Tricky Tuesday – Two Days to the Fed
by phil - September 11th, 2012 7:50 am
Once again we're waiting on the Fed.
As you can see from the chart on the right, while we had a very impressive break-out last Friday, it was only impressive when you price the indexes in Dollars – priced in Euros, we were unable to break over the 50 dmas, which are in decline in a constant currency. The Dollar stopped going down yesterday and the markets stopped going up – it's a pretty straightforward relationship.
To be bullish on stocks and commodities here means you are bearish on the Dollar at 80 and, of course, bullish on the Euro at $1.28, which just so happens to be its own 50 dma ($1.2827). Should gold be higher than $1,750? Should oil be higher than $96.74? Should AMZN be higher than 260 with a p/e of 313?
It's not just AMZN, of course but that's one of our favorite shorts because, even with the most bullish of forward projections – they are still priced like dot com mania never left us at 8x the valuation of AAPL, who make 41 TIMES more money than AMZN. AAPL makes $25Bn a year on $108Bn in sales, AMZN make $600M on $48Bn in sales. AMZN has been around since 1994 – it's not like they just started doing this stuff. If AMZN doubled their bottom line without increasing sales, then they'd make $1.2Bn on $48Bn in sales, still 1/20th of AAPL's profits.
In order for AMZN to match AAPL's $25Bn in profits, even giving them a free double on margin, they would have to sell $1.8Tn worth of merchandise. That's 4 times bigger than WMT and would essentially mean that AMZN is the only retailer in the United States, with over 90% of the total retail market share. And that's JUST to get to AAPL's valuation! Isn't that completely ridiculous? The suckers buying AMZN don't seem to think so.
It's not just AMZN that has completely unrealistic pricing, of course, with the consumer taking it on the chin, much of Retail is way overpriced for realistic forward prospects. In fact, the p/e ratio of the entire S&P 500 is up to 15 again – about the value at which we usually…
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Which Way Wednesday?
by phil - September 5th, 2012 7:49 am
Wow!
What a day yesterday. The Dow dropped over 100 points from the open but then, at 2 pm, a miracle occurred and we recovered almost all of our losses in just 30 minutes. We had similar action on the S&P and, as TA guru Dave Fry commented:
Our crack addicted trading desks believe in the Bernanke Put and the global central bank put. It’s quite apparent reading the news from China this morning as pundits were universally calling for more PBOC stimulus—it’s QE contagion. Moody’s cut their European outlook to negative which must be viewed two ways: Moody’s gets no respect and it means more QE.
Speaking of which the ECB is rumored to be launching “unlimited” bond buying (QE) with “conditions” (whatever those might be). The bond buying is said to be 0-3 year maturities with the implication being the problems of austerity and debt would beClouseau-like “sol-ved” during that period. Given that sort of optimism you’d not be incorrect in assuming the ECB will need a bailout itself down the road.
As you can see from Dave's SPY chart, the real volume for the day came to the downside while more volume sold off into the close than took us up in the afternoon.
That's the beauty of the HFT algos – they punch the market up all afternoon and then dump it on the mutual funds that come in after the bell and buy (for you – you retail sucker) at the day's closing prices. Pump and dump – that's the game the big boys get to play every day and it's clear as a bell that yesterday was dump, pump and dump with 2-3 times more volume selling that buying.
That's why this chart of On Balance Volume has such a massive divergence, again, much like the one that led to a 20% drop in the market last year that "no one saw coming." OBV measures buying and selling pressure as a cumulative indicator that adds volume on up days and subtracts volume on down days – clearly…
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Will We Hold It Wednesday – Euro $1.25 Edition
by phil - August 29th, 2012 8:38 am
Would you pay $1.25 for a Euro?
Would you take $125,000 of your Dollars and convert them to 100,000 Euros and put them in your safe until Christmas? The Euro topped out (non-spike) at $1.45 in April (when the markets topped out) and then plunged to $1.31 (10%) before bouncing back to $1.41 (66% retrace) and then fell all the way back to $1.27 (10%) came back to $1.34 (66% retrace) and then down to $1.21 (10%) and is now back at $1.25 (33% retrace).
Fibonacci would be very proud to see his numbers still ruling the markets 800 years later but it certainly doesn't make us feel warm and fuzzy about the Euro's chances of getting back to $1.30, since $1.29 would be that 66% retrace before we'd expect a drop back to $1.06.
From the point of view of our 5% Rule, we've got a 25-point drop from $1.45 to $1.20 and our "weak bounce" is a 20% retrace to – $1.25 and $1.30 would be a "strong bounce" 40% retrace but a failure here would be a very bad sign and, as you can see from Dave Fry's chart, the 22 week moving average crashing down to $1.25.57 doesn't make it seem all that likely.
In fact, $1.256 was our shorting spot for the Euro yesterday and there easy money to be made there several times already. We don't usually bother with currency trades but that one seemed pretty obvious… This morning obvious Futures trade I highlighted for our Members in an earlier note was going long on gasoline (/RB) off the $2.90 line as we head into oil inventories tomorrow and the hurricane makes landfall and knocks out a couple of refineries (they don't have to be damaged, someone always at least "trips" on the plug and shuts them down for 2 or 3 days to jack up gas prices – especially ahead of holiday weekends).
Gasoline makes a nice, bullish offset to our generally bearish bets – including oil shorts, because we still have way too much of it – despite 4 consecutive weeks of heavy draws, which were caused by a drastic reduction in imports and a drastic increase in imports to fake the impression of US…
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Trying the Tops on Tuesday – As Usual
by phil - August 28th, 2012 8:29 am
Seriously, this is 4 Tuesday's in row – is anyone seeing a pattern?
Of course this Tuesday we are 100 Dow points lower than we were last Tuesday and the BS pre-market pump job at 6am has already faded (7:30) although we're still working short bets on the Russell futures (/TF) and the Euro (EUR/USD) from 813 and $1.256 as I put up a note in early morning Member Chat as we spiked on – get this – the news that Draghi cancelled his appearance at Jackson Hole this weekend.
Why would it be good that Draghi is NOT going to the last Central Bankster conference of the year but the buzz is that he MUST be so close to a masterful solution to all of Europe's problems that he can't be bothered to gather with his brother bankers on the eve of his triumph. The announcement was timed to coincide (10 minutes before) bond auctions by Spain ($2Bn 3-month notes at 0.95%) and Italy ($3.75Bn of 2-year notes at 3.06%) and the Euro jumped 0.7% into the auction – lowering the effective rates and both auctions were a "success".
That pulled the EU markets off the floor (still down half a point at 8am) and got the US futures out of the red zone as we finally pushed the Dollar under that pesky 81.50 line, goosing the indexes and commodities. Unfortunately, it's just a sugar rush and we've already run out of steam but I'm sure someone will start another rumor around 9:15 to get us back to green into the open.
As I said last Tuesday, with the Dollar at 81.50 we're looking for adjusted levels of: Dow 13,464, S&P 1,428, Nasdaq 3,060, NYSE 8,160 and Russell 816 and we held the Nasdaq yesterday but that was all so no reason to capitulate on our bearish stance just yet. Last Tuesday we also discussed 3 more trades (there we 3 the Tuesday before) to make 300% if the market did break higher and our first batch had several 100% winners so let's see how our 3 new trades did in a downtrend:
- 2 FAS Oct $107/117 bull call spreads at $2.05, selling 1 BBY 2014 $15 puts for $3.75 for net .35 is now net $1.52 – up 334%
- AGQ Oct $38/45 bull call spread at $3.10, selling BTU 2014 $20 puts for $3.60 for
…
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Monday Market Miracle – Everything is Fixed, or it will be, or Something…
by phil - August 6th, 2012 8:30 am
Nothing happened this weekend and I guess that's better than something because most somethings that are likely to happen are bad and the only something that MIGHT happen that would be good is not all that likely to happen – not soon anyway. So better to have nothing happen so we can hope that something will happen than to have something happen that turns out to be nothing after all, right?
Welcome to 21st Century Investing. Please do not make the mistake of discussing the actual BUSINESS PROSPECTS of the companies you buy and sell with an average hold time of 22 seconds – that's so 1900's. It's rumors, not earnings, that power the modern markets so you'd better have your ears on the ground and keep your nose out of the financial statements – making money is so passe' – especially since money isn't worth the paper it's printed on anyway. What matters is how much FREE MONEY our Central Banksters will give us to play with today. Then we can have fun, Fun, FUN 'till Bernanke takes our T-Bills away.
This morning "ECB Officials" said that the Central Bank could intervene and buy the bonds of struggling euro-zone countries without unanimous approval, raising hopes that a bond buying program is still a possibility, and offsetting the disappointment caused by the bank's President Mario Draghi on Thursday. This is not new information but it's treated as such by Uncle Rupert's WSJ, who need a strong market as they look to split the company so Murdoch and his paper have Billions riding on a positive market environment – not that that would influence their reporting of course – allegedly.
That was enough to get the Asian markets excited – again – and the Asian markets closing higher was enough to give the EU a good open (even though the reason the Asian markets went up was nothing that would have gotten Europeans to buy again but – they don't know that) and the EU markets going higher helps our Futures go higher and that allows Cramer to go on CNBC this morning and tell you to BUYBUYBUY because, as Cramer tells us, the market is going to go higher because it went higher and higher is higher than higher so…
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Thrilling Thursday – Rumors Run the Markets
by phil - July 5th, 2012 8:16 am
Before we begin – let's catch up on the Libor scandal:
"The Global Banking Industry relies on London having virtually no regulatory oversight. The bulk of the Global financial crimes occur in London. David Cameron, of course, is keen to protect the franchise of the city of London – it's the big profit center for his country and his Government – essentially peddling in fraud."
That is the key point made by Max Keiser (7:20) in the above video. As Keiser points out, fraud and manipulation are rampant in the Global Financial Markets and have been for years. I've been saying so and we have great systems to profit from the manipulation of fraudulent markets but they wouldn't work so well if the markets were not a sham, would they?
While I'd love to go back to picking value stocks in clean market environment – I'm certainly not holding my breath. Fining BCS $450M for making Billions of Dollars in a conspiracy to defraud Trillions of Dollars of Global investors over periods of years means you shouldn't hold yours either. I'm pretty sure we can expect more of the same for a long, long time.
This morning the Euro and the Dollar have been flying up and down along with our index futures on rumors that China will or won't be easing (100-point swings in the Dow pre-market) or that the ECB will or won't ease and that other countries will or won't kick in stimulus. You know, the same old crap we've been hearing since early June – giving us roughly 10% gains across the International board – even as the Global Economic Data continues to decay:
We are still "constructively bullish" which is what led us to stay cashy and cautious short-term, while holding bullish on our long-term bets. We haven't got any strong downside bets as we have clear lines at those 50 dmas (red) with the 20 dmas (blue) curving up sharply to give us support before we feel compelled to go bearish again. Of course, this "rally" has been a lot of low-volume BS – hence the "cashy and cautious" stance. We have had no reason yet to actually go bearish and, since we added most of our long-term longs in early June – we have quite a while before we do become…
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Frustrating Thursday – From .EUphoria to .DEspair
by phil - June 28th, 2012 8:28 am
.DE is Germany's web domain.
So I'm trademarking .DEspair to consolidate all the anti-EU statements coming out of Germany this week as the rhetoric reaches a crescendo and goes up from there. .EU is, of course the EU domain and .EUphoria is where we will store all the glowing pro-EU rhetoric that makes the market rise (until someone in Germany says something).
It's a typical case of .DE said, SH.Eu said and all the kiddies can do is hide in their room until Mommy and Daddy stop fighting.
Things were getting silly enough on the plus side as we rallied for no reason at all that we added a very aggressive short position on the Russell using TZA. My 3:07 comment in Member Chat was:
Big RUT move makes TZA fairly cheap at $20 and the July $20/24 bull call spread is $1, which makes for a nice hedge and if the RUT pops, you can offset it with the July $18 puts, now .45, for $1 or better or, of course, there's always the TWIL List!
We had no long plays to make yesterday as we added them all when the market was much lower (told you so!) and now it has moved to the top of the bottom of our range and we pick up a short – this is not rocket science, folks. It's going to be a choppy, terrible market until either the EU saves us by tomorrow or we crash and burn horribly and my comment to Members in the Morning Alert at 10:24 was:
We still need the Dollar to go lower and this morning it's zooming higher (82.80) and keeping us from a better move up on the indexes. This will go on for the next few days with each syllable uttered by anyone of presumed authority in the EU so – if you can't stand the heat – stay in cash!
The Dollar had worked it's way down to 82.50 into the close but now (8am) it's been jammed back to 82.90 as the Euro plunges back to $1.2426 on whatever silly thing someone just said. Financials are dragging everyone down as they are DOOMED if the EU can't pull things together.
Financials are also hurting as the NY Times Dealbook Blog is reporting that JPM's Trading losses "may reach $9Bn." I'm a little…
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AT&T Weekly Puts In Play
by Option Review - May 23rd, 2012 1:55 pm
Today’s tickers: T, FXE & OI
T - AT&T, Inc. – U.S. equities are on the decline as Europe’s woes once again take center stage. Shares in AT&T, down 0.90% at $33.24 this afternoon, are faring better than most of the other Dow components so far, though options activity on the wireless carrier suggests some strategists are bracing for further declines ahead of the long weekend. Traders exchanged more than 6,800 puts at the May 25 ’12 $33 strike against open interest of 646 open positions, and appear to have purchased the bulk of the volume at an average premium of $0.17 apiece. Bearish positions in the $33 strike weekly puts may be profitable at expiration should shares in AT&T settle below the average breakeven price of $32.83.
FXE - CurrencyShares Euro Trust – Bearish positions initiated yesterday in FXE options are worth far more on Wednesday as the Euro, and of course the Euro Currency Trust that mirrors its performance, continue to slide on fears Greece may leave the euro. Traders betting on further weakness in the currency on Tuesday picked up around 1,000 of the May 25 ’12 $125 strike puts for an average premium of $0.16 apiece. As of Wednesday afternoon just before 12:30 p.m. ET, these same contracts cost $0.60 apiece, or nearly four times as much. Overnight profits are also available for those effectively taking a short position in the currency on Tuesday. Buyers of around 1,000 deep in-the-money put options at the $127 strike for an average premium of $0.71 apiece yesterday could currently sell those contracts at $2.10 apiece for a net gain of nearly 200.0% on the position. The FXE currently trades 0.96% lower on the day at $124.96 as of 1:10 p.m. in New York.
OI - Owens-Illinois, Inc. – The maker…
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Testy Tuesday – All Better or Just Bouncing?
by phil - May 22nd, 2012 8:15 am
Wow, what a Monday!
The Nasdaq and the Russell already hit our 2% bounce goals and the Dow needs another point with just half a point making the mark for the NYSE and the S&P – not bad for a day's work…
EVERYONE is TALKING about bailouts and easing but, so far, no concrete action has been taken and we don't believe we can get more than a strong bounce (40% retrace of the drop) without ACTUAL stimulus coming through. Those lines would be:
- Dow – 12,750 (12,540 is 20% retrace/weak bounce)
- S&P – 1,343 (1,319)
- Nas – 2,900 (2,840)
- NYSE – 7,720 (7,560)
- RUT – 780, (765)
As you can see from the Big Chart, the Nasdaq stopped dead at their -5% line at 2,850 so we'll be watching that one very closely and the S&P is just under its -2.5% line at 1,320 so those are our major goals for the day along with turning the Russell and the other weak bounce lines green. Those are the 2% bounces we expected in yesterday's post but we certainly didn't expect them in one day!
We had gone into the session expecting to flip more bearish after betting on the bounce Friday afternoon but it was a very strong day overall and none of our warnings (see Morning Alert) were tripped so we ended the day a little more bullish as we tweaked our FAS Money Portfolio even more bullish by uncovering our primary January bull call spread. On the other hand, we left our bear hedges in place on the $25,000 Portfolio, so we're not ready to go all the way on our first bullish date.
All three of my stock picks from this week's Stock World Weekly gave us the entries we were looking for and some nice gains yesterday as CHK opened at $14.25 and finished at $14.91 (up 4.6%), HPQ opened at $21.42 and jumped to $21.89 (up 2.1%) and XLF gave us our $13.77 entry but is still playable at $13.90 (up 1%) and, of course, our aggressive FAS Money move was to take advantage of the lagging XLF index.
Of course the more fun way to play XLF would be our trade idea from yesterday's Member Chat, which was to sell the Jan $12 puts for .75 and buy the Jan…
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Free-Falling Thursday – Facebook Faces Fatal Friday Follow-Through
by phil - May 17th, 2012 8:04 am
What a week to do an IPO!
Will Facebook save the markets tomorrow with a successful roll-out of the largest IPO of all time or will it be the straw that breaks the camel's back, with a disappointing open that sends the Nasdaq off a cliff along with their entire over-priced sector? Either way – this is going to be fun.
We can argue the merits of Facebook's value (or lack thereof) all day long but, scam or not, it's very likely FB will set off a buying frenzy in the space and we finish the week off with a bang. If that doesn't happen – I will be very, very bearish but from what I'm hearing and the way they are extending the offer and raising the price – it's way oversubscribed. Also, we have to consider that people are cashing out 1-5% of their holdings to raise cash for FB on Friday – sure it's moronic, but that's what people do so you have to put yourself in a position of someone who wants to put 5% of your portfolio in to Facebook (the way you wish you had put 5% into Google at $80 when they IPO'd) tomorrow – what would you be doing with the rest of your portfolio today?
Meanwhile, the rest of the World is falling apart with Europe turning sharply lower as Spain sells bonds at record high yields (5.106% for 4-year notes) this morning after announcing that their Q1 GDP was -0.4% at the same time as Moody's indicates they will be cutting the credit ratings of 21 Spanish Banks this evening AND, to top it all off – there is a run on Bankia, which Spain nationalized last week – with $1.3Bn pulled from accounts this past week! This sent Spain's markets down 1.6% and Italy (who is next) fell 2%, sending the Euro down 1% to $1.2668 and the Pound followed it down to $1.5832 (while EUR/CHF holds steady at 1.2009 in the most blatant currency manipulation ever witnessed).
Wow – that's a lot of bad stuff! Maybe too many bad things – as in a bit suspicious that all this bad stuff happens at once – as if maybe someone WANTS to force a panic bottom? If so, I applaud them – we certainly needed to shake things up a little…
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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.