I love it when a trade really comes together. After 4 DD's and a roll, I cashed out 16 times my initial position in TLT today for a 140% gain. Thank you Phil for the lessons in scaling in, and paying for position.
2Can
Every time I read Mr. Davis' market analyses and reports about his super profitable trades I feel admiration mixed with envy for the overall brilliance of this man, intellectual and verbal, his extraordinary savvy in the exotic art of options and, last not least, his moral passion with which he writes, even if in passing, about the darker aspects of capitalism.
RussianBear
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, Your HOV suggestion about 3 months ago basically paid for my Philstockworld subscription for years to come. My average cost is about $1.
Ether
Phil Thank you very much, I appreciate your help and wisdom.
CdsdpDean
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
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
Thanks super helpful re: UGN example…..other inflation/market-correction-defensive-related play you threw out that has jammed UP in less than a month is TITN 6/14 $15 puts, up 40%. Excuse my enthusiasm but haven't had those types of gains in multiple plays in years let alone days doing it on my own…….maybe I should host the PSW infomercial!!!!
stevegeb200
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
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
Its been a "perfect" month. Every stock I wrote calls against looks like it will be called away next week, every put I wrote will expire worthless. Thanks Phil, now I need some new buy/write candidates, or the new 100K portfolio….
Barfinger
Hello Phil,
Thanks for the heads up on the comming sell off on friday, and the bs job yesterday. your our guiding light!
Microflux
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: 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.... 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
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… My portfolio, in the past few months, has acheived a high degree of stabilization. I've noticed that on up days, down days, even days, it doesn't matter, my portfolio rarely varies more than 2%. And over the long haul it just slowly increases in value. I attribute this not to investment choices, but to style. Thanks to you and others on this site I'm paying close attention to position size, delta neutrality, downside protection, and concentrating on selling premium rather than buying it. I've developed increasing patience, not having to trade daily, or even weekly. I'm concentrating on the finer points of trading, letting the profits come to me, rather than the other way around. I appreciate the help everyone here has given in getting me focused on this principle. I'm pumped!…in a calm sort of way.
Iflantheman
Oxen (directly) and Wilkinson (indirectly) are making me a great day trader! Props to Andrew for another little nugget last night: HIG. $20 Dec calls paid 6% quickly this morning. And helloooo STJ - a few days, but nice pick nonetheless - esp with early cover premium.
Dstillwe
Being a bear is easy (and I am not convinced we are doing all that well on the whole as an economy), but one cannot fight the trend (didn't Phil say that a while ago)? Just cover, make 5-10-15-20% and move on. It really does add up by chipping away. All I can say is I am back to 2007 levels in my account b'f the crash with this run up and some very nice help on this board….so kudos to us (and me!!)…
Pharmboy
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/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
The strategy you have laid out pretty much mirrors much of my trading activity. I also mix in some momentum plays and "drop dead" bargains that come across my radar. My YTD trading profit is 63%. Back in March when Phil said "unless you think the world is coming to an end, then NOW is the time to start taking positions in Buy/Writes with the VIX so high." I jumped in with both feet - ( thanks, again Phil)
Chaps
I would like to thank Phil and PSW crew for the insight and assistance (even the liberals).
In December I initiated long stock positions buying stock, writing calls and puts in AAPL, WFR and CHK (scaling in and out). Over the last week I have been trimming back my positions selling stock and taking out my callers and putters. I am now back to my initial 25% position that I started with in December. However this time, my cost basis on shares AAPL, WFR, and CHK is $0! With money to spare from those positions.
Texasmotion
I have been trading for quite a few years and in good years made about 25%. After joining PSW, I followed closely the PSW strategy and my trading profit for this year is close to 70% to date. For fun, I like to mix in a few "Hail Mary" plays that really worked out well, but overall the simpler Buy/Write strategy, as presented by Phil so often, created the majority of the profit.
Gel1
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/Everyone here/Thank you - What everyone here with their insightful comments (including yourself) has helped me with is that I'm greatly increasing my ability to trade more psychologically neutral, although I've got a ways to go. Two years ago I'd wake up early and my heart would race if futures weren't pointing exactly how I wanted… I've noticed an exponential leap in my discipline skills especially over this past two weeks. The old me would have ran with that trade for profits without even asking. Now I know that there are ALWAYS more trades and that I have PLENTY of options to turn a bad trade even. Also, it's more logical and less emotionally draining which lets me focus my faculties on my wife, college, my job, and studying for the ol' Series 7. Would it be safe to say that one of the most important skills to develop is the ability to adjust? I'd love to get to the point where I can look at a bracket and know, for example, what I need to sell for cover in what month in order to get my desired results. Both COF and my past DMM venture have been excellent learning experiences. Thanks, everyone. I look forward to further lessons.
Skasiah
I like the retirement picks too. The futures trading is certainly more sexy, but the boring retirement picks are the ones that consistently make me money.
jjennings
Joined last year and and started profitably trading options thanks to everything I have learned here. THANK YOU!!
OnWisconsin
My watch list looks like a grid where Phil's recommendations went UP and everything else went DOWN! It looked something like an ad for Philstockworld. I am half in cash, followed the recommendations (AAPL TASR YHOO) on a 20K portfolio and still up 1% for the day. Thanks!
Sn0gr00ve
Probably the best approach and method I have ever seen for the public and I have worked for some serious traders at the biggest houses doing research. Those guys all have various forms of inside info that you and I do not and cannot have. Davis simply has a great system based on a very deep understanding and experience that gives him market savvy that is very real. A very smart guy and he shares it for a fee. He knows how to use options to great advantage and make money trading.
In a recent Bloomberg interview, James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, offered his assessment of Greenspan’s performance as Federal Reserve Chairman.
Grant on how he would grade Alan Greenspan:
“Here’s the book on Alan Greenspan. He thinks what everyone else thinks, but one fiscal quarter later. He has the lamentable knack, or lamentable tendency or personality trait of needing to be liked, which is not the best thing to have when you’re chairman of the Federal Reserve board.”
“So we saw him bullish on technology in March of 2000. We saw him ever so unhelpfully urge the American homeowner to consider adjustable rate mortgages at the very bottom of the interest rate cycle in the mid-aughts. He is a front-running momentum kind of guy and Wall Street’s full of them. He is just a guy in a business suit. That’s Alan Greenspan.”
Why Grant is a skeptic of Greenspan:
“Here’s the thing about Greenspan. The first — the second sentence of his prepared testimony he comes out against central planning, an audacious stance to take in front of this commission. He is against the Berlin Wall; he was glad it fell — it exposed the hopeless flaws of central planning. He is in the business of central planning. He, when he was Fed chairman, fixed an interest rate. And the interest rate he fixed did terrific damage from time to time because he told us how he would fix it and for how long.”
“Wall Street is nothing if not observant. And hearing him tell you that the rates will be low for a considerable period, people did what you would expect them to do which is to tee off. And that was the origin of this terrific debt bubble, the shrapnel of which we are paying for to this day and will continue to pay for.”
Jim Grant has been a well respected voice of reason for a very long time – he publishes Grant’s Interest Rate Observer and from the "About Us" page you can get an idea from where he is coming from. Grant’s Interest Rate Observer is an independent, value-oriented and contrary-minded journal of the financial markets. We publish 24 times a year. Our mission is to identify investment opportunities in a range of markets at both extremes of valuation, high and low alike. Without bragging, we like to think that we are the financial-information medium that least resembles CNBC.
Some might consider his type a bear; I call them realists… he has been an opponent of the policies of the (now rogue) Federal Reserve for a long time. Below is a CNBC interview from this morning – again, one must ask why the most powerful institution in the world can be run without any oversight. On the other hand, the scary thought is Congress might one day provide oversight… I don’t know which evil to fear more. 8 Minute Video of sense.
The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is so out of whack that the central bank would be shut down if subjected to a conventional audit, Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, told CNBC.
With $45 billion in capital and $2.1 trillion in assets, the central bank would not withstand the scrutiny normally afforded other institutions, Grant said in a live interview.
"If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed’s own documents—unlabeled documents—to pass judgment on the Fed’s capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down," he said. "The Fed is undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized."
"If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed’s own documents—unlabeled documents—to pass judgment on the Fed’s capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down."
"The Fed is undercapitalized in the same way that Citicorp is undercapitalized."
"I think zero is the wrong rate for almost any economy."
"So great is the slack in the economy that it will be years before there is anything like a murmur from the inflation front."
"15 out of 16 primary government bond dealers are in agreement that the Fed will not move before the year end."
"There are no bad bonds, just bad prices. Treasuries at 2% were a toxic asset."
"Citibank is a rogue bank."
Bernie Sanders is preparing to release his version of the "jobs guarantee" that has become a fixture of the UK Labour Party's platform under leader Jeremy Corbyn.
And although his office admits it hasn't carried out a cost analysis for its visionary plan, Sanders says his goal is to guarantee a job (paying $15 an hour) in construction, health-care, education and a handful of other fields, to every American who wants one.
But while the socialist fervor unleashed by Sanders's 2016 primary run shows little sign of abating, a draft report released by the World Bank sh...
Update:Data from EtherScan shows that over $150k worth of ETH has been stolen in the DNS hack. Starting from 07:17 this morning, 179 inbound transactions totaling 216.06 ETH were sent to ETH address 0x1d50588C0aa11959A5c28831ce3DC5F1D3120d29. At 10:15, the attacker sent 215 ETH to 0x68ca...
By csinvesting. Originally published at ValueWalk.
Bear with me as I share a bit of my history that helped me create SkyVu and the Battle Bears games. The University of Nebraska gave me my first job after college. I mostly pushed TV carts around, edited videos for professors or the occasional speaker event. One day, Warren Buffet came to campus to speak to the College of Business. I didn’t think much of this speech at the time but I saved it for some reason. 15 years later, as a founder of my own company, I watch and listen to this particular speech every year to remind myself of the fundamentals and values Mr. Buffett looks for. He’s addressing business students at his alma mater, so I think his style here is a bit more ‘close to home’ than in his other speeches. Hopefully many of you find great value in this video like I have. Sorry for the VHS...
The definition of a bull market or bull trends widely vary. One of the more common criteria for bull markets is determined by the asset being above or below its 200 day moving average.
In my humble opinion, each index above remains in a bull trend, as triple support (200-day moving averages, 2-year rising support lines, and February lows) are still in play ...
"You’ve probably heard by now that Cambridge Analytica, which is backed by the borderline-psychotic Mercer family and was formerly chaired by Steve Bannon, had a decisive role in manipulating voters on a one-by-one basis – using their own personal data to push them toward voting ...
The original tobacco strategy involved several lines of attack. One of these was to fund research that supported the industry and then publish only the results that fit the required narrative. “For instance, in 1954 the TIRC distributed a pamphlet entitled ‘A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy’ to nearly 200,000 doctors, journalists, and policy-makers, in which they emphasized favorable research and questioned results supporting the contrary view,” say Weatherall and co, who call this approach biased production.
A second approach promoted independent research that happened to support ...
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
...
Bill Olsen from NewsWare will be giving us a fun and lively demonstration of the advantages that real-time news provides. NewsWare is a market intelligence tool for news. In today's data driven markets, it is truly beneficial to have a tool that delivers access to the professional sources where you can obtain the facts in real time.
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
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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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
