Phil/CLK4 – Perfect! Saw the answer 1 min after my post…out with $740 on two contracts. Thanks again for the education.
Jeffdoc2004
Peter D: great write-up for Short Strangles, Part 1, looking forward to Part 2, particularly the adjustment part.
RMM
Oxen (directly) and Wilkinson (indirectly) are making me a great day trader! Props to Andrew for another little nugget last night: HIG. $20 Dec calls paid 6% quickly this morning. And helloooo STJ - a few days, but nice pick nonetheless - esp with early cover premium.
Dstillwe
I must give kudos to Phil for changing my way of thinking. I'm a gambler by nature and used to just play the indexes with 3x etf's… well I still do, but the options give far better returns than I ever dreamed of. With these wild swings I've been catching 50-100% winners in days.
Mkucstars1
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
Phil… My portfolio, in the past few months, has acheived a high degree of stabilization. I've noticed that on up days, down days, even days, it doesn't matter, my portfolio rarely varies more than 2%. And over the long haul it just slowly increases in value. I attribute this not to investment choices, but to style. Thanks to you and others on this site I'm paying close attention to position size, delta neutrality, downside protection, and concentrating on selling premium rather than buying it. I've developed increasing patience, not having to trade daily, or even weekly. I'm concentrating on the finer points of trading, letting the profits come to me, rather than the other way around. I appreciate the help everyone here has given in getting me focused on this principle. I'm pumped!…in a calm sort of way.
Iflantheman
I have to thank you for excelling yourself during this past week. I have spent a good few hours going over your notes and comments and there are so many gems on repairing and rolling trades that I have been beavering away on paying special attention to my major positions and analysing them using your approach on Tuesday. Being able to look at a group of trades on the same underlying (in this case AAPL) and taking a detached view by assessing the impact of the underlying reaching different price points was extremely reassuring.
Winston
Phil, thanks for the call on the SKF puts earlier, I'm riding that horsie downhill right now, giddyup!
MrMocha
Phil/USO Adjustment~~ Thanks for showing us the make it even (maybe even profitable) tricks for 'fixing' a losing position. I would have never known the trick if you didn't explain it. The option adjustment techniques are very helpful. Trading stocks would probably never offer that kind of flexibilities! Thanks!
Investwizard
Well I want to thank P. Davis for his style and for the fact that he affirmed my thoughts for a correction. He was right and his confirmation of my bias saved me thousands. Mr. Davis is amoral when it comes to money. He realizes the poor are screwed but we must fight to win. A measure of sarcasm and dark humour and it is great reading. 100% right on the correction.
Chaffey
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
Market manipulation…. One of the things I've gained from this site is the concept of market manipulation. I never thought it was so prevalent, but now I know it is. I actually consider its effect when I make trades. Several days ago, when AAPL was moving toward 220 I sold 210 calls. My reasoning was that they will probably pin this month at 210. They came in big time as the stock moved ever closer to 210. I agree with Phil's comment that one of the things we need to do is find out what they are manipulating, and how, and hitch a ride. They are doing this with several equities. I've actually seen one article describing several equities that were being manipulated to pin at expiration each month, and describing how it was done, and of course Phil has described it well. In some ways it's easier to figure this out than it is a ‘normal' market behavior, and thus easier to make money in certain equities.
Iflantheman
Phil, thank you for all the education here. I've gained so much knowledge being a part of PSW.
Thanks to the rest of the members as well! I appreciate all of the contributions you make.
JeffDoc
Well that was a fun day. Cashed out my GS 140 calls for about 35% profit and my AAPL calls for 38% gain. Not bad for 40 minutes of work. Back to 85% cash.
Singapore Steve
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)
Phil,
thank you for the thorough response(s). I joined this group last week to take my education to the next level. the school i am involved with very good at calling out levels but very little live trading and little help in managing a position going against you.
I like the combo of knowing where the major levels are coupled with your approach to getting in. learned a lot this week.
thank you!
DawnR
Phil,
3 for 3! Sold on initial excitement and made a double on USO, 70% on AMZN and 70% on SPY options from Friday.
Thanks and much appreciated for the suggestions.
Gingbaum
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
Thanks, after years of blood and blunders, I have reached a significant milestone – I don't lose money. Net net, I rarely have a losing week, market up, market down. And that I owe to you. Balanced positions. More premium sold than bought. Fundamental criteria applied to good companies, not momentum/ news headlines/ stock du jour/ triangle squeezies. But rather earnings, P/E, dividends, competitive position — the boring stuff that takes study, thought,….and patience. You have been a great teacher, and I have embarassed myself repeatedly day with how slowly I learn.
And it's a funny thing – if you don't lose, the gains start to pile up. The arithmetic is cruel to the downside, and becomes a gift in the other direction. And I'm in this for the long run, having made myself unemployable through a need for diversification. Moreover, what I've learned here has also elided into other areas, including real estate and ex-U.S. investment. Pretty cool. Have a great weekend.
Zeroxzero
Phil fantastic call on the markets… I owe you BIG…thanks and have a great weekend!
Kustomz
I have been a member for over six years and I still learn something new every day. This site gives you the skills to trade without having to be spoon fed. More importantly it teaches you about risk which is WAY more important than profit. Honestly, it is not a get rich quick scheme!
Malsg
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
Phil - Another excellent teaching article - when you write like that it blows me away. Thank you!
I had the ideas from earlier articles but what I didn't have was enough understanding. The familiarity of ideas through repetition, re-working, revision - over time - the variation, the pulling out of implications - it all contributes to understanding and mostly thats on the student - but a good teacher (worth their weight in gold) makes understanding a pleasure.
I wanted to learn about trading options because it makes my brain feel better - fitter, healthier. Actually mostly it makes me happy to think about the trade and trading options.
You are a good teacher and I know that or I wouldn't value the subscription the way I do. It pays for itself through the pleasure of understanding alone.
Redfern1
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
Phil – I wanted to tell you how much of a privilege it is to learn from your every day. You are a shining beacon in the life of so many investors. You have assembled probably the best group of people in the history of financial blogging and you, yourself have done more to help investors in the last 6 months than all previous financial advisors combined.
StJeanLuc
I want to thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. I've learned a lot (and still am) about your trading strategy, but also I see a man who truly cares about our country, America. Thank you.
Autolander
Personally I admire and respect you disciplined approach to investing. My style is at the extreme side of aggressive and I have to learn how to be less that way. If I yell " Let it Ride" at my house, no one says a word so I can't use that to temper my behavior. Phil has done a pretty good job of knocking some of my potential moves and as a result, I have increased my portfolio value by almost 25% since late July.
DoubleD
Phil - I just referred 10 people. Last week was a 50% gainer for me. There are companies that want to sell mentoring service for thousands of dollars. This is far better of a deal with very good advice.
Steve
Hey I just did a nice options trade on LL for $800 (50%) gain thanks to this site, so… not bad for my first day! An hour of reading you guys and I already paid for two months subscription! Thank you!
lchu
I would like to thank Phil and PSW crew for the insight and assistance (even the liberals).
In December I initiated long stock positions buying stock, writing calls and puts in AAPL, WFR and CHK (scaling in and out). Over the last week I have been trimming back my positions selling stock and taking out my callers and putters. I am now back to my initial 25% position that I started with in December. However this time, my cost basis on shares AAPL, WFR, and CHK is $0! With money to spare from those positions.
Yes, we know, and Bernie Madoff agrees; Timothy Naegele has thought so all along. Who’s Timothy Naegele? Read my interview with him to learn more. – Ilene
Convicted swindler and consummate narcissist Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina for his $65 billion Ponzi scheme. He was interviewed by New York Magazine, and its terrific article states in pertinent part:
From the beginning, Madoff . . . had a chip on his shoulder, along with a certain contempt for the industry he’d chosen. “It was always a business where you had to have an edge, and the little guy never got a break. The institutions controlled everything,” he said in a voice surprisingly thick with emotion. “I realized from a very early stage that the market is a whole rigged job. There’s no chance that investors have in this market.”
. . .
At first, Madoff ground out a modest but steady income on the scraps of business tossed his way by Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, action that was too much trouble and too little profit for them. “I was perfectly happy to take the crumbs,” he said. Madoff was a market-maker, a middleman between those who wanted to buy and sell small quantities of mostly bonds—odd lots. “It was a riskless business,” he said. “You made the spread,” buying at one price and selling at a higher one, and in those days the spreads could be substantial, 50 or 75 cents or even a dollar a share. Madoff increased his profits by trading on the side.
. . .
Madoff wanted to grow his trading business, and a good way to do that was to expand his market-making business. But that meant going up against the New York Stock Exchange, the heart of the club. At the NYSE, a few firms controlled market-making, executing most large trades while getting rich on the spread. Madoff was one of the first to see that technology could match buyers and sellers more efficiently and cheaply than a human trader shouting orders amid a blizzard of paper on the floor of the exchange. By 1970, Madoff had hired his brother, Peter,
Citigroup ignored warning signs of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and a bank executive knew the con man’s stated trading strategy couldn’t generate the reported returns, the trustee liquidating Madoff’s firm said in a lawsuit.
The unidentified Citibank executive, who was responsible for making recommendations to clients on derivatives, “concluded” by June 2007 that returns reported by a Madoff feeder fund, Fairfield Sentry Ltd., couldn’t have come from the strategy, trustee Irving Picard said in a complaint unsealed yesterday. The executive reached his conclusion after meeting with analyst Harry Markopolos, a whistleblower who also alerted U.S. regulators to the fraud, Picard said.
The Citibank official later communicated with Markopolos orally and in writing, specifically discussing the fraud before the Ponzi scheme was exposed in December 2008, Picard alleged.
“Citi knew, and was on notice of, irregularities and problems concerning the trades reported by BLMIS, and strategically chose to ignore these concerns in order to continue to enrich themselves,” Picard said in the complaint, referring to Madoff’s firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Picard laid out in the complaint details of a lawsuit he filed under seal in December against New York-based Citigroup and other banks. He is demanding $425 million from Citigroup – money it received “in connection with” a loan to a Madoff feeder fund and a swap transaction with a Swiss hedge fund linked to a second feeder fund, Picard said.
We first got an inkling of Picard’s filing from this Bloomberg story in December.
Citigroup, Bank of America Sued by Madoff Trustee
Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank, Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit and five other banks were sued by the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s firm to recover more than $1 billion for the con man’s defrauded customers.
The banks, which include Natixis SA, Fortis Prime Fund Solutions Bank (Ireland) Ltd., ABN Amro Bank NV, Nomura Bank International Plc. and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, received money through Madoff feeder funds when they knew, or should have known, that Madoff’s investments were a fraud, the trustee, Irving Picard, said yesterday in a statement.
Picard, who faces a two-year legal deadline that runs out Dec. 11, has filed hundreds of suits in the past month, seeking more than $34 billion from banks, feeder funds, investors and others alleged to have profited from Madoff’s decades-long Ponzi scheme, the biggest in…
Here’s the hypocrisy of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority* (FINRA); it dumped a portfolio of Auction Rate Securities* (ARS) before the ARS market froze up in early 2008. People are asking legitimate questions and FINRA is refusing to answer. When FINRA wants its questions answered, it knows how to get the answers through its subpoena power. Why won’t FINRA fess up and be transparent about its dealings in the ARS market?
I recently caught up with my friend Larry Doyle and asked him whether there had been any progress in uncovering the events behind FINRA’s timely liquidation of its ARSs in 2007 since our last conversation. Here’s a transcript of our conversation about FINRA and FINRA’s ARS sales. Larry touches on a number of important topics including transparency, the incestuous relationship between Wall Street and Washington, the absurdity of self-regulation and twisted logic of granting a quasi-government entity government-style immunity, while allowing it to be free from the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
FINRA’s Timely Auction-Rate Securites (ARS) Sales
Before we continue, please read my previous interview with Larry Doyle here. Excerpt:
"The ARS market operated smoothly until the credit markets seized up. First signs of trouble emerged in 2007 when the spreads started to blow out (widen significantly). Spreads widened because dealers realized the true nature of the risks and backed away from supporting the market. Selling intensified as investors were trying to get out in the late spring and summer of 2007. Investors stopped buying, though the dealers maintained an intermediary market for a while. Finally, sellers so overwhelmed buyers that Wall Street had to stop serving as an intermediary. This developed over a period of months, but was not shared with the clients. Wall Street was trying to lay these ARSs out on investors. When the market collapsed in February 2008, the “cash equivalency” disappeared."
[...]
Going into 2007, FINRA had $647 million dollars of ARSs. It was holding ARSs as the credit markets started to freeze in mid 2007. FINRA says it did nothing nefarious when it sold its ARSs. But that fails the smell test. It sold its ARS holdings before the markets collapsed. Meanwhile, investors got stuck with approximately $150 billion of ARSs.
One would have to be exceptionally naïve to think FINRA officials did not have material,
Sam Antar, former CFO of the criminal enterprise "Crazy Eddie," will tell you all about his crimes while insisting he will burn in Hell. He now teaches accountants, lawyers, and FBI agents about white-collar fraud and how to catch white-collar criminals. I met Sam in Portland, at his seminar for healthcare fraud investigators.
Sam opened his lecture by asking the audience, “Can anyone guess why I’m here?” A man in the audience suggested “because you got caught.” (That was the first correct answer in twelve years.) Sam, who was energetic and seemed to be enjoying himself, spoke of Crazy Eddie, fraud, and the investigators charged with bringing criminals to justice. Below, I've posted a summary of Sam's presentation followed by our interview and some background information.
1. Presentation
About fraud
All fraud is basically the same. All fraud is personal in nature. It’s done on a one to one basis. Your humanity, ethics, and sense of fairness are weaknesses that we – white collar criminals – seek to exploit. We have no morality. The more likable and friendly we are, the easier it is for us to commit our crimes. We build walls of false integrity. You never know who the real person is behind a criminal’s carefully choreographed wall of false integrity. Bernie Madoff had a wall of false integrity around him and the lawyers investigating him at the SEC were enamored by his status. That’s why they didn’t properly follow through on whistleblower Harry Markopolos’s tips about Madoff’s criminal activities.
Punishment does very little to prevent crime. It’s not a great deterrent. Criminals don’t stop because they see other people getting caught. While Bernie Madoff committed his crimes for almost two decades, he saw many other criminal get caught. Did that stop him?
When I cooperated with the government it was only to save my own skin. I only cooperated with the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the SEC, and lawyer representing victims of my crimes because I did not want to bend down
Here’s another great gem we just found in the big SEC document dump on Madoff [below]. It concerns the independent fraud investigator Harry Markopolos, who tried for years and years and years to blow the whistle but tno avail. How were his efforts viewed in the SEC? Basically, they dismissed him as an anti-Bush crank.
The SEC just made a MASSIVE document dump related to its failure to catch Madoff. Of course, it’s all embarrassing, so it’s on a Friday afternoon, when everyone’s too lazy to go through it. There are 536 documents in total. Joe Weisenthal
Jerry Brown, California’s Attorney General, is tying himself to just about every problem stemming from the financial crisis.
Overkill? Perhaps. But Brown is probably running for governor.
Today, Brown wrote at the Huffington Post about Beverly Hills financial adviser Stanley Chais, who pocketed some $270 million over the decades by feeding money to Bernie Madoff.
"Sadly, the rise of super-sized swindlers like Madoff and Chais was inevitable given the mindless deregulation-mania of the last decade — abetted and made possible by a complicit Congress, SEC, and inattentive White House," Brown writes.
Last week, Brown piled on to the rating agency bashing, launching an investigation into their role in fueling the financial crisis and subpoenaing Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch to determine "whether the firms violated California law when they recklessly gave ‘stellar ratings to shaky assets.’"
In April, Brown Jr. today filed suit against three Wells Fargo affiliates to recover $1.5 billion for California investors who purchased auction-rate securities based on "false and deceptive" advice that these financial instruments were "as safe and liquid as cash."
Want more? Check out these press releases: there are suits against predatory lenders, health insurers acting badly, mortgage scam artists, and many more, almost one ever other day.
Bernard Madoff arrives at federal court in New York, Thursday, March 12, 2009.
Mary Altaffer / AP
A long-awaited report from the Inspector General at the Securities and Exchange Commission concludes the SEC received six "substantive" complaints between June 1992 and December 2008 that could have uncovered disgraced financier Bernie Madoff‘s Ponzi scheme as far back as 1992 if it had "properly examined or investigated" Madoff’s trading practices.
In a 450-page report, released Wednesday, the report outlines a series of fumbles, where SEC staff either failed to follow up on complaints, wrongly accepted Madoff’s confusing and inconsistent answers to questions or, in some cases, involved junior staff who didn’t understand options trading and Ponzi schemes.
"Despite three examinations and two investigations being conducted, a thorough and competent investigation or examination was never performed," the report said.
The report said at least six complaints raised questions about Madoff’s trading practices, with some even suggesting a Ponzi scheme was involved. They questioned "Madoff’s incredible and highly unusual fills for equity trades, his mispresentation of his options trading and his unusually consistent, non-volatile returns over several years," and how Madoff’s alleged strategy and purported returns could not be duplicated by anyone else and had "no correlation to the overall equity markets in over 10 years." One tipster even nudged the SEC that "it may be of interest to you that Mr. Madoff keeps two sets of records — the most interesting of which is always on his person."
Yet, SEC staff failed to adequately follow up or seek third-party verifications on the trades, the report said. In many cases, the report said, "an inexperienced examination team" was assigned the investigation, many of whom were not familiar with trading practices and simply accepted Madoff’s explanation that he used his "gut feel" to time the market based on "his observations of the trading room." According to the report, examiners stated "there was no training" and that "this was a trial by fire kind of job." It also stated that examination team was "composed entirely of attorneys, who … did not have much experience in equity and options trading’ but ‘rather, their experience was in general litigation.’" (See pictures of a Madoff family album.)
So remember how we wondered whether Frank DiPascali was getting enough from the feds for his cooperation in the investigation in Bernie Madoff’s scam?
Well, it turns out that part of his deal is having the feds overlook his history of taking illegal drugs, carrying an illegal firearm right up until the time of his arrest and reporting that he had no income during a year when he earned $4 billion.
According to documents released yesterday by federal prosecutors, DiPascali, the former CFO at Madoff’s investment firm, agreed to spill the beans about Madoff in part to guarantee the feds didn’t go after him on "use of controlled substances prior to 1992" and for possessing illegal firearms up until last Friday.
The 52-year-old Queens native, who is cooperating with prosecutors in the Madoff scandal, is also avoiding criminal prosecution for evading taxes, the documents show.
Indeed, DiPascali cheated Uncle Sam out of several million dollars between 2002 and 2007 through a number of shady schemes, including depositing his income into accounts under other names and filing false returns. In 2006, for example, DiPascali reported zero dollars in taxable income even though he actually earned $4 million that year. He also reported no income in 2002 and 2005.
Memo to regulators: be forewarned about frauds in the credit-default swap market. They’ll make Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion fraud "look like small-time."
That’s what Harry Markopolos — Madoff’s whistleblower ignored by federal investigators — is saying anyway.
New York Post: [Markopolos] says there are evildoers out there who will make the Ponzi scum "look like small-time." Markopolos gave a speech to 400 of the faithful at the Greek Orthodox Church in Southampton and predicted major scandals will soon be revealed about the unregulated, $600 trillion, credit-default swap market. "To put it in simple terms, it is like buying fire insurance policies from five different insurance companies on your neighbor’s house and then burning down the house," he said.
It’s not clear if there are frauds that he knows of, specifically, that he’s not disclosing publicly, or if it’s just his how the market works — in which case, he’s basically just parroting what a lot of people who hate "naked" CDS have been saying. Either way, we suggest Mary Schapiro or the CFTC pay him a call and get a clarification.
The upcoming issue of Vanity Fair portrays the lives of Bernard Madoff’s sons and asks "Did The Sons Know?" Mark and Andrew Madoff feel betrayed by their father, David Margolick writes for Vanity Fair. Page Six today highlights some of the juicier details:
Blame mom as an enabler. Andrew and Mark Madoff aren’t speaking with their mother Ruth Madoff. They don’t suspect that she was involved with the scheme, but they believe her tendency to side with Bernie regardless of the the circumstances enabled his crimes.
Avoding using the Madoff name. Andrew Madoff and his fiance Catherine Hooper (pictured with a fish, above) use her name when making restaurant reservation. Andrew’s estranged wife, Deborah, orders groceries from FreshDirect using her maiden name.
Excessive self-pity. * Jeff Wilpon, whose family owns the Mets and lost hundreds of millions in Madoff’s scheme, remains friendly with Mark Madoff. But that is being strained by Mark’s "excessive self-pity. "
Strained relations. Hooper gave Andrew a birthday card in April that said, "Hope you have a fun day doing all the things people in prison wish they could do." When Andrew told her that his real wish was to have his parents back, she shot back, "Yeah, they were a really nice idea."
When Andrew complained to an African American friend that he is unemployed, broke, and "just trying to stay out of jail — my name is mud," his friend replied: "Well, now you’re just like every black man in America."
There’s more at Page Six, including the shunning of the Madoff grandchildren by classmates at the New York City private school, Dalton. If this sampling is any indication, we really can’t wait to read Margolick’s full piece in Vanity Fair.
Reuters reveals that the article says Mark Madoff scrutinizes every story and blog on the scandal. Andew, on the other hand, appears to have detached himself emotionally. He calls the situations "a father-son betrayal of biblical proportions." Cue the violins!
The monthly Bank of America Fund Managers Survey (FMS) is perhaps best known for exposing Wall Street's cognitive dissonance, if not schizophrenia, to the world because while on one hand survey respondents cry over soaring corporate and global leverage, at the same time they rush to 3x oversubscribe a bond package with the "worst-ev...
If the saying So Goes The Banks, So Goes The Broad Market is true, what message are we receiving when financials have lagged the broad market for over a year?
This 2-pack looks at the XLF/SPX and EUFN/XLF ratios over the past couple of years.
The XLF/SPX ratio has created a series of lower highs for the past 12-months after peaking at (1). The EUFN/XLF ratio has created a series of lower highs for the past 18-months after peaking at (2). These falling trends look to be sending a negative divergence message to the broad markets if one believes that banks are important for bull markets.
Sifting through the noise to really understand what impact Brexit and all the uncertainty that it brings is having on the UK’s technology start-up scene, it’s possible to see a picture emerging. It is one that should cause serious concern for anyone with an interest in keeping the UK at the centre of Europe’s technology sector.
A very good week for market bulls as the prior week’s selling was all reversed. Last week we asked how many times can we rally on the same Federal Reserve juice. It seems indefinitely. Jerome Powell went on ’60 Minutes’ and talked dovish – that sparked a big rally Monday and it continued all week. The only down day all week was Thursday when the progress on the U.S. – China trade deal seemed to hit a delay.
A meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be delayed until at least April, Bloomberg News reported, indicating that a bilateral trade deal will n...
By Michelle Jones. Originally published at ValueWalk.
The pension crisis has been capturing headlines for years, but there’s another layer to the pension issue that’s starting to draw attention to itself. Public pension funds have shown an increasing appetite for credit and related holdings, the latest round of pension flows demonstrates that this trend continues One analyst believes pensions are largely to blame for the extremes of the boom/ bust cycles we’ve seen over the last year or so. He now suggests that the equity bull market could last another five years—thanks to the extremes driven by pension funds.
The bullish case for Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB)'s stock has come to an end, according to Needham.
The Analyst
Needham's Laura Martin downgraded Facebook from Buy to Hold with no price target.
The Thesis
Needham's multi-year bullish stance on Facebook's stock can no longer be justified for three key reasons, Martin said in a research report. These include:
Facebook is reportedly preparing to launch its own version of Bitcoin, for use in its messaging applications, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. Could this “Facecoin” be the long-awaited breakthrough by a global technology giant into the lucrative market for retail financial services? Or will...
For most people, the purpose of investing is to build up enough wealth to allow you to retire. In general, that's usually enough money to reliably generate a year's worth of your average income, each year into your retirement so that that, plus you Social Security, should be enough to pay your bills without having to draw down on your principle.
Unfortunately, as the last decade has shown us, we can't count on bonds to pay us more than 3% and the average return from the stock market over the past 20 years has been erratic - to say the least - with 4 negative years (2000, 2001, 2002 and 2008) and 14 positives, though mostly in the 10% range on the positives. A string of losses like we had from 2000-02 could easily wipe out a decades worth of gains.
Still, the stock market has been better over the last 10 (7%) an...
The threat to America is this: we have abandoned our core philosophy. Our first principle of this nation as a meritocracy, a free-market economy, where competition drives economic decision-making. In its place, we have allowed a malignancy to fester, a virulent pus-filled bastardized form of economics so corrosive in nature, so dangerously pestilent, that it presents an extinction-level threat to America – both the actual nation and the “idea” of America.
This all-encompassing mutant corruption saps men’s souls, crushes opportunities, and destroys economic mobility. Its a Smash & Grab system of ill-gotten re...
Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
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Phil has a chapter in a newly-released eBook that we think you’ll enjoy.
In My Top Strategies for 2017, Phil's chapter is Secret Santa’s Inflation Hedges for 2017.
This chapter isn’t about risk or leverage. Phil present a few smart, practical ideas you can use as a hedge against inflation as well as hedging strategies designed to assist you in staying ahead of the markets.
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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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. She manages the site