By the way thank you Phil for the DNDN idea. 3x till this morning and will 4x my small investment by next OE THANKS !!!!
Microflux
Why were the analysts wrong?
If I were a Japanese investor who purchased US stocks prior to November at Y80 yen to the dollar, with the US market up an average of 15% or more and upon selling the asset I covert dollars to Yen, also realizing an additional 25% gain (one dollar now converts to 100+ Yen rather than the 80 I used at time of purchase), I think I would be unloading US assets also.
But analysts never do the math in their articles nor very rarely bring up or discuss the ramifications of currency fluctuations. I don't include Phil in this group as this is a valuable lesson I am learning from him.
Denlundy
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
Phil: UNH, hedged stock position, doing great, up over 50 %,
RMM
Phil - I got your earlier trade a month or so ago on MSFT 2015 32/37 BCS, selling 2015 30 puts. Nice up 75% now!
Jomptien
Phil - It is nice being more discipline with my trading. Generally, I am out earlier than most, but my results, overall, are much better than they were when I was trying to squeeze 80 cups of lemonade out of one lemon! On the other side, I am learning the value of rolling and turning losses into non-losses or small gains. I so appreciate the time you have spent with me and others who have benefited greatly from your knowledge. Thank you!
Dclark41
I have been reading the "free" PSW for about a year and have always liked Phil's style as it closely resembled the way I like to trade (mostly naked put options). I have been a paid subscriber for about 5 weeks and I have been learning a lot from Phil and other members. I had made some money on Phil's "free" ideas in the past and I joined because one of Phil's futures ideas paid for my subscription within the same day (NG). Phil deserved my subscription and I was eager to learn more. I just did a quick tally and within the last 5 weeks the ideas that I chose to follow from Phil generated over 25K in options profits and 12K in futures profits (some of my trades were more conservative than what Phil's had suggested). I have a lot to learn, experience and confidence to gain. Thanks again Phil and Successful Trading to all.
Verreaul
Happy holidays to all members of PSW. Just completed my 6th year and still my favorite site to read. Thank you all for your contributions and support especially you, Phil!
DClark41
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, thanks for the call on the SKF puts earlier, I'm riding that horsie downhill right now, giddyup!
MrMocha
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
All I can say is — I understand that the Universe sent me to PSW for a reason. So, I'm listening!! …and studying. Your commentary is literally outstanding. …and your members are impressive as well.
Seaquill
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
What a quarter! (AAPL, etc.) "People react; PSW'ers anticipate." Thanks everyone for a vibrant board.
Silentstorm
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, 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
Phil, I don't know how I can thank you enough for your guidance this past week. I'm up significantly in my portfolio and I've never been so relaxed watching the market panic. Thanks once again for being here for us.
thechaser
Wishing Phil and all fellow PSW members a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2017! Thanks to all of you for your insights and comments which help make me a better investor every day. Wishing everybody the best of luck for 2017
Learner
Phil - I'm with you just little bit longer than a month and you can not imagine how happy I am now, and not just because my P/L improved ( and I'm sure that it will be even better), but I found that the worst thing in trader's carrier is a LONELINESS. Here I found so many bright good guys, I looked for this service for years.
THANK YOU AND TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF BECAUSE I PLAN TO STAY HERE AND RIDE THIS CREASY MARKET WITH YOU FOR ANOTHER 20-30 YEARS
Tchayipov
Phil, I wanted to thank you for all of your teaching, advice, and guidance. Because of you I don't chase, don't worry about missed chances, and play things much more selectively. Yesterday's /ES and /TF and today /CL are my first futures plays of the month. Thanks Phil. (Out of /TF and /ES yesterday with a nice gain)
Japarikh
Wow, Phil, we pretty much made your levels.
Your levels:
Dow 7,404, S&P 775, Nas 1,466, NYSE 4,839 and RUT 402
My sceen is showing:
Dow 7,404, S&P 777, Nas 1,462, NYSE 4,868 and RUT 404
Jordan
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 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
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
AMZN ... thanks Phil; boy did they run a squeeze on everyone there ... made me sweat ... scaling helped! I think AMZN has an 85 handle tomorrow ... maybe lower.
Cap
WOW, look at DRYS go. Nice call on the entry the other week Phil. I got 200 at $6.66 and sold a 7.5 call for $.50, then on the tear today sold another 7.5 call for $1. This should puts me in at an average of $5.91 and called away at $7.5 for a profit of $300+ after commisions. Once again another Phil trade pays for this months membership.
Craigzooka
Once again, many muchos for the SODA trade of last week. Finally out of all three legs. I didn't want to wait for expiration tomorrow and the possible peg at $70.00, following your dictum to not get greedy.
flipspiceland
Phil: I cleaned up today. A rather stark contrast to my untutored performance April/May 2009, after I had written to you to explain how wrong-headed your bearishness was. Many thanks.
I ran into someone once who played on the Bulls with Jordan for quite a few years. He was asked what he had learned from playing with MJ for so long. He smiled and said "Give him the ball."
Zeroxzero
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
Fed days are fun! Just for grins I decided to see how much money I could make in two clicks. I bought DIA calls right when the surge started and then sold them the minute they hit my account. Net gain of 20% in 20 seconds. Can't do that very often…
Just one week ago the World was coming to and end and now everyone has their rally caps back on. Investors really are sheep – except I think sheep have better memories… We're still right on plan of dropping 10% and then bouncing 4% (strong bounces) by Wednesday (today) that was initiated on October 6th by our friends at the Fed (see yesterday's post for the summary). For those of you keeping score, our strong bounce predictions for today were:
Dow 16,466(weak) and 16,632 (strong).
S&P 1,878 (weak) and 1,903 (strong).
Nasdaq 4,280 (weak) and 4,360 (strong).
NYSE 10,360 (weak) and 10,540 (strong).
Russell 1,104 (weak) and 1,128 (strong).
The Dow is just 17 points away from our goal and we'll just need the NYSE and the Russell to confirm their bounce lines and THEN we can get bullish again. Meanwhile, we actually got a bit more bearish in our Short-Term Portfolio (also in yesterday's post) as our Long-Term Portfolio popped right back to up 18.1% for the year so we wanted to lock those gains in with the STP, which finished the day up 81.8%, down from 92% in the morning as the markets rocketed.
If the rally is real, the Dow should have no problem at all popping our 16,632 line – after all, it jumped 234 points yesterday but stopped dead right at our strong bounce line. The…
The Dow is at 16,580 so all must be well, right? The fact that we're up here on low volume and even lower earnings is just one of those nit-picky things that won't matter a year from now, when TA people use the movement to draw new, bullish trend lines.
That's what the Fed is controlling, they are painting charts in broad strokes to keep things moving along – even when they aren't.
Sure the US economy is only growing at a 0.1% annual pace and sure that's down shockingly from 2.6% last quarter but, hey, we EXPECTED to only grow at 1% – so it's ONLY a 90% miss – what, us worry?
The Fed says it's just bad weather slowing us down and, whether or not you believe that, they also promise to continue to stimulate the economy long after it is necessary. The Fed is like Santa Claus, only they don't have to put in any effort to make their toys, so Christmas comes 365 days a year for the top 0.01%. For the bottom 99.99% – well, it's 0.1% growth on the "trickle down" effect.
In fact, if you take out the Banksters, who are piling up the Fed's free money in their vaults and using it to manipulate the stock and commodity markets (and higher costs for Energy, Food and Health Care were the only reason our GDP wasn't -1% instead of +0.1%), then you can see that those companies not protected by the Fed are in big trouble.
Not since 1999 has there been less cash relative to debt in Corporate America. Yes, money is cheap, so why not borrow some but that money isn't being used to invest in plants, equipment or, God forbid, hiring and training more people – it's being used to buy back stock and pay out dividends to give the ILLUSION that earnings are improving, when it's actually only the share count that's being reduced.
As you can see from this chart of the S&P, earnings are up just 25% from where they were in 2009, when the market…
The deterioration in the economy has been clear in recent months, but the equity markets have confounded many investors. Stocks are just 10.6% off their highs and have shown some remarkable resilience, particularly in the last few weeks. There’s a great tug-of-war going on underneath what appears like a potentially frightening macro picture.
A closer look shows that what we’ve primarily seen is deterioration in the macro outlook and not so much in specific corporate outlooks. Despite the persistently weak economy, earnings aren’t falling out of bed. Without a sharp decline in earnings there is unlikely to be a sharp decline in the equity markets (outside of some exogenous event such as a sovereign default).
The most distinct characteristic I can recall from the the 2007/2008 market downturn was the persistent deterioration in earnings. Like dominoes we saw the various industries go down one by one: housing, then banks, then consumer discretionary and on down the line. While the macro picture has deteriorated recently we haven’t seen the same sort of deterioration in earnings that we saw in 2007 and 2008.
In a recent strategy note JP Morgan elaborated on the divergence between the macro outlook and the earnings outlook:
“What matters for equities is earnings and not GDP growth. US GDP growth projections are being cut, but earnings projections have been little affected so far. Investors and analysts are hoping that, to the extent the soft patch in US GDP growth lasts for only a few quarters and does not spillover to the rest of the world, US companies will be able to protect their revenues and profits. Indeed, this is what happened during 2Q, when US companies were able to deliver strong top line and EPS growth even as US GDP grew at only a 1% pace.
It is a prolonged soft patch that poses the greater threat for corporate earnings and equity markets as it raises the specter of deflation and profit margin contraction. Why is deflation bad for corporate profitability? When nominal interest rates are bounded at zero, a fall in expected inflation causes a rise in real interest rates and the cost of capital, hurting corporate profitability. In addition, nominal wage rigidities mean that deflation reduces output prices by more than input prices putting pressure on corporate profitability. Indeed, the
The economy has gone from bad to worse. On Friday the Commerce Department reported that GDP had slipped from 3.7% to 2.4% in one quarter. Now that depleted stockpiles have been rebuilt and fiscal stimulus is running out, activity will continue to sputter increasing the likelihood of a double dip recession. Consumer credit and spending have taken a sharp downturn and data released on Tuesday show that the personal savings rate has soared to 6.4%. Mushrooming savings indicate that household deleveraging is ongoing which will reduce spending and further exacerbate the second-half slowdown. The jobs situation is equally grim; 8 million jobs have been lost since the beginning of the recession, but policymakers on Capital Hill and at the Fed refuse to initiate government programs or provide funding that will put the country back to work. Long-term "structural" unemployment is here to stay.
The stock market has continued its highwire act due to corporate earnings reports that surprised to the upside. 75% of S&P companies beat analysts estimates which helped send shares higher on low volume. Corporate profits increased but revenues fell; companies laid off workers and trimmed expenses to fatten the bottom line. Profitability has been maintained even though the overall size of the pie has shrunk. Stocks rallied on what is essentially bad news.
This is from ABC News:
"Consumer confidence matched its low for the year this week, with the ABC News Consumer Comfort Index extending a steep 9-point, six-week drop from what had been its 2010 high….The weekly index, based on Americans’ views of the national economy, the buying climate and their personal finances, stands at -50 on its scale of +100 to -100, just 4 points from its lowest on record in nearly 25 years of weekly polls…It’s in effect the death zone for consumer sentiment."
Consumer confidence has plunged due to persistent high unemployment, flat-lining personal incomes, and falling home prices. Ordinary working people do not care about the budget deficits; that’s a myth propagated by the right wing think tanks. They care about jobs, wages, and providing for their families. Congress’s unwillingness to address the problems that face the middle class has led to an erosion of confidence in government. This is from the Wall Street Journal:
"The lackluster job market continued to weigh on confidence. The share of
For those strapped for time, here is a comprehensive 4 minute Bloomberg TV interview with David Rosenberg which recaps some of the recent trends the Gluskin Sheff Strategist has been discussing, including the sovereign debt crisis, corporate earnings, and small business performance.
For those wishing to dig deeper into the observations, below is the key take home from today’s Breakfast with Dave (full piece here).
In several of my recent musings, I put forward the idea that economic, political and market trends are likely to continue the pattern of alternating direction from one year to the next. In other words, what worked in 2010 is not likely going to work in 2009 any more than what worked in 2008 did not work in 2009; in a nutshell, we are still on this post-bubble roller-coaster ride. If you go back to the initial bounce off the depressed bottom in the early 1930s, what we had for a decade off the bungee-jump was intense volatility. The same holds true for Japan in the early 1990s, and ever since. Considering the volatile, alternating character of the financial markets over the last three years there should be no need to back away from an overall cautious investment strategy that involves capital preservation and income generation, notwithstanding the sharp but inevitably fleeting market rallies that are typical in a post-bubble credit collapse.
From my lens, it now looks like the global economy is going to weaken after a few quarters of bounce-back that was caused principally by massive government intervention and stimulus. For illustrative purposes, we ran some simulations and found that absent the massive amount of monetary, fiscal and bailout stimulus last year, real GDP in the U.S. would have likely contracted as much as 4% in 2009 instead of the posted 2.4% decline; the third quarter would have contracted 1% (not gained 2.2%) and Q4 would have been down 1.5% (not the ripping 5.7% jump that is destined to be revised in any event).
The stimulus we experienced in 2009 is unlikely to be repeated in 2010 for a number of practical and political reasons. Scott Brown’s recent victory in the U.S. Senate race was a message for the government to go easy on the public purse, among other things like socialized health care. In addition, economic growth will be increasingly burdened by…
Robert Reich presents his view of the economy, stock market run-up, job losses, and corporate earnings, which reflect cutting employees rather than growth in production. Given that we have a consumer-driven economy, with consumers being the ones losing jobs, and perhaps their houses, logically, it makes sense that the stock market is at risk for another meeting with value based-pricing some time in the future. Being long now is a bet on liquidity driven gains continuing, regardless of the actual state of the economy. - Ilene
How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise.
In the old-fashioned kind of recession decades ago, big companies laid off people with the expectation of rehiring them when the economy turned up. Then a few recessions back, companies started laying off people for good, never rehiring them even when the economy recovered.
In the Great Recession of 2008-2009, companies are going a step further. They’re using this sharp downturn to cut payrolls even below where they were when times were good. Outsourcing abroad, setting up shop in China and elsewhere, contracting out, replacing people with software and automated machines – they’re doing whatever it takes to get payrolls down so earnings bounce up.
Caterpillar earned $404 million in the third quarter, or 64 cents a share. Analysts had expected only 5 cents. Caterpillar’s stock is up 165 percent since March. How did Caterpillar do it? Not by selling more bulldozers. It did it by cutting over 37,000 jobs.
The result, overall, is an asset-based recovery, not a Main Street recovery. Yes, the economy is growing again, but the surge in productivity is a mirage. Worker output per hour is skyrocketing because companies are generating almost as much output with fewer workers and fewer hours.
The Fed, meanwhile, has become an enabler to all this, making it as cheap as possible for companies to axe their employees. Money costs so little these days it’s easy
Psyched is a bi-monthly column covering the most important developments in the industry of medicinal psychedelics. We hope you follow us periodically as we report on the growth of this exciting new industry.
Champignon Brands Buys IP Company and Adds Ketamine and New Formulations To Its Portfolio
On March 19, Champignon Brands Inc. (CSE: SHRM) (OTC: SHRMF), a Canadian healt...
Last October, in the aftermath of the WeWork and Uber fiasco, we asked if SoftBank, that chronic seed (and not so seed) investor in cash-incinerating zerocorns startups would be "The Bubble Era's "Short Of The Century." Subsequent events have only made our query more pressing: with the global economy frozen, with social distancing and self-quarantine now a mandatory part of life...
Lawmakers are pinning their hopes on a US$2 trillion package to prop up the U.S. economy and provide relief to individuals and business ravaged by the coronavirus.
...
I put together this video that will calm you down, because knowing where are within the stock market cycles, and the economy makes all the difference.
This is the worst time to be starting a business that’s for sure. I have talked about this is past videos and events I attended that bear markets are fantastic opportunities if you can retain your capital until late in the bear market cycle. If you can do this, you will find countless opportunities to invest money. From buying businesses, franchises, real estate, equipment, and stocks at a considerable discount that would make today’s prices look ridiculous (which they are).
Take a quick watch of this video because it shows you ...
One of the broadest indices in the states remains in a long-term bullish trend, where a critical support test is in play.
The chart looks at the Wilshire 5000 on a monthly basis over the past 35-years.
The index has spent the majority of the past three decades inside of rising channel (1). It hit the top of this multi-decade channel to start off the year, where it created a monthly bearish reversal pattern.
Weakness the past 2-months has the index testing rising support and the December 2018 lows at (2).
Non believers of cycles become fast believers when the heat of the moment is upon them.
Just has we have birthdays, so does the market, regular cycles of time and price. The market news of the cycle turn may change each time, but the time is regular. Markets are not a random walk.
Success comes from strategy and the execution of a plan.
Changes in the world is the source of all market moves, to catch an...
Amid all of yesterday's chaos in bond, commodity, and stock markets, with the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note dropping below 0.5% for the first time in history - a strong indicator that investors are desperately looking for safe harbors - two supposed safe-havens in 'alternative currencies' behaved qui...
By Jacob Wolinsky. Originally published at ValueWalk.
Indicating strong health of entrepreneurship, both entrepreneurial activity and established business ownership in the United States have trended upwards over the past 19 years, according to the 2019/2020 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Global Report, released March 3rd in Miami at the GEM Annual Meeting.
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...
What an amazing recovery!
The Dow is just 17 points away from our goal and we'll just need the NYSE and the Russell to confirm their bounce lines and THEN we can get bullish again. Meanwhile, we actually got a bit more bearish in our Short-Term Portfolio (also in yesterday's post) as our Long-Term Portfolio popped right back to up 18.1% for the year so we wanted to lock those gains in with the STP, which finished the day up 81.8%, down from 92% in the morning as the markets rocketed.
Why should we worry?
In fact, if you take out the Banksters, who are piling up the Fed's free money in their vaults and using it to manipulate the stock and commodity markets (and higher costs for Energy, Food and Health Care were the only reason our GDP wasn't -1% instead of +0.1%), then you can see that those companies not protected by the Fed are in big trouble.
As you can see from this chart of the S&P, earnings are up just 25% from where they were in 2009, when the market….png)
Courtesy of 
Courtesy of 
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Chinese
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.