On Optrader's section yesterday he was asked how he works with AAPL as an investment. He replied that he just ‘plays with the covers'. I've got a separate portfolio where I use primarily this technique over the past 6 months. Up 60% The principles involved are stock selection, patience, patience, using covers to protect profits, rolling covers to maximize premium return, and exiting when covers are gone and stock price is high. Sometimes it's hard to remember where you learn to do this stuff, but much of it is from integrating principles I've learned here with thing I already knew. Thanks for the help on this, Phil and others.
Iflantheman
100KP dividend plays - FYI, I'm loving them...thanks, Phil!!! Including the $0.848/share dividend, I am up 100% on my $2.38 net entry on LYG...that's pretty cool!
SSDirk
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
TBT - Many thanks, Phil. I join you in your opinion favoring the Jan expirations. That's a great play. I can never thank you enough for what I have gained educationally as well as monitarily. Here it is late Sunday evening and I am able to get world class advice, just by asking for it. I feel like I am staying in a 5 star hotel, and room service is just a telephone call away!
Gel1
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
Thanks for all the work you put into this site. I have looked at a few other option advisory or "mentoring" services this year, but no one offers even a fraction of the content or the level of services you provide at PSW!
Jelutuck
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
Thank you Phil we appreciate all the work you put in to teach us valuable lessons about investing.
Pat Swap
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
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
I am a Registered Nurse, so is my wife. We work hard to take care of seven kids that are the joy of our lives. The cost for a basic membership is ALOT from our our monthly budget of spending and saving…but well worth it! Phil has allowed me to really ramp up the savings we put away for our children's college funds and our retirement.
David
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
Phil: well, often you say, just for FUN, great comment, TXS,
closed 2 SKF positions, one with 10 % , the other with 6 % gain,
RMM
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
Oil – thanks Phil,
got in late at 0.53 on the 38p today, set a sell for 0.75 and took the dog for a walk – 70% gain and more than enough $$ to buy dog food. TZA Aug 35/40 BCS – closed out for a 100% gain in under a month – thanks again for introducing me to these trades.
CanuckBob
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, 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
Phil.... I remember back in March of '09, you stated " Unless you think the country is going to hell in a hand-basket, NOW is the time to do your buying". Do you remember ?
I took your advice, and bought leap $2.00 calls on F, approximately 200,000 shares using the options, for just pennies. Now that was the best Ford I ever owned.... made over $1 mil - thanks go to you Phil. I now drive a Mercedes but still "love" the Ford.
1234Gel
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
I cannot believe the success I have had in the last 6 months because of what I have learned here! It has been truly life changing. It's like the old adage about teaching someone how to fish instead of just giving them a fish. Thank you Phil, I am forever grateful and hope I have helped someone else along the way.
Craigsa620
I have been a member off and on for years. Using these techniques I do consistently beat the S&P 500. Phil's Stock World has been the most important site in my financial life. It's impact on me over the past years has been huge. As have my tax bills!
Knightpilot
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
Hi Mr. Phill, I am a Venezuelan lady tormented by our politicall situation, who use to be an emerging market trader, and many other executive positins in the finance "arena" and now is trying to built a new concept and service for asset management for clients on my own, I am in the trial and learning process at the moment, I also invest for some friends and myself. I want to congratulate you , because reading you fill my days with a touch of irony (besides ,of course the spectacular market insight) that happens to give me energy, its a joy the remarks and comments even the pictures used, sometimes I just read it for the fun, I completily agree with your thouhts, though we belong to totally different cultures and enviorements and certanly realities Your readings is like a little hand helping me out to be in the market and fight for my devastated country where every single day we looe inches and yards of liberty. You shoul try to writte a book!
Mindeyes
I subscribed to Phils Stock World full service for a year or so and found that it was extremely helpful. Now I just get the Stock World Weekly summary, which I find invaluable.
Phil does not baby people and certainly can't make someone into a successful stock operator who does not make the effort on their own behalf, but he is extremely generous with his time in answering newbie questions.
Although I found it difficult to follow and implement all his trades in real time, what I did find was that once you got the hang of his methodology and way of thinking, you could work out your own trades and be quite successful. Even just using his patent Rule Number One* alone is worth its weight in gold. Rule Number Two is even better.
Rookie IRA Investor
Phil & Ephmen85: I hadn't thought about selling the covered calls. That should be the easiest strategy for me since I'm a beginner. Thanks a bunch!
JWick1981
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
Phil- I want to let you know that you really helped me make some money this morning when I probably would have lost on my own. I was stuck in doctors waiting rooms most of the morning starting at 8AM. By following the game plan you laid out and using my smartphone, I went short on oil whenever we got to 61.50 and long at 61 waiting for the spikes ahead of inventory. When 10:30 rolled around I was out after selling longs at 61.60 a few minutes earlier. I went short at 61.75-61.80 and voila, rode it down to 60.60 or so. Thank you.
craigsa620
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
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…
Arguably, the Hollywood human casino will give derivative traders the incentive and means to play with people’s lives very directly. So will they put their unproductive energies into destroying the hopes and dreams of others? If economic (recent) history tells us anything, they will. Max Keiser, who developed the virtual forerunner to the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) computer technology, predicts that if his technology is approved for use with real money, Hollywood will go the way of Enron and Lehman within two years. – Ilene
As if attacks from paparazzi and star-crazed fans weren’t enough, Hollywood stars may soon have a literal price put on their heads by investors in the Cantor Exchange, a real-money trading platform where people can bet on the gross profits of upcoming movies. Sales of The Dark Knight skyrocketed after Heath Ledger died unexpectedly, and so did sales after the deaths of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Will greed-driven investors now be laying in wait for the stars of movies they have bet on?
The Cantor Exchange (CE) is based on a virtual trading platform called the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), a web-based, multiplayer simulation in which players buy and sell “shares” of actors, directors, upcoming films, and film-related options. The difference is that where the HSX uses virtual money, CE will turn the game into a real casino using real dollars.
On April 21, Cantor Exchange reported that it had just received regulatory approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which oversees futures exchanges. “This is a significant step forward in achieving our ultimate goal,” it said in a letter, “which is to launch a market in Domestic Box Office Receipt Contracts.”
Having “contracts” out on movies and movie stars, however, has an ominous ring; and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) apparently doesn’t like the sound of it. The Cantor letter said that its tentative launch date of April 22 was being delayed because the MPAA and others “raised concerns about the economic purpose of this market and its usefulness as a hedging vehicle.”
The legitimate hedgers, the moviemakers and equity holders with a real financial interest to protect, don’t want it. But Cantor is pushing forward, because gambling is big business and there are…
Hollywood may know a thing or two about how Wall Street works after all, regardless of what Shia LeBeouf may think about InterOil. And the movie lobby really seems to know a thing or two about Washington.*
For weeks, big movie studios have been fighting an effort by two financial firms to launch a new market in movie futures that would allow investors to bet on box office takings. The financial firms think this is an Oscar-worthy scheme. The movie studios panned it. Wall Street is used to getting its way in Washington. But this time, the James Camerons of the world appear to have outsmarted the Gordon Gekkos.
This Capitol Hill clash began with the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), a fake-money internet game in which players try to predict the box office takes of Hollywood’s biggest flicks. In 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment firm, bought the five-year-old HSX with the intention of perhaps starting a real-money market along the same lines.
Cantor Fitzgerald was nearly wiped out on 9/11 and it wasn’t until 2008 that the firm asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to approve HSX. The OK came this month for HSX and another exchange, Media Derivatives Inc. (MDEX). And that’s when the Motion Picture Association of America lobbyists decided it was time for their close-up.
Cantor Fitzgerald may be a big deal on Wall Street. But it doesn’t have nearly as much pull on the Hill. It hasn’t lobbied the Senate directly since 2002, according to disclosure databases. And while its employees give generously to congressional candidates, it doesn’t have a PAC exclusively promoting its interests. MDEX—an Arizona-based firm started in 2007—is even less of a Washington player.
Hollywood’s lobbying paid off. On April 16, as MDEX executives were no doubt celebrating their good fortune, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) released her draft financial regulatory reform bill. In it, she proposed the first exclusion of a product from futures markets since angry onion farmers descended on Congress in 1958 to accuse Chicago-based traders of capturing the market and artificially driving down prices. The current law lays out rules governing the trade of derivatives of any product "except onions." If Lincoln’s
Cisco’s CRS-3 router made a bit of a splash when it was announced on March 9, but the power of this new device hasn’t yet sunk in. Consider: The CRS-3, a network routing system, is able to stream every film ever made, from Hollywood to Bombay, in under four minutes. That’s right — the whole universe of films digested in less time than it takes to boil an egg. That may sound like good news for consumers, but it could be the business equivalent of an earthquake for the likes of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures.
Most people are familiar with routers, or desktop boxes used to provide connectivity between PCs, laptops and printers in a home or small office. These are tiny geckos compared with theT. rexes used by telcos such as Verizon and AT&T to distribute data among computer networks and provide Internet connectivity to millions of homes and wireless subscribers.
As it turns out, these megarouters sitting inside data centers of major telcos and cablecos are among the biggest bottlenecks of the Internet, because as bandwidth speed to end users has shot up in recent years, router technology has not kept up, resulting in traffic jams that can slow or freeze downloads.
Cisco’s superrouter is expected to turn what is now the equivalent of a country road into an eight-late superhighway for Internet data traffic, including 3-D video, university lectures and feature films such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. "Video is the big driver behind all this," says analyst Akshay Sharma of technology-research company Gartner Inc., noting that voice and texting will soon be overtaken by richer multimedia content and applications.
While it’s already possible to stream a feature film in real time, in the best-case scenario it takes about two hours to download to a personal film archive, at home or on a mobile device, for repeat viewing. With the predictable slowdowns and interruptions now so common, the process can eat up four hours or more of computer time — to say nothing of time lost managing the process.
But routers are not the only cause of bottlenecks, and Cisco is not alone in working to maximize the Internet’s full potential. Google is also concerned about the speed limitations imposed by wires that run to the home. Last…
A bunch of legendary comedians got together to make a sketch, where the punchline is: "establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency". It’s kinda a funny, but mostly because of the Darrell Hammond’s imitation of Clinton making sexual innuendos, and Fred Armisen’s impersonation of Barack Obama. It seems director Ron Howard was trying to find something to ‘do good’, so he chatted with the earnest and overeducated Elizabeth Warren, and decided consumer financial regulation was the kind of smart idea that would obviously work. After all, who’s against consumer protection?
I am! This is the same government that goaded banks to lower standard to lend more to historically damaged communities, and then when those borrowers defaulted, blamed such lending on the banks. Avoiding the poor is redlining, targeting the poor is predatory, which means, whatever goes wrong can be blamed on the banks. Government always wants to have its cake and eat it too: low taxes & high spending, high growth and union-type work rules, banks lending more today and raising their capital.
The CFPA tries to do what most regulators try to do: improve efficiency, eliminate waste, consolidate regulations,simplify regulations, protect consumers, and protect jobs! It seems banks are greedy and basically uregulated, leading directly to the 2008 housing crisis. There are seven government bodies already regulating banks, highlighting how incredibly naive this proposal is. If there’s a magic bullet for improving efficiency, etc., share it with existing regulators…unless you think that all the regulators have been captured by some interest group, which if true just means we are bringing in one more interest group to advocate why they should get a better deal.
More importantly, if your concern is about the irrational poor people easily duped by huckster bankers, lower prices and penalties on the poor doesn’t help them, it enables them. Life has carrots and sticks, and one definition of a vice is that which generates bad outcomes in the long run. If you are constantly overdrafting your account, don’t have enough money to make a 20% down payment on a property, you need better financial discipline. Helping the poor from being trapped by debt should try to minimize they amount of debt they have, say by increasing rather than lowering prices on credit cards.…
In my larval, pre-blogging days, I always faced the back-to-school moment with abject dread. It meant returning to a program of the most severe, mind-numbing regimentation in the ghastly New York City public schools after a summer of idyllic unreality in the New Hampshire woods, where I went to a Lord of the Flies type of summer camp. And so here I am, many decades later, still uneasy as the final page of the August calendar flies away in a hot Santa Ana wind, and a great hellfire closes in on the far eastern reaches of Los Angeles, and the American money system falls into a peculiar limbo, and every fifth person is out of work, or going bankrupt, or glugging down the seawater of default, or being denied coverage by health insurance that he-or-she has already shelled out ten grand for this year, or getting shot in a trailer park.
I was in Los Angeles for a few days last week, as chance had it, marveling at the odd disposition of things there. I’ve been there many times over the years, but you forget how overwhelmingly weird it is. Altogether the LA metro area has the ambience of a garage the size of Rhode Island where someone happened to leave the engine running. To say that LA is all about cars is kind of like saying the Pacific Ocean is all about water. But one forgets the supernatural scale of the freeways, the tsunamis of vehicles, the cosmic despair of the traffic jams. The vistas of present-day LA make the Blade Runner vision of things look quaint in comparison.
You motor out of the LAX airport – personally, I love the name "LAX" because it so beautifully describes the collective ethos of the place – and you discover quickly that the taxi cab’s windows are not that dirty, it’s the air itself colored brown like miso soup. Going north on the 405 freeway, you see the looming Moloch of the downtown skyline through the brown miso soup. And you begin to understand why the products of the film industry are so fixated on the theme of machine apocalypse. Downtown LA looks like just such a gigantic machine as the FX crews would dream up, as if a day will come when those gleaming mirrored office towers will pull themselves
First we had the $5.5 billion dollar deal between Baker Hughes and BJ Services. Now Disney picks up Marvel. It’s suddenly feeling like the old days when Monday mornings meant merger announcements. That’s $9.5 billion in deal flow today.
No details yet on the banks working the deals or the financing involved.
From the Associated Press:
Walt Disney Co. says it is acquiring Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing characters like Iron Man and Spider-Man into the Disney family.
Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters.
Disney said Monday that Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own.
It said the boards of Disney and Marvel have both approved the transaction, but it requires an antitrust review and the approval of Marvel shareholders.
Disney (DIS) announced this morning it was acquiring Marvel Entertainment (MVL) for about $4 billion, or $50 per Marvel share. The acquisition price represents a 30% premium to Marvel’s current share price.
Operationally Marvel appears to be a good fit for Disney. Disney’s distribution could quickly exploit Marvel’s strong licensing business. In addition, Marvel has recently gotten into making its own productions (versus just licensing its characters for films), which has helped drive better-than-expected results the past few quarters.
America's newest generation is growing up in a marijuana environment that is unlike anything ever seen in the U.S.
Generation Z has never experienced an era where marijuana was looked upon as a "scourge", or the source of extreme political ire - instead, they have only known an era where cannabis is being relentlessly pushed toward acceptance and legality. In fact, California voted to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, just one year before the eldest Generation Z consumers were born, ...
Uber Technologies is planning to sell a 14 percent stake in its autonomous vehicle unit to existing investor Softbank, Japanese automaker Toyota, and auto parts manufacturer Denso ahead of its much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO), which is expected to happen in May. Though...
Depending on what country you live in, your cryptocurrency will be subject to different tax rules. The questions below address implications within the United States, but similar issues arise around the world. As always, check with a local tax professional to assess your own particular tax situation.
When silver, gold, and the precious metals industry were red-hot bullish in the 2000’s, investors could do no wrong.
You could buy SILVER at just about any price and it would go higher.
In today’s chart, you can see three large green bullish ascending triangles from the 2000’s that lead to big gains. But that was the bull market before the current bear market.
The tables have turned since the 2011 price top. Silver quickly formed a bearish descending triangle and fell another 50 percent when that broke down. This sent a vicious bear mark...
For March 2019 the fund was up approximately 5.5% net of all fees and expenses. By way of comparison, the S&P 500 was up approximately 1.9% while the Russell 2000 was down approximately 2.1%. Year-to-date 2019 the fund is up approximately 12.8% while the S&P 500 is up approximately 13.6% and the ...
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.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here
...
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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The legitimate hedgers, the moviemakers and equity holders with a real financial interest to protect, don’t want it. But Cantor is pushing forward, because gambling is big business and there are…
Cisco’s CRS-3 router made a bit of a splash when it was announced on March 9, but the power of this new device hasn’t yet sunk in. Consider: The CRS-3, a network routing system, is able to stream every film ever made, from Hollywood to Bombay, in under four minutes. That’s right — the whole universe of films digested in less time than it takes to boil an egg. That may sound like good news for consumers, but it could be the business equivalent of an earthquake for the likes of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures.
By 
You motor out of the LAX airport – personally, I love the name "LAX" because it so beautifully describes the collective ethos of the place – and you discover quickly that the taxi cab’s windows are not that
Wow..
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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
