Thrilling Thursday – S&P 2,000!!! Again…
by phil - September 25th, 2014 8:01 am
Wheeeee, what a ride!
This is why we use hedges – they kept us from stopping out of our long positions during the dip and, since our long positions pay off in a flat or up market, anything not down is VERY profitable for our Long-Term positions, which outnumber our bearish Short-Term hedges by 10:1 in our Income Portfolio and Long-Term Portfolio.
Markets do, indeed go up AND down on a pretty regular basis and we've made a lot of bottom calls this week, adding more long positions as we got a nice pullback. Now we have the bounces we predicted and we'll just have to wait and see if our strong bounce lines hold up for the week. Yesterday morning, before the Market, our 5% Rule™ predicted we'd see:
- Dow 17,100 (weak) and 17,150 (strong) – Now 17,210
- S&P 1,990 (weak) and 1,995 (strong) – Now 1,998
- Nasdaq 4,525 (weak) and 4,550 (strong) – Now 4,555
- NYSE 10,875 (weak) and 10,950 (strong) – Now 10,885
- Russell 1,125 (weak) and 1,135 (strong) – Now 1,128
So we have 3 greens and two in-betweens and that's certainly enough to get us to stop being bearish but not quite enough to turn us bullish yet. If we are holding the Strong Bounce lines on the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq, however, we could go long on the Russell, with the …
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Deja Thursday – The Coalition of the Willing is Back in Business!
by phil - September 11th, 2014 8:30 am
We're back in business baby!
It's been 12 years since GW Bush first assembled the "Coalition of the Willing" in November of 2002 (a full year after we were attacked by 15 Saudi hijackers), to go after Osama Bin Laden, (who was hiding in Afghanistan) by attacking Iraq. Interestingly, Bush only stole that phrase from Bill Clinton (what, you thought Bush had an original thought?), who first mentioned it in a 1994 interview.
Now, in 2014, we're ready to go back to war – in Iraq (did we ever really leave?) – with another coalition of the willing staring most of the same players but this time, we have Germany on our side – so you know we're serious. According to the WSJ, they've already spotted a training camp for Syrian rebels in Saudi Arabia and – oops, wait – that's being run by us – WE'RE arming and training Syrian rebels – what can go wrong?
Well, as they say, politics make strange Bedouin fellows and I guess we'll ignore the fact that the current ISIS rebels were the same people we armed and trained to fight Saddam 12 years ago. While we're training and arming Syrians in Saudi Arabia, we'll be bombing their country as well. Again, this is pretty much how we handled Iraq but hey – at least we're consistent!
At PSW, we're consistent too. While we love war as much as any other red-blooded Americans, we question this one as well – even when there's a Democrat in charge. It's funny because, just the other day, I suggested that Congress, rather than rejecting the call for $40M to help combat Eblola (as they just did), could have scraped together that money by simply firing one less $1M Tomahawk missile each week. I was wrong, and I apologize – it turns out they cost $1.41M each.
This is, of course, great news for RTN, whose stock has already run up 13% in the past 30 days as the fear of peace flushes out of the stock price. If you want to…
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Monday Market Mayhem – Bombs Fly, Markets Fly – Why Not?
by phil - August 18th, 2014 8:11 am
From Ferguson to Fallujah, America has spent the weekend kicking ass and taking names with the National Guard rushing in to put down the 99% in Missouri while in Mosul, we're bombing the Middle East's 99% off the dams and picking off the stragglers with high-tech drones – F*ck Yeah!
That, combined with what we can politely call a non-escalation of tensions in the Ukraine has sent the price of oil tumbling by 0.75 this morning, good for $750 per contract from our Friday short (and now we're long at $94 on /CLV4 for October) - F*ck Yeah! Index futures were up slightly in Asia but gathered steam in Europe and markets there are coming out of lunch up over 1% – even as the cease-fire in Gaza is about to end.
Meanwhile, over in Hong Kong, we got a powerful lesson in numbers as the 1.3Bn population of China is able to overwhelm that Island's 7M people (0.5% of China's population) at will and that will was exercised this weekend as China staged "Pro-Beijing" rallies that protested the "Occupy Central" rallies the bottom 99% of Hong Kong had been staging. Can anti-democracy rallies be far behind?
The anti-Occupy Central campaign's focus on the impact of civil disobedience has appealed to the pragmatism of many Hong Kong people. While many support democracy, they also just want to live their lives and go to work unimpeded. "We can't be optimistic at all—the pro-Beijing camp will control the entire list of candidates," said Joseph Cheng, a political-science professor and convener of the Alliance for True Democracy, a coalition of democratic parties supporting Occupy Central.
In short, while China did promise to give Hong Kong the right to vote – they never said they wouldn't stuff the ballot boxes or put up candidates that were nothing more than two different flavors of the same puppets. "If we are buying fruit, don't give us three rotten oranges to choose from," one of the activists said. Oh wait, that might have been our own election coverage – it's so hard to keep these totalitarian regimes straight…
Still it's VICTORY…
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Dow Chemical Option Bulls and Bears on the Prowl
by Option Review - November 17th, 2009 4:32 pm
Today’s tickers: DOW, GLD, ISIS, DTV, SINA, XOM, SPWRA, AGO & SINA
DOW – The Dow Chemical Co. – Shares of the manufacturer of chemicals and plastic materials increased 2% during the trading session to $29.45. We observed a mix of bullish and bearish option plays on the stock today. One investor appears to have unraveled an in-the-money ratio call spread in the December contract in order to finance the purchase of 7,500 calls at the December 28 strike for 1.92 apiece. Further along, in the January 2010 contract, another bullish player rolled a long call position to a higher strike price. It looks like the investor originally paid between 2.35 to 3.30 in premium to buy 5,000 calls at the now deep-in-the-money January 24 strike back on September 14, 2009. Today the trader closed out the December 24 strike calls by selling 5,000 contracts for 5.30 each. The closing sale of the calls was spread against the purchase of 5,000 fresh call options at the higher January 28 strike for about 2.45 premium per contract. Finally, protective plays dominated the March 2010 contract. Two put spreads were established this afternoon. The first transaction involved the purchased of 5,000 puts at the March 27 strike for 2.08 each, marked against the sale of the same number of puts at the lower March 20 strike for 47 cents apiece. The net cost of the trade amounts to 1.61 per contract and yields protection beneath the breakeven price of $25.39. The other put spread involved the same number of put options but was transacted at the March 26/19 strikes at a net cost of 1.38 per contract. Downside protection on this play kicks in if shares decline through the breakeven point at $24.62 by expiration day in March.
GLD – SPDR Gold Trust ETF – More than 253,800 option contracts changed hands on the GLD with about 30 minutes remaining in the trading day. Investors traded calls on the exchange-traded fund more than 1.8 times to each put option in play. Shares of the GLD, which replicates the performance of the price of gold bullion, are up 0.25% in late-day trading to stand at $111.90. A large-volume ratio call spread on the fund suggests some investors expect the price of gold to rise sharply by expiration in January 2010. Bullish traders bought approximately 15,000 calls at the January 112 strike for an…
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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.
