Phil-
I would like to echo the sentiments of dclark41. Joining this site was the best thing I have ever done to aid my growth as a trader/investor. There are so many smart and experienced people here sharing their ideas that regardless what your investing style is you will learn something daily. Thank you and all the regular contributors for your generosity.
Acd54
Thanks Phil for all you do. I feel like I don't read all the newsprint because when I check in with you I know I get the "real" scoop. Your service is number Uno in my book for all the knowledge and teaching. I ignored the aapl spin and am now enjoying some rewards. Every AM I get my Phil fix and throughout the day any important links. Mucho gracias. It leaves me time for my volunteer work besides the investing.
Pirateinvestor
Hi Phil,
Thanks for the free disaster hedge ideas. I implemented variations of two of them on SDS bull call spreads and EEM bear put spreads (haven't done the TZA yet) and they really hedged my short term longs nicely today. Makes it seem a lot less like gambling.
You are the man (of the people)!
Howard Roake
WOW, glad I went bearish… Phil, thanks for the help on the QID calls yesterday, I turned it into a partial cover rolling down to the Feb 52s selling the 55s 1/2 covered. Sold 1/2 and now lowered my cost basis to $4.38 on the $52s (fully covered).
Texasmotion
HOTT / Got great trades with it: Enter 6.75 at open, out at 7.18 (avg) at 10:13
Reentered at 7.00 and out all 7.11 few minutes ago- Was a small play but I collected enoght for next month PSW subscription.
Spider
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
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
I am not a user of phil's site now, but was for a couple years. His advice and information is excellent. Perhaps even better, you get access to real-time trades of additional traders on his site (OptTrader, etc) and the other members who post what they are buying and selling. Overall, its a very valuable information tool. Expensive, but paid for itself many times over. I did not renew my membership because I switched jobs and did not have time to trade nearly as much.
XRTrader
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
The virtuous trade / Phil throws out so many ideas, that understandably he rejects all calls for a running total of how all ""quoted"" ideas are performing – it would be unworkable. But without such a list, I think it behooves us to call out the trades that have made a difference. January 13 expiration is going to be a big month for me as a significant number of sold put positions will expire worthless. One example of the power of patience and leaving well alone:
VLO – sold Jan 13, 17.5 puts for $3.45 – and this trade was placed in August 2011. VLO is currently a tad over $35!
And as time went by, and I got more experienced – with the help of Phil and the contributions from board members, I started selling short term puts and calls around this position. Sometimes having to roll, sometimes doubling down but always knowing what I was getting into, and feeling very calm and focussed that whatever happened I could handle it. And if I couldn't then there was always Phil to lend a helping hand. All in all, my profits since August 2011 would qualify as a tidy addition to any earnings from the day job.
Thank you Sir.
Winston
I really would like to meet all of the posters here who seem like an intriguing bunch of intelligent, opinionated (without being obnoxious or condescending most of the time), and well spoken people. Not so easy to find in this age of instant gratification and me first attitudes. Usually this results in groups where misinformation is used to gain an advantage, or whatever it takes to beat the other guys. I love the one for all, all for one vibe here, sharing your best ideas and helping each other work together for a common goal, to be successful investors!
craigsa620
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
Phil, I have the SRS 2011 $7.50 short puts you recommended awhile back. I sold them for $2.20 and now $1.51 (up 31%) although SRS has been down since inception. This was a nice mellow way to play it like you said, thanks.
Jomptien
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
Phil, i wanted to thank you again for helping me protect future stock allocations at work - finally, i feel like i am owning my own destiny with stocks vs. letting the market dictate what you get – thanks again.
Nramanuja
Hey Phil,
You called all the trends and market movements with perfection this week. I enjoyed it! Thanks for keeping us sane!
GClay
Phil: Once again thanks for those inciteful comments, and the old links to Sage's portfolio management (I hadn't read before). I'm an experienced stock trader, but over the last 3 or 4 months have come to appreciate options trading here at PSW, and the consistency of your many premium-selling strategies. It is liberating to have to worry less about getting direction right and being able to generate 5% MONTHLY returns with close to delta-neutral positioning. Much appreciated!
Neverworkagain
Phil, did you by chance publish the weekly webinar on Youtube yet? I have been watching these and they are awesome. Unfortunately, I can't cut out of work to attend live webinars. Again, they are just awesome content – thank you.
jcpdx
WISH TO EXTEND A BIG THANK YOU! I netted about $18,000 on the short Jan puts and the annualized ROI/M is mind boggling! Hope to meet you some day and buy you and your significant other a nice dinner.
Best Regards
Newt
Newthugger
I have an under 50k account that im trading I dont do all the trades but pick and chose to keep diversified.
With what Ive learned from being a member I average $400 to $800 per week trading futures
BertII
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
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
Tesla et. al. – I've spent many months getting hammered shorting overvalued Momos, until, finally, I internalized Phil's message. Play small; give yourself plenty of room to double/move up the [lack of value] chain in terms of price. Play short; take [Musk's, eg.] latest bleep and sell the spike for a short time frame, because his tweets always come to naught. I've been coining money doing it, I just watch that premium melt away with scarcely veiled amusement. Swinging for the fences is for suckers [me, for a long time]. Those little gains really add up — $2k per week of evaporated premium and you could actually buy a Tesla by the end of the year!!
zeroxzero
Thanks, after years of blood and blunders, I have reached a significant milestone – I don't lose money. Net net, I rarely have a losing week, market up, market down. And that I owe to you. Balanced positions. More premium sold than bought. Fundamental criteria applied to good companies, not momentum/ news headlines/ stock du jour/ triangle squeezies. But rather earnings, P/E, dividends, competitive position — the boring stuff that takes study, thought,….and patience. You have been a great teacher, and I have embarassed myself repeatedly day with how slowly I learn.
And it's a funny thing – if you don't lose, the gains start to pile up. The arithmetic is cruel to the downside, and becomes a gift in the other direction. And I'm in this for the long run, having made myself unemployable through a need for diversification. Moreover, what I've learned here has also elided into other areas, including real estate and ex-U.S. investment. Pretty cool. Have a great weekend.
Zeroxzero
Happy Thanksgiving Phil and to your family and associates. Also to all of the other fellow citizens of Phil's Stock World. I am particularly happy and thankful that I clicked on your article in Seeking Alpha a number of years ago. That opened the gate to Phil's Stock World and "being the house". My wallet thanks you as does my peace of mind in trading options, stocks and rarely futures. Your liberal views opened up my views—being a boot strapper (pulled myself out of a poor background) I was a CONSERVATIVE—cynical of others who weren't as driven. Now, I am much less so; you have taught me more than how to make money and manage risk. So, again I give thanks to you and the others of PSW!!
Newthugger
I've recently done exactly what Phil described. I upgraded my ability to trade the IRA acct. by transferring acct. from TDA to TOS. TDA would not allow spreads; TOS does. Neither will allow naked options. With spreads I am able to buy calls or puts several months out then sell front month calls or puts over and over. This allows me to collect premium, which is, of course, the goal. This wasn't an original idea. Phil put me onto it. Since the transfer I've substantially increased my performance in the IRA!
Iflantheman
Phil,
3 for 3! Sold on initial excitement and made a double on USO, 70% on AMZN and 70% on SPY options from Friday.
Thanks and much appreciated for the suggestions.
Gingbaum
That was a quick double on the DIA calls. trailing stop in place.
Kwan
Phil
Killed it tonight trading copper. Anyone who jumped in right after election is up about 75k on one contract!
Thanks
Kapella
I remember that call (to sell gold at $1,850) as well... and the many Buy-Writes that were created on your site during that period... thanks to you, I had an average ROI of close to 70% for over 2 years, averaging 4,000 trades per year. Busy trading, but lots of fun and memorable trades.
Why am I angry at Cramer today? Because yesterday he committed the same crime he commtted in 2008 that cost so many people their life's savings – he told people not to sell their stocks on a pullback. "Don't take profits" is the message for the viewing public. But, I would ask, if people don't take profits – when will they ever get profits? What kind of stupid message is that? Well, it's the message that leaves you holding the bag while his hedge fund buddies head for the exits. It's not much different than telling one group of people not to leave a burning building while you make sure all your friends are getting out safely.
"This is not just my opinion. I can prove it to you empirically. See, as I was preparing to write my book "Get Rich Carefully," I went over the previous five years of trades made by my charitable trust. And as I reviewed those trades I noticed that far too often, my good judgment would be overcome by excessive skepticism."
If the "proof" Jim is talking about is his Action Alerts Plus, then I'd say you really should think long and hard about following his advice here (via Kirk Lindstrom – who does compete with Cramer):
I guess, sure, Jim legitimately should regret that he wasn't more bullish from 2008 to 2013, when the market popped 200% and his trust gained about 100% but don't you think the lesson Cramer should be taking from that experience is to CUT YOUR LOSSES, not…
Some rather scary predictions out of Paul Farrell today: "It’s inevitable: Wall Street banks control the Federal Reserve system, it’s their personal piggy bank. They’ve already done so much damage, yet have more control than ever.Warning: That’s a set-up. They will eventually destroy capitalism, democracy, and the dollar’s global reserve-currency status. They will self-destruct before 2035 … maybe as early as 2012 … most likely by 2020. Last week we cheered the Tea Party for starting the countdown to the Second American Revolution. Our timeline is crucial to understanding the historic implications of Taleb’s prediction that the Fed is dying, that it’s only a matter of time before a revolution triggers class warfare forcing America to dump capitalism, eliminate our corrupt system of lobbying, come up with a new workable form of government, and create a new economy without a banking system ruled by Wall Street." And just like in the Hangover, where the guy is funny because he’s fat, Farrell is scary cause he is spot on correct.
Handily, Farrell provides a projected timeline of events:
Stage 1: The Democrats just put the nail in their coffin confirming they’re wimps when they refused to force the GOP to filibuster Bush tax cuts for billionaires.
Stage 2: In the elections the GOP takes over the House, expanding its strategic war to destroy Obama with its policy of “complete gridlock” and “shutting down government.”
Stage 3: Post-election Obama goes lame-duck, buried in subpoenas and vetoes.
Stage 4: In 2012, the GOP wins back the White House and Senate. Health care returns to insurers. Free-market financial deregulation returns. Lobbyists intensify their anarchy.
Stage 5: Before the end of the second term of the new GOP president, Washington is totally corrupted by unlimited, anonymous donations from billionaires and lobbyists. Wall Street’s Happy Conspiracy triggers the third catastrophic meltdown of the 21st century that Robert Shiller of “Irrational Exuberance” fame predicts, resulting in defaults of dollar-denominated debt and the dollar’s demise as the world’s reserve currency.
Stage 6: The Second American Revolution explodes into a brutal full-scale class war with the middle class leading a widespread rebellion against the out-of-touch, out-of-control Happy Conspiracy sabotaging America from within.
Stage 7: The domestic class warfare is exaggerated as the Pentagon’s global warnings play out: That by 2020
If it doesn’t blow sky high right now it won’t at all?
I think this sort of nonsense is amusing.
"You’re fighting The Fed and Geithner right now if you hate stocks"? "We’ve seen P/Es come down so much…"
Huh? We’ve sold off ten percent and that’s a "big" P/E decrease?
You’ve got to be kidding me.
The entirety of the rally off the 2009 lows was predicated on the US borrowing and spending $1.5 trillion a year, or 11% of GDP, for the last two years!
The extreme volatility you’ve seen the last couple of weeks is not about Greece. Nor is it about Merkel, or Sarkozy, or any of the clown car brigade in Washington DC.
The volatility is the market debating whether governments worldwide can continue to borrow and spend 10% or so of their GDP on an ongoing, continual and perpetual basis.
It’s that simple folks, because the underlying economic fundamentals and private activity has not come back at all – there has been zero advancement in private activity sufficient to allow any pullback of that support!
If this cannot be continued, and the recent events in Greece strongly suggest that it cannot, then market prices are dramatically too high, as they reflect a fully-priced in "V" shaped recovery that is being created and sustained as a consequence of this deficit spending!
The bottom line is that simple, and yes, we will have a fulfillment of that debate soon.
Within 48 hours? Not a chance.
But in the near future? You bet, and if the resolution of that debate is that governments will have to withdraw their artificial "stimulative" measures due to inability to sustain the deficits then that repricing will continue in earnest – in that event it is nowhere near over.
The complacency in the market is now reaching a fever pitch. It always amazes me that investors can be so bearish near the bottom and then be so incredibly bullish after the market has risen so substantially. On January 28th I said the market was not forming a major market top and that the downside was “more likely a correction within the uptrend”. At S&P 1,140 I went net short for just the second time in the last 12 months. With our H1 outlook largely playing out as expected I now find myself wondering if we are in a euphoric blow-off top and on the wrong side of the trade….
Mad Money started 5 years ago on CNBC. I vividly remember seeing the show when it started because it began right around the same time when the great Louis Rukeyser got sick. My first thought was: “there is something seriously wrong with the market if its participants are willing to listen to a man banging on buttons and acting like a lunatic.” The power of Cramer over the years is undiminished and leaves me wondering exactly the same thing today. Cramer is a good investor and a GREAT salesman, but you just have to wonder after 5 years – the market is flat over the same period – have any of his viewers actually come out on top after taxes and fees? My guess is very few….Investing is not a joke. It is not entertainment. I am not sure why anyone thinks it is okay to make it seem that way.
While I continue to think the VIX is a sign of near-term complacency you just can’t help but wonder if investors are still too fearful in the long-term. The majority of investors still don’t have an ounce of faith in the recovery and this is reflected in the historically high VIX. In the past two recessions, the VIX did not reach its historical low of 10 until at least 3 years into the recovery. Perhaps most important, the market rallied this entire time.
Democrats as far as San Francisco are freaked out by the fact that a fellow party member could lose in Massachusetts.
Mayor Gavin Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle: "We better get our act together – and quickly… (voters) are so angry. They don’t feel that we’re paying attention to their needs, in terms of their jobs, and what’s going on at the grassroots, in their neighborhoods."
It’s actually not all bad for Dems. A Coakley loss is an early wake-up calll, and there are several months before November elections for them to turn things around and get their message right.
No doubt the Democrats wish that in 1994, they’d had a similar warning. After all, they were largely blindsided by the Republican revolution of that year, predicting with only weeks to go before the election that they’d maintain control of the house.
Meanwhile, Martha Coakley is down to 31% on InTrade, which is around the odds that Nate Silver called for.
JIM CRAMER, MAD MONEY HOST: We know it’s earnings season. You can no more avoid it than you could avoid getting your report card or worse – your parents getting your report card. You saw that today when people sold the market on allegedly weak earnings from Intel and JP Morgan, emphasis on allegedly. The Dow getting hurt bad, down a hundred big ones. S&P giving back more than a percent. But that doesn’t mean that the most important factor in next week’s game plan is an earnings report. Far from it. Come with me. The number you need to watch is the number that Scott Brown racks up against Martha Coakley in this amazing Massachusetts Senate race. I say amazing ’cause this was supposed to be a walkover. I mean, even a few weeks ago it was a lock for Democrat Coakley. But now everything’s up in the air, and a Brown win would be devastating for the president’s agenda. Let’s put Brown, okay, and I don’t mean UPS which I happen to own for my charitable trust. Particularly on healthcare reform, because Republican Brown has said he will definitely vote against the plan.
Brown in the Senate? That wrecks the 60-vote supermajority the Democrats have been counting on. It could spell the end for this almost year-long nightmare of a piece of healthcare legislation.
What does a Brown election mean larger than this? Well, first you’re going to get a knee-jerk rally in all the so-called penalized stocks — the HMOs, the drugs, the medical device-makers. I call it "knee-jerk," though, because these stocks have been on fire for months. Look at Cramer fave WellPoint, or United Health. 52 week high. 52 week high. Merck, 52 week high. It’s been clear as a bell that the healthcare reform wasn’t going to affect most healthcare stocks. That’s versus what we thought last year.
More important, though, I think investors who are nervous about the dictatorship of the Pelosi proletariat will feel at ease, and we could have a gigantic rally off a Coakley loss and a Brown win. It will be…
Case and Shiller have one. Dow and Jones have one. Black and Scholes have something similar…
Wall St. Cheat Sheet is proud to introduce our first proprietary index: The Cramer-Roubini X-treme Index. After toiling with quantum proofs and a stack of “For Dummies” books for years in the basement of Duke University’s Lilly Library, we have finally produced the perfect blend of Doom and Boom suffused with a subtle hint of X-Games adrenaline.
Unlike the VIX or other sentiment indexes which somehow fell into the shit pit during the Great Markets (Housing, Stocks, Credit, Oil, etc.) Crashes of 2008, The Cramer-Roubini X-treme Index held up like a Viagra induced E! party on The Girls Next Door. That’s right. While those old bags Dow and Jones couldn’t tell you what the hell was happening, our needle jolted from Cramer to Roubini faster than food passes through an American tourist who just ate a spoiled egg in Thailand.
By now you’re probably scratching your head trying to reverse engineer our black box indicator (which, by the way, is available to institutional and accredited investors for annual licensing at the bargain price of the US National Debt divided by 100). Don’t give yourself the mathematician’s cold sweats or the Bible Code mystic’s shiver. If you’re not an institutional investor or don’t qualify as an accredited investor, please read on (if you are one of the aforementioned investors, please pay now)…
The secret to our indicator is its lack of cutting-edge technology. We employ a Luddite style system where a handful of college interns sit in front of 52″ flat screens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week watching CNBC, Bloomberg, and FOX Business. Each time an unpaid viewer sees either Cramer or Roubini, he or she registers the viewing by clicking a baseball umpire’s out counter. We know it only goes to three, but we’ve hired some cum laude quality interns to do the higher math on paper from our recycling bin.
At the end of each session, we tally the Cramer and Roubini sightings on a huge chalkboard. Whoever has the most appearances on the three networks plus comments as “experts” in major print media outlets (which are monitored overseas, but that’s a story for another article),…
Recently, my email has been full of all sorts of Cramer-Spam, with stories about all these great stock picks he made. Here’s a sample of bullet points from emails from "Jim Cramer (members@e.mail-thestreet.com)":
Model Portfolio Outperforms S&P 500: 134.79% Total Average Return*
On January 20th, I bought Goldman Sachs at $60. When it hit $85 on January 28th, I trimmed my shares, locking in a 41% gain
I bought GE at $8.78 when everyone thought it was going bankrupt — and now it’s up 50%.
My subscribers were right on hand as I bought NKE for $44 on March 19th, watched the stock skyrocket, and pocketed my profits on June 2nd for a return of 34%.
RealMoney recommended China Green Agriculture (CGA) when its shares were trading at $5. The stock closed at $8.09 and subscribers who followed our advice netted a 61.8% gain
RealMoney advised subscribers to buy shares in Darling International (DAR) when the stock was trading at $4.54 a share. The stock then closed at $6.60. Once again, RealMoney nailed the market with a 46% return.
P.S. I can only extend this offer to you for 48 hours so please do not delay…. you have absolutely nothing to lose when you take us up on our $129.95 offer
Notice his example picks have an average return well above anyone’s hurdle rate, with returns of 30% to 134.79% (love than .79). It’s funny when people sell penis enlargement pills online for $50 because its silly and not a lot of money, but as John Stewart noted, the stock market isn’t a game. This is disgraceful and CNBC should be aware this makes them part of his scam. It simply isn’t plausible that 30%+ returns are representative, and they know that, and suredly would say they didn’t mean every return is this high, but it’s like lottery ads saying ‘anyone can win’—true enough, but highly misleading.
The following is from my book on stock recommendations, where I note that in contrast to standard asset pricing theory, ALL stock recommendations promise above average returns. In theory, half of all stocks should be recommended with below-average returns because they have good ‘risk adjusted’ returns, but this doesn’t happen. That this never happens highlights a
Good news! The rate of the price decline in the housing crash has finally begun to ease.
Bad news! Prices are still falling 18% year over year.
Specifically, in April, according to the Case Shiller index, the rate of decline in nationwide house prices eased slightly in April--to 18% from 19% in March. The rate of decline has hovered around 19%-20% for the last several months. And prices have now declined a staggering 33%-34% from the peak.
As we’ve noted over this period, before house prices can start recovering, they have to stop falling. And the first step toward prices stopping falling is a decline in the RATE at which they are falling. And we are finally beginning to see that.
But we’re still talking about an astonishing rate of collapse. And we’re still looking at a peak-to-trough decline of at least 40% and probably closer to 50% nationwide, which would be unprecedented. And even today, with prices down 33%-34% from the peak, prices are still above fair value.
So the folks who use this slight moderation in the rate of decline to spin tales of a "bottom" or, worse, a "recovery" are smoking something. Prices have at least another 10%-15% to fall, and they’ll likely be falling for at least another year or two.
Here’s the small uptick in the rate of decline:
Prices have now rolled back to mid-2003 levels. They’ll likely be back to 2000 levels before we’re through.
And here’s the positive spin from the S&P press release (always look on the bright side!):
The 10-City and 20-City Composites declined 18.0% and 18.1%, respectively, in April compared to the same month in 2008. These are improvements over their returns reported for March, down 18.7% for both indices. For the past three months, the 10-City and 20-City Composites have recorded an improvement in annual returns. Record annual declines were reported for both indices with their respective January data, -19.4% for the 10-City Composite and 19.0% for the 20-City Composite.
“The pace of decline in residential real estate slowed in April,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s. “In addition to the 10-City and 20-City Composites, 13
After years to Jim Cramer bragging about what a great stockpicker he is and of choruses of Mad Money viewers grousing about the opposite, the issue has been settled.
Paul Bolster and Emery Trahan of Northeastern University have done an exaustive analysis of Cramer’s Mad Money stock picks from 2005 to 2007 (pre-crash).
The answer?
Cramer’s not an awful stockpicker!
Unfortunately, he’s not a particularly good one, either.
In fact, once you adjust for the various style factors that explain most stock returns (market, small/large, value/growth, momentum), Cramer’s stockpicking is pretty much in line with the index. In other words, he’s average.
Also, in contrast to one of Cramer’s refrains about the mediocrity of passive investment strategies like Jack Bogle’s, once you subtract the costs of trading and taxes (not to mention the incalculable cost of having to watch Cramer’s show every night), you’d have been better off in an index fund.
Individual investors have an incredible variety of sources for investment guidance. These
include internet blogs, financial publications, books, newsletters and, of course, television
shows. We examine a relatively new but widely popular source of investment advice,
buy and sell recommendations made by Jim Cramer on his popular nightly Mad Money
show on CNBC… Overall, the results suggest that, while Cramer may be
entertaining and mesmerizing to many of his viewers, his aggregate or average stock
recommendations are neither extraordinarily good nor unusually bad.
The Details
Bolster and Emery’s study is embedded below. Here are some of the interesting points.
On a gross basis, Cramer’s picks actually did quite well, especially relative to the S&P 500. Cramer’s "portfolio" (as constructed by Bolster and Emery) returned 12.1% per year, versus 7.4% for the S&P, providing lots of fodder for those who say he "beats the market." This performance was before trading costs and taxes, however. And the comparison to the S&P also does not take into account the type of stocks Cramer likes to buy (generally, small cap, value, and momentum stocks, which, as a group, outperformed the S&P).
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as barely been in office a month, and he's already convinced some Britons that he's ready to take the UK out of the EU, with or without an interim trade deal to soften the blow.
On the other side of the Atlantic, President Trump has pledged to cobble together a trade deal to help bolster Johnson's popularity should he need to call for an early general election to try and bolster his party's mandate (the Tories and their coalition control the Commons by one measly vote). This past week, Johnson has generated headlin...
The Aramco IPO is one step closer to reality, with Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company seeking proposals from banks who wish to fulfill various roles in the much-anticipated IPO, Reuters sources said on Monday.
The requests for proposals were sent a few days ago, the sources said. Saudi Aramco declined to comment on the development.
Aramco’s official request that banks submit proposals is a positive development for the IPO, although even with banks handwringing with anticipation, the mega IPO has an uphill battle ahead.
Aramco’s Senior VP of Finance, Khalid al-Dabbagh, said last week that it w...
That’s right. The Fed is doing POMO again. POMO means Permanent Open Market Operations. It’s a fancy way of saying that the Fed is buying Treasuries, pumping money into the financial markets.
Over the past 6 days, the Fed has bought $8.6 billion in T-bills and coupons. These are the first regular Fed POMO Treasury operations since the Fed ended outright QE in 2014.
Who is the Fed buying those Treasuries from?
The Primary Dealers. Who are the Primary Dealers? I’ll let the New York Fed tell you:
Primary dealers are trading counterparties of the New York Fed in its implementation of monetary policy. They are also expected to make markets for the New York Fed on behalf of its official accountholders as needed, and to bid on a ...
SLX has spent the majority of the past 3-years inside of trading range (1). The persistent decline over the past year has it testing the bottom of this trading range at (2).
The weakness over the past year has it below long-term moving averages as its relative strength r...
Real Estate is one of the biggest purchases anyone will make in their lifetime. It can account for 30x to 300x one’s annual income and take over 30 years to pay off. After you’re done paying for your property, now you have to keep paying to maintain it and to support the property taxes to keep it. What has happened to the US Real Estate market since the 2008-09 global credit market collapse and is the US Fed behind the curve?
Case-Shiller Home Price Index
One of the most common indicators used to measure national housing affordability and price trend is the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. In this chart, we are displaying the Case-Shiller National Home ...
Today's news from the US IRS has been blamed for the recent price slump, yet the bitcoin fractal like the gold fractal suggest the market players have set bitcoin up for a slump to $9000 USD long before the IRS news hit the wire.
Get the impression some market players missed out on the b...
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been on a persistent upswing this year, but they're still pretty volatile. But during a time when even some of the most developed economies in the word are watching their currencies bounce around like the Argentine peso (just take a look at a six-month chart for GBPUSD), New Zealand has decided to take the plunge and become the first country to legalize payment in bitcoin, the FT reports.
The ruling by New Zealand’s tax authority allows salaries and wages to b...
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...
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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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