Your discussion during your web seminar on SPX and SDS today was great. It really let me see how you look at the numbers and use the 5% rule to see where inflection points occur and what the bands look like. This was incredibly helpful. I actually sold out of my small short position at a good profit ( which was more a bet on a short term fluctuation rather than a hedge after listening to you) and will look more deeply at my portfolio and how to hedge it. In addition your view on hedging was also very helpful looking at the leverage you can get w/ a small spread, and protect portfolio against a big move against me. Thank you for your sharing this. Very helpful.
Batman
I have been a member of Phil's site for three years and counting, and my advice is that all investing takes time. There are o shortcuts, no secret way to riches. Same with Phil's site- you need time and patience to start benefitting fully from his advice. But it is often spot on and also very useful, especially to me as I try to keep a level head in this turbulent stock market environment.
Jordan
The legendary Phil Davis has done it again with his call to "get out of the market now" (12/05/2017). Congratulations Phil, and while I am at it, I again would like to Thank You for your advise given me in March '09, when you said "unless you believe the world is coming to an end, then get in this market with both feet"...... and what a ride that was !
1234gel
Phil - I am 3 month follower and shout a big thanks for all the good advice and training. I read all the materials and posts as suggested. I am retired CFO and took over my investments 2 years ago from broker after frustration with returns. I followed some conservative advice for retirees and have 60% bonds currently in a 5m portfolio. I had been doing covered calls on my stocks to boost returns and slowly am getting more aggressive after following your site and my son who has been with you for 6 months. I allocated 1.5m to stocks and am scaling up from 30%. I did some of the trades suggested in early June using Aug & Oct buy/writes on CSCO, WMT, MON, WFR, DO in addition to calls on XOM, CVX, PEP, PG, WM, T that I owned. Most are doing very well (4-24%) in 60 days. My good problem is that instead of getting longer, I will be making 6% quickly (50% plus annualized) and getting called away on many positions. What would you advise for getting long again. Thanks again for such a great job advising all of us!
TXChili
Personally I admire and respect you disciplined approach to investing. My style is at the extreme side of aggressive and I have to learn how to be less that way. If I yell " Let it Ride" at my house, no one says a word so I can't use that to temper my behavior. Phil has done a pretty good job of knocking some of my potential moves and as a result, I have increased my portfolio value by almost 25% since late July.
DoubleD
I have been around for many years now, was a modest inexperienced investor when I started, and I can honestly say I would not be at the point in my portfolio I am today without the guidance of Phil and JeanLuc and Yodi and all the others I've had the pleased of learning from and, on a few occasions meeting, over the years. Truly been a great experience.
RPeri
Phil fantastic call on the markets… I owe you BIG…thanks and have a great weekend!
Kustomz
Speaking of the "Man Who Planted Trees", it really works. I bought BTU back in March at $49.87. I practically bought it at the tippy top. However, I soon afterward found this site, started learning Phil's methodology(and those in the strategy section) and began selling calls/puts regularly against my bad position. As of yesterday, I still own the original 100 shares, but have brought my basis down by over $11.00. Couldn't be happier, what started out as a really bad entry, I have managed to work down to a good basis. Had I not watched that video and learned your system, I would sold out of the position, and been kicking myself for making such a bad entry.
Hoss
10/15/2014: Phil…..been travelling more than not but reading and watching you guys every night. This is to say a big thank you. Even though I don't have the time to trade every day now I set up hedges and base long term strategy on PSW. I now it may sound like BS to some readers but my 401k is down a mere 3%. It hardly gets my attention when I open my brokerage portfolio accounts. And that is by using your longer term hedges and strategies. I don't need to be a day trader to take advantage of PSW. At this time in my life when I cant trade every day……. not losing what we've gained moves front and center. It's just a great feeling to watch your brokerage account hold steady in a sea of red. Thanks Teacher.
Livingfull
Opt, I think the hardest thing is being disciplined enough to trade with you. Atleast now when I see something go in the red I know how much I'm going to loose and that I will profit somewhere else and have enough money left at the end of the day to trade again. Thanks for all your hard work! My stress levels are down 75% and I have even made a small profit in the short time I've been here
Mopar
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
I must add yet another paen to Phil's "cash and short" call, as my TZA shorts are past paying for Similac and Pampers and have now covered all doctors and Mt. Sinai hospital bills for young Charlotte, as TZA took the portfolio up 10%.
Zeroxzero
Phil - I got your earlier trade a month or so ago on MSFT 2015 32/37 BCS, selling 2015 30 puts. Nice up 75% now!
Jomptien
I must give kudos to Phil for changing my way of thinking. I'm a gambler by nature and used to just play the indexes with 3x etf's… well I still do, but the options give far better returns than I ever dreamed of. With these wild swings I've been catching 50-100% winners in days.
Mkucstars1
Gel1…..I've been here 6 months, mostly watching and learning. Lots of smart people on the site and I've learned a lot from Phil and many others. //// Inflan - I have to trump your sentiments regarding the wisdom of the board. I have to thank Phil and the many contruibutors for a 80% profit for 2009. I have learned a lot and am still learning ( even occasionally about political issues - ha! )
Iflantheman & Gel1
Phil/BCS - Didn't realise they traded here. Should've known really. Thanks for the tip. managed to pick some up just before the close at a 15% discount to the UK closing price.
DB
In options trading, one must remain flexible with the ability to adjust to take advantage of the unexpected moves in the market. It is like chess - spend most of your time strategizing the next move. A good understanding of options is necessary to change direction and make adjustments as the market moves against you. I have a friend that honed his option skills while a member of Phil's elite membership over a period of two years. With the education acquired, he made over $2 Mil in that period, trading options and following the plays put on by Phil. If making money is your goal, then he is the go-to guy, as he knows option strategies better than anyone, and market timing is also a skill he has mastered.
1234gel
Phil is a fundamentalist to his fingertips. His ability to value a stock goes well beyond p/e, as he understands the essence of many businesses, what gives them value and how they make their money. As such, his recommendations are invaluable to a investor who takes a value-oriented approach.
Zeroxzero
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
Phil - I'm with you just little bit longer than a month and you can not imagine how happy I am now, and not just because my P/L improved ( and I'm sure that it will be even better), but I found that the worst thing in trader's carrier is a LONELINESS. Here I found so many bright good guys, I looked for this service for years.
THANK YOU AND TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOURSELF BECAUSE I PLAN TO STAY HERE AND RIDE THIS CREASY MARKET WITH YOU FOR ANOTHER 20-30 YEARS
Tchayipov
Just closed out my V put for 50% in 24 hours thanks Phil!
Humvee
I have definitely learned to take smaller wins early and be happy with that. Lately, I've aimed for $250 profit per day. Doing that daily/weekly x 48 weeks (assuming I take some time off) works out to 60k per year. That's a lot of money!! $250 moves happen all the time if you just wait for them.
JeffDoc
I did the same thing via your logic (sold puts that is). I glanced one time and they were already up 15% which is considered a good return for an overnight hold in most circles. This is PSW though and to us it's just another day…
Kwan
I have been a "silent" member for the past year, and am 1,000 hours into the 10K hours of training (The last week is worth at least 500 hours!). Made lots of mistakes and misunderstood quite a few of Phil's calls, … some actually made money when reversed. The chat (Including the politics) is very engaging (Many great minds with international coverage), and a great companion, while nursing a trade gone wrong, through the night. The webinars (despite technical difficulties) are extremely useful. Thanks for your coaching … it has made me a consistently profitable trader, with a better understanding of what I do not know.
Aquila
Thanks to Phil (again) for the lessons on the art of the roll, selling premium and hanging tight under fire (particularly in the first hour of trading-MADNESS). Watching you manage the $25KP has really helped my trading in a big way.
Oknoman
You may wonder if anyone gets anything out of you seminars (or may not wonder). Anyway, I almost never day trade because of my job. Today, I was home due to the snow and since I was behind by 2 weeks on watching your recorded seminars I though I would watch one of them. I set up my pivot point charts in TOS to match the ones in your seminar and made the QQQ trade from this morning. I only bought 5 puts. While I watched the seminar, I would pause then switch back and forth and watch the live QQQ chart. I ended up stopping out for a $170 gain, but it was pretty cool to have the dip and recovery at the same time I was learning the art of stopping out when a pivot line was taken out.
rj_jarboe
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
You guys gotta give it to phil–the voice of reason yesterday, last nite and this morning.
Corleone
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
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.
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).
Several thousand traders on Wall Street may be extra jittery tomorrow when the FOMC announcement hits at 2:00pm. The reason: shipping containers full of illegal drugs - mostly blow - were found and seized at a Philadelphia port in what authorities described as the largest seizure in the region's history. Back in March we reported by what at a time seemed like a giant haul when a ton and a half of cocaine seized at the port of New York and New Kersey, in what was describe...
Could the Staples sector and the yield on the 10-year note be on the verge of sending an important message to the stock and bond markets? It sure looks that way.
Staples ETF (XLP) is currently attempting to break above the January 2018 highs at (1). If it does, it would be a breakout of the trading range that has been in play for the past 18-months, as it looks to have created a double bottom last year.
Moneygram International Inc (NASDAQ: MGI) rose 128.3% to $3.31 in pre-market trading after the company reported a strategic partnership with Ripple. Blockchain payments firm Ripple has made an investment in MoneyGram and will also allow the group to use its XRP cryptocurrency as part of the cross-border payments process. Ripple made an initial investment of $30 million in the money transfer company, made up of common stock and a warrant to purchase common stock. Ripple purchased newly-issued common stock including the shares underlying the warrant from MoneyGram at $4.10 per share.
Back in 2016, Helen (a pseudonym) took three different direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests: AncestryDNA, 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA. She saw genetic testing as a way...
Having survived the day's bloodbath in US tech stocks, cryptos are crashing in the early Asian session, apparently playing catch-down to the day's de-risking.
While no catalyst is immediately evident, there are some reports noting 13 large global banks are preparing to launch digital versions of major global currencies next year, though we suspect this drop was more algorithmic that fundamental-driven.
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...
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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.
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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