our Short-Term Portfolio (STP), that was at $144,380. Generally, we've simply changed the STP to the LTP and moved the hedges out of the new LTP to the STP and added $400,000 in virtual cash to the LTP and NOW we are ready to get serious playing the market with our main, paired portfolios.
Essentially, we made $44,380 while we've been waiting around for a good time to deploy more cash. Of course we cashed in $3M last year so we're only re-deploying a small portion of it but that's appropriate for the still-uncertain market we're in now and, anyway, we started with the same $600,000 back in Jan, 2018 so it's much more fun to build it all up again, isn't it?
Last month, we were worried about Iran and, frankly, I don't even remember why anymore as it's all about Coronavirus now although Trump's Impeachment still looms large in the background. Still, it's earnings season and we've already fired off 4 Top Trade Alerts in January and last week we added a few early trades to the New LTP already.
Here's this month's collections of our trade reviews from last week's Live Member Chat:
Short-Term Portfolio Review (STP): This is now the Long-Term Portfolio (LTP) and we'll make a new STP to cover these positions. Mechanically, we're moving $400,000 into this portfolio and making a new $100,000 STP whose main function is to protect the new LTP (so looking more for bearish opportunities than bullish ones).
The STP is at $144,380 and that's down $9,118 from our last review, pretty much entirely due to TSLA going off the rails on our short calls. We'll deal with that and decide which positions stay and which ones go in our new LTP:
- CBS – Keeper
- CSCO – Keeper
- M – Keeper
- CMG
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Working it Out Wednesday – Is the Trade Deal the Beginning or End of the Rally?
by phil - January 15th, 2020 8:37 am
Today is the day!
Trump will sign a deal today (11:30) with China that puts off the new tariffs he threatened them with until "after the election" and China agrees to buy $200Bn in US Goods and Services over 2 years, which is double their normal pace so, in theory, it could add 0.5% ($100Bn) to our GDP, assuming we actually produce more Goods and Services and don't just end up selling China things we would have sold to someone else. Boeing (BA) has several hundred grounded 737s China can have – that's a good start!
It's onlly a start though as the deal does not address Cybersecurity or China’s tight controls over how companies handle data and Cloud Computing. China rejected American demands to include promises to refrain from hacking American firms in the text, insisting it was not a trade issue. The Chinese have also rebuffed requests for broader changes to the structure of their economy. That includes a pattern of subsidizing and supporting key industries, like solar and steel, that American firms say have allowed China to dump cheap products it makes into the United States.
In the interim, the remaining tariffs will continue to inflict financial pain on American businesses that rely on Chinese imports and the consumers who buy their products. Is that going to be good enough to continue to boost the market or will the reality of the trade deal's mediocrity begin to weigh on forward-looking sentiment. Pay close attention to Corporate Guidance, now that they are taking the signed deal into account.
Earnings have been going well so far but Goldman Sachs (GS) missed this morning by almost 20% – that was a surprise. BAC, BLK, PNC, USB and UNH all beat along with WAFD last night and only WFC screwed up yesterday so it's so good, so far in the Financial Sector but, of course, shouldn't it be with the market up about 30% in 2019 and up another 2% in the first two weeks of 2020?
The Producer Price Index came in weak this morning at 0.1%, half of what was expected and that indicates that, despite "strong" retail sales, the Consumers are unwilling…
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Philstockworld December Portfolio Review (Members Only)
by phil - January 7th, 2020 1:21 pm
$153,498!
Not much action (up $1,445) since our last review on the Short-Term Portfolio and there is still no Long-Term Portfolio at the moment so the march to $1M is going very slowly at the moment. Still after being up 53.5% in 3 months – our primary goal shifted towards preserving our gains over the holidays and now we're just waiting to see if the markets hold up into earings and we can start buying again.
With the Iran situation and Trump's Impeachment and do we really have a China deal – it's hard to commit more cash into these overpriced stocks but we'll have to if they don't show any signs of slowing by the end of this month or we may miss the next ridiculous leg of this rally.
Short-Term Portfolio Review (STP): $153,498 (53.5%) is flat to the last review as our hedges killed us and so did TSLA. Still, I'd rather lock in a $50,000 gain over 3 months than risk giving it back so we got cautious after making ridiculous 2-month gains. Next month, we can start an LTP by simply renaming this one and removing the short-term plays and the hedges and putting them in a new STP – see how easy that was – we already started our LTP – and it's our STP!
- Short puts – All on track with $8,710 of additional potential.
- SQQQ – The December spread was a bet, not a hedge and offset by the CSCO puts – though it's a long time before we get this loss back. Just dead money here.
- BKNG – Very nice as we bought back the short calls and now we can sell them again. Unfortunately, we shorted BKNG over China Trade issues affecting travel (it did) but that's over now and they really aren't that expensive at $2,000. Also, I no longer feel strongly about the bear put spread so let's just cash this one in – it's been very good to us.
CMG – Meh
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Philstockworld November Portfolio Review
by phil - December 6th, 2019 6:14 am
$152,053!
That's right, after closing our our last STP/LTP paired portfolios in September, 2019 with over $2.6M from a $600,000 start in Jan 2018, we decided to put $100,000 back to work in a new Short-Term Portfolio on October 1st. We haven't started a new Long-Term Portfolio yet, but our STP is already up 52% in just 2 months and, if we average 26% a month for 24 moths – that's $25,638,527 (compounded) so I'm not at all worried that we won't make enough money if we don't deploy our other $500,000 re-starting cash to the LTP right away as 26% a month is not likely to keep going but, if it does – than $100,000 is all we'll need to be very happy!
52% in two months is a silly amount of money to make and we have to keep that in perspective because we could have just as easily have lost 52% so I'm only comfortable with the relatively small risk in the closely-watched STP – where we can take advantage of long and short positions over varied time-frames.
We still have our Butterfly Portfolio and our Hemp Boca Portfolio from 2018 and 2019 respectively but Money Talk, Dividends, Earnings are also new portfolios – all started with $100,000 of virtual cash in October and November.
As it's early in the cycle, I don't have a lot to say so we're just consolidating our first round of Portfolio Reviews here:
Short-Term Portfolio Review (STP): Doing way better than planned but mostly due to BKNG working out perfectly (even a broken clock….) but also as there is only MJ on the losing side and not too much damage there. While the Portfolios are small, it's a good time to practice the expectations game.
Overall, I'm worried we turn down next week on low volume but, then again, they aren't done beating the dead horse of "China Progress" so this drift may go on for another month – into the year's end. Keep in mind I didn't WANT to have money back in play – it was just so boring to not play….
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PhilStockWorld September Portfolio Review – Cashing out of this Crazy Market!
by phil - October 2nd, 2019 6:50 am
And we're out!
$2,606,756 is up $2,006,756 (434%) from our $600,000 start of our Long-Term/Short-Term paired portfolios back on Jan 2nd of 2018. The STP was the real star, turning $100,000 in to $881,976 due to some very good timing as we flipped our hedges almost perfectly several times over the past two years. That's very unusual – as was the huge $1,124,780 (245%) gain from the LTP's $500,000 start. We were very close to $2.5M in June but then had a rocky summer – to the point where I said I'd cash out if we fell back to $2M so getting back to $2.6M is a gift horse we dared not look in the mouth – so back to cash and we'll start fresh in November is the plan.
Hedging a $1.7M LTP would be very expensive and what if next time we didn't time the turn in the STP and instead blew the turn and lost money there as well as the LTP. Then we'd be back to $2M and needing to make 30% to get back to $2.6M and what if it's hard to make money next year or what if we have another crash and the market is down 40% – it's just too much to risk vs. putting $2.6M safely on the sidelines and simply looking for new opportunities.
As I noted in Member Chat last night, in anticipation of getting back to cash, I wrote up "5 Trade Ideas to Make $25,000 in 5 Months" on August 29th, to demonstrate that we didn't need to be massivly invested to make good money. Those trades are on track for a $33,603 gain in January from a $6,565 cash entry (and $26,659 in margin) and that's 33% for the quarter against $100,000 of sidelined cash – without risking it all to get there. That's as good as any of our portfolios have done – but with just 5 positions!
We officially cashed out the week of Sept 16-20th (and these reviews are from those dates – this is just a summary), into options expirations and we did so because we get much better prices
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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.