Newer member here, but just wanted to say thank you too. I've learned so much and I hope you'll be around for a long time helping us learn along the way.
Where
I love volatile days like this when you can make a bunch of money on these big swings. As long as you have Phil on your side calling the bottoms and the tops of course.
craigsa620
I discovered PSW while reading up on the US economy and how it applies to all the poor folk of the world and to myself as a humble UK desk slave.
This year I put time into learning options trading. I upgraded (with great administrative difficulty!) my stock dealing account to deal options. Now I am an avid reader of PSW and subscribed for voyeur membership. Initially feeling out of my depth struggling to keep up with the peculiar language of options traders, I unsubscribed feeling a little under confident and uncertain if the small stake I have to invest in options could generate enough to justify my PSW subscription. Nevertheless, I've benefited considerably from the member's material. From a small number of initial trades, I've exceeded profit targets enough to consider re-subscribing in some capacity. Thanks for the knowledge and more than anything I appreciate the human angle, the humour and the ecologically sympathetic approach rarely seen in other financial media. Best wishes all - Jon
Jon
Phil: I loaded up big time yesterday on your suggestion of the AMZN September 75 naked puts. They are up 43%!
Gel1
Thanks for you guidance – Your "student" will be passing on the McMuffins and having Lobster dinners tonight!
Aquila
Kudos on the POT puts! I studied the charts last night and you couldn't have hit the inflection points more perfectly. Since there are often many head fakes in the charts, that was very well done. I know they can't all work this well, but that was an extra unexpected bonus yesterday.
Ocelli7
Opt, I think the hardest thing is being disciplined enough to trade with you. Atleast now when I see something go in the red I know how much I'm going to loose and that I will profit somewhere else and have enough money left at the end of the day to trade again. Thanks for all your hard work! My stress levels are down 75% and I have even made a small profit in the short time I've been here
Mopar
Brilliant covering of the arcane, the profane , but never the mundane!
Easy to understand the reason for your huge following, Phil, and why you have become a must read on my daily agenda. Please accept my complete appreciation.
Seeking Truth
Cory Booker for President. :) . Thanks for all the good futures guidance Phil! Having one of my best months yet. Account is up 75% YTD!
Traderd
Thanks Phil for helping make this a much, much better year this year than last. Your tutelage has been so very helpful. Don't think I can say Thanks enough. And I thanks all the members here who were work hard in helping us all to become better traders, and I would say better people as well. The support many of you offered when we evacuated during the fire this past year helped me immeasurably.
Happy New Years to you all!
JBur
Phil - Wow…wow. The vision and inate grasp of the options world you posess is rather staggering. It's this type of experience that I really hope to develop. I'm afraid I still can't see the moves, but I WILL learn. I cannot thank you enough for the patience, knowledge and effort you put into this place. Please keep it going!
Where
Phil, thanks for the call on the SKF puts earlier, I'm riding that horsie downhill right now, giddyup!
MrMocha
A truly great website with a lot of information for investors. Whether you are a novice, seasoned, or a professional there is a lot to be gained about stock options and options trading from this very informative website.
ZKatkin
Thank you Phil for this site – the trade discussions on PSW are mind boggling. Future trading while learning to be a value investor. Priceless
Joseph
I am struck by several things over the last few days. First is how level-headed we all are as Greece and China develop. Second is how very helpful it is to see the different trading styles we have, partly because of personal preference and partly because of different stages of development and education. It's very helpful. Well-done, Phil, to have developed this community.
Snow
I have been here for 8 yrs, and find it the best service out there. There are more eyes on the market in this forum than anywhere, and opinions abound. So, relax, and let the group help you out.
Pharmboy
Praising PSW for enlightenment is a bit akin to praising the Pope for being holy. I've been reading PSW for about two months now and have learned more about investing technique and the world in general than I've learned from the books and seminars I've paid for. Thanks for the enlightenment, the education, the guidance and the truth, which is not a commodity these days, but a virtue in short supply.
Andy Morris
You guys gotta give it to phil–the voice of reason yesterday, last nite and this morning.
Corleone
Phil, you are the man. My positions in ABX and CLF are up massively this year, and doing very nicely with USO and UNG. TSR is another winner. Just waiting for the TSLA short now!
Rookie IRA Investor
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 — gotta thank you for your advice this week, and especially today. I took many aspects of your advice this morning, with all of my shorts -- being prepared on the short side, selling into intial excitement, taking the money and running, not being greedy. I also made money on the your /QM and /YM calls. It used to be I would be terrified of weeks like this one. Now, it feels somewhat comfortable, for want of a better word.
Escohen5
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
Phil// Cashing out of my LT holdings have been going on for over two weeks. However, I have elected not to cash all of the holdings including my AAPL, Jan 16 Short Puts at $470 and $480. Plus, I am being opportunistic in selectively putting on those positions for beat down stocks by selling 2016 Puts. That said, YTD harvested profits now stand at $135k on a current account balance of $683K or a 19.81% YTD return. Thanks for your expertise in teaching me how to be patient, be the banker, but also not being greedy, cashing out and harvesting profits.
IHS4GOD
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/CLK4 – Perfect! Saw the answer 1 min after my post…out with $740 on two contracts. Thanks again for the education.
Jeffdoc2004
Phil, have to thank you for saving me today. I think the discipline I have learned from this site has helped me as much if not more than the actual picks.
Rustle123
GOOG, NFLX and AAPL all bought last hour Friday. Sold into the excitement the first hour today for an average of 15% on the options. And lots of them. Thanks again Phil for teaching me so well.
lflantheman
Phil/CL-that play made a quick $500 per contract! Took all of 10 minutes! I want to thank you for helping me not just learn a bit about trading, but giving me some confidence and most of all a rewarding "hobby" to look forward to each day. I have had a few mistakes and losses along the way, but I have had some great wins too and I am now consistently making money trading futures and have even learned to go to sleep while holding a losing position knowing that tomorrow is always another opportunity to win again. So thanks again for your help and patience along the way.
Craigsa620
Joined last year and and started profitably trading options thanks to everything I have learned here. THANK YOU!!
OnWisconsin
Phil, I'm up 34x what I paid in fees for your service, and that only counts the trades I didn't think of myself. Thanks!
At issue is Tim Geithner’s criminal behavior in orchestrating the AIG bailout to favor Goldman Sachs through counterparty payouts at par, and then the massive cover-up.
On the President’s first day in office on January 21, 2009, he issued an Open Government memo promising the American people a new era of transparency. On March 19, 2009, under the President’s orders, the Attorney General’s office issued detailed guidelines on how Federal agencies were to respond going forward to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The guidelines instructed the agencies as follows:
“The key frame of reference for this new mind set is the purpose behind the FOIA. The statute is designed to open agency activity to the light of day. As the Supreme Court has declared: ‘FOIA is often explained as a means for citizens to know what their Government is up to.’ NARA v. Favish, 541 U.S. 157, 171 (2004) (quoting U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 773 (1989)…The President’s FOIA Memoranda directly links transparency with accountability which, in turn, is a requirement of a democracy. The President recognized the FOIA as ‘the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring open Government.’ Agency personnel, therefore, should keep the purpose of the FOIA — ensuring an open Government — foremost in their mind.”
It pains me to inform you, Mr. President, but the Treasury Department, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and Securities and Exchange Commission (the trio that has been variously distracted minting trillions in currency, trading cash for trash with Wall Street, surfing for porn, or mishandling multiple voluminous tips on Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme) have misplaced your memo or, as many suspect, take their marching orders not from you but from Wall Street — perhaps because they perceive that this is where you take your orders too.
On October 6, 2010, I filed three FOIA requests with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). I had come by information that the official government report on the stock market’s “Flash Crash” of May 6, 2010 was materially wrong and I wanted to buttress my investigative report to the public with documents the SEC had obtained or compiled in conducting its investigation.
I followed the SEC’s FOIA instructions and emailed the requests to foiapa@sec.gov as instructed by the web site, asking for a small amount of very…
In early March I turned quite bullish for the first time in 2009. My reasoning behind the bullishness was relatively simple. The market had overshot the mean to the downside and psychology was far too negative. This created a market that was like a loaded spring. All it needed was a catalyst. That catalyst came in the form of the M2M rumors. In other words, the government was going to directly intervene in the market and stop the bleeding. What resulted over the ensuing months was even larger than I ever could have expected.
At the end of March I began referring to the rally as the “government run rally”. Although the actual underlying fundamentals were not improving, the government had created a series of events and catalysts that forced the shorts out of positions and changed the psychology of the market:
The last of these well crafted maneuvers were the capital raises and the stress tests. This series of events created a foundation for a market bottom and helped form the most important portion of the current rally in stocks. It would sound conspiratorial if it weren’t entirely true. What has ensued since has confounded even the most veteran of traders. The market has continued higher in a nearly straight line.
There is no doubt that the economy has rebounded sharply from the days of ISM 35 and GDP -6%. The overshoot to the downside was extreme to say the least, but what is less clear is why the market has rallied an astounding 60% off its bottom and effectively priced in 20%+ earnings growth and 4% GDP going forward when the real underlying problems that caused this entire mess are still apparent. We have simply implemented the failed Bank of Japan policies of the 90’s combined with the failed bank policies of Maestro Greenspan – crank up the printing press, turn on the liquidity spigot, implement quantitative easing and let the banks earn their way out of their problems. It sounds great in theory, but Greenspan’s policies failed miserably as did the Bank of Japan’s. Neither approach proactively attacked the root of the problems. The results speak for themselves.
Mr. Bernanke has declared an end to the recession, but we continue to…
As Zero Hedge reported previously, Florida bank BankUnited was put on dodecatuple secret probation under a "prompt corrective action directive" on April 18th to find a buyer within 20 days or face imminent shutdown. 20 days came and went, and the bank is still standing "strong," unshutdown, and unpurchased. At first glance it would seem ultimatums by the Office of Thrift Supervision carry markedly less weight than those conveyed by the "three stooges" of the U.S. Treasury Dept, the Fed and the FDIC.
A Dow Jones article sheds some light on the lack of action in this soon to be receivership. Allegedly the three likely emerging bidders for BKUNA include some of the most usual suspects imaginable: one is a consortium of Toronto Dominion Bank and… Goldman Sachs, in which the split would be: branches and deposits go to TD, while GS gets to keep all the juicy distressed assets, that subsequently will experience a miraculous short squeeze and be sold at a "bargain" to investors at just over par (the last bit is some superfluous musing on the part of this author).
The second presumed bidder – no surprise there – it is perma-acquisitive JC Flowers. As to the latter it is unclear whether it is more shocking that the former PE legend has not learned his lesson with investing in "value" financial propositions, or that he still has any capital left at all to invest in the first place.
And the last group is the Keiser Soze of the lot – a triumvirate of Wilbur Ross, Blackstone and NY kickback scandal tainted Carlyle Group.
As the new bid deadline has been extended until next Tuesday, although it seems like that day will also come and go with no fireworks. Another propagating rumor is that neither of the bidders is inclined to see the economic green shoots or mustard seeds, and would rather have the bank be put into receivership first (read: GSE woodshedding approach) before any formal action is taken. While this is bad news for any existing equity holders in the "not too big to fail" Florida bank, receivership for the roughly $14 billion company will be fabulous news for any of the three potential bidders who, in a WaMuesque, FDIC-orchestrated…
Judicial Watch, which lucked out majorly on a FOIA request to the Treasury, has received several hundred pages of stunning revelations, among which are that Hank Paulson essentially used the same tactics that he used on Ken Lewis on a group of nine bankers at the October 13 meeting which apportioned government investments to the various “critical” banking institutions. The major disclosure was captured in a memo called CEO Talking Points, which delineates the continuous use of strongarming tactics by not just Paulson, but by Tim Geithner, and Sheila Bair, who were also present at the meetings. According to one of the Talking Points:
“If a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware that your regulator will require it in any circumstance. We don’t believe it is tenable to opt out because doing so would leave you vulnerable and exposed.”
Among the banking CEOs who were forced into a pre-envisioned arrangement were:
Ken Lewis (BofA)
Vik Pandit (Citi)
Lloyd Blankfein (GS)
Jamie Dimon (JPM)
John Thain (ML)
Robert Kelley (BONY)
Ronald Logue (SS)
John Mack (MS)
Richard Kovacevich (WFC)
Among the key disclosures obtained by Judicial Watch are:
“CEO Talking Points” used by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson confirming that the nine bank CEOs present at the October 13 meeting had no choice but to accede to the government’s demands for equity stakes and the resulting government control. The talking points emphasize that “if a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware your regulator will require it in any circumstance.” Suggested edits of the “talking points” by Tim Geithner, then-New York Fed President, were withheld by the Obama Treasury Department.
“Major Financial Institution Participation Commitments” signed by the nine bankers on October 13. The CEOs not only hand wrote their institution’s names but also hand wrote multi-billion dollar amounts of “preferred shares” to be issued to the government.
Email documenting that, on the very day of the meeting, the Chief of Staff to the Treasury Secretary and other top Treasury staff did not know the names of any of the banks that would be in attendance.
Email showing Treasury officials wanted to use the Secret Service to help keep the press away from the CEOs arriving at the
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Amid a global pandemic and economic crisis hurting small businesses and workers across the country, Goldman Sachs reported “blowout second-quarter earnings” today, raking in a whopping $2.42 billion in profit — a boon CNBC is calling the mega bank’s “biggest earnings outperformance in nearly a decade.” Goldman Sachs was able to capitalize on the trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve and the Trump administration inje...
Its been a long 7-years if you happened to buy Junior miners ETF (GDXJ) back in 2013, as it has traded sideways since those highs.
This chart comes from Marketsmith.com, which reflects that GDXJ is trading above long-term moving averages and its relative strength continues to push higher.
GDXJ has spent the majority of the past 7-years inside of the trading range (1).
The rally off the bottom of the range in March, has GDXJ working on an upside breakout of this trading range at (2).
Authored by A. Gary Shilling, originally published in Bloomberg Opinion
The Social Security Trust Fund has done quite well in recent years, due to the postwar babies’ surge into the labor force in the last decades of the 20th century while retirees from the low-birth rate Great Depression years were drawing relatively few benefits. The combination of these two forces pushed the Social Security Trust Fund balance from about zero in ...
Real estate, especially commercial real estate, is likely to be the first segment of the real estate market to enter the second phase of an extended collapse. The COVID-19 virus has created an atmosphere where continuing operations for retail, restaurants, and many other business segments is virtually impossible to maintain. Without the ability to earn sufficient income, thousands of restaurants and other retail businesses have already closed or are in the process of closing. This has pushed the commercial real estate market into turmoil. We believe the residential real estate market will follow the commercial market because consumers are going to suffer as commercial real estate collapses....
No matter where in the world you log in from—Silicon Valley, London, and beyond—COVID-19 has triggered a mass exodus from traditional office life. Now that the lucky among us have settled into remote work, many are left wondering if this massive, inadvertent work-from-home experiment will change work for good.
In the following charts, we feature data from a comprehensive survey conducted by UK-based startup network Founders Forum, in which hundreds of founders and their teams revealed their experiences of remote work and their plans for a ...
But can the FED blow $6T every time the market rolls down to test support.
Yes, maybe before the US 2020 elections the FED will do 'what it takes'. But post elections not so much, the year 2021 is a long way from the next election (presidential or congress) and defense of the markets may not be so supportive at $6T or $10T per market smash. The FED may hesitate, and that will be window for stocks to break lower.
The COVID 19 pandemic is, predictably, worsening again in much of the US. Only the Northeast, and to a lesser extent some Midwestern states, have been consistently improving. And that trend could also reverse as those states fully reopen.
The problem in the US seems to be widespread public resistance to recommended practices of social distancing and mask wearing. In countries where these practices have been practi...
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...
There is no doubt that the economy has rebounded sharply from the days of ISM 35 and GDP -6%. The overshoot to the downside was extreme to say the least, but what is less clear is why the market has rallied an astounding 60% off its bottom and effectively priced in 20%+ earnings growth and 4% GDP going forward when the real underlying problems that caused this entire mess are still apparent. We have simply implemented the failed Bank of Japan policies of the 90’s combined with the failed bank policies of Maestro Greenspan – crank up the printing press, turn on the liquidity spigot, implement quantitative easing and let the banks earn their way out of their problems. It sounds great in theory, but Greenspan’s policies failed miserably as did the Bank of Japan’s. Neither approach proactively attacked the root of the problems. The results speak for themselves.
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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.