Weekly Wrap-Up – Buffett’s Daring Derivative Deal Does Well
by phil - February 28th, 2010 9:30 am
I was going to talk about Buffett's annual letter to investors.
Fortunately, I procrastinated and other people did some detailed reporting like Ravi Nagarajan, Andy Fry, Scott Patterson and Joe Del Bruno – who does a great job of pointing out that Berkshire's 4th quarter results were propped up by Buffett's $1.05Bn gains in derivatives betting (something Buffett himself once called "weapons of mass financial destruction" but, as we well know – if you can't beat them…), which accounted for 1/3 of Berkshire's $3.06Bn profits.
Buffett's biggest bet was selling a put against the S&P 500 back in March – a move I said at the time was BRILLIANT and Buffett himself now says about his own options trading: "We are delighted that we hold the derivatives contracts that we do. To date, we have significantly profited from the float they provide. We expect also to earn further investment income over the life of our contracts."
What did Buffett do? Exactly what we teach you to do here at PSW - he took advantage of an irrational move in the markets and SOLD INTO THE EXCITEMENT, getting a fat premium from some sucker that bet the S&P would not hold 666 5 years from now. Buffett effectively sold $5Bn worth of puts that expires worthless at S&P 700 between 2019 and 2027, putting $5Bn in his pocket and holding aside $1Bn in margin, which is how much he's already ahead on the bet. Like a good options trader, he has a plan and he's trading his plan, making sure his investment is on track and patiently letting time do it's work as it eats away at the put-holder's premium.
What about the risk? Well I can't speak for Buffett's stop-loss technique but we're talking about a company that has (had) $40Bn in cash using their excess margin to make a $5Bn bet that the S&P would not stay below 700 for 10 years. Buffett and I both tell people – NEVER buy a stock (or sell a put against one) that you are not willing to own for 10 years. The S&P was 5% below at the time and would have had to drop, perhaps, 20% more to cost him $1Bn so let's call the stop 550 on the S&P where Buffett risked 2.5% of his cash against a posible 400% gain on his $1Bn risk allocation over 10+ years. While it is true that if the…
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Testy Tuesday Morning – Coincidence or Confidence Game?
by phil - February 23rd, 2010 8:21 am
What will hold up?
As you can see from our chart set, our major indices are trading very much in synch, more likely than not propelled by trade-bots that already have the next 25 trading days already mapped out to take us through the end of the quarter. Of course you can argue that it's perfectly natural for 8 of 9 different indexes to follow virtually identical patterns as a result of the random trading of millions of individuals trading Trillions of Dollars worldwide and that's your perogative. I prefer to think of it as one giant scam and then figure out ways to make a little money off it for ourselves…
Several times last week I said to members I thought "THEY" were running the market higher so they could sell calls to suckers at high prices but, in general, the move was "fake, Fake, FAKE." What do we do in the face of flagrant market manipulation? What do you think we do – we play along! We don't complain about good manipulation when we see it – we join in! Don't be confused by the fact that I complain about it in my morning post – once the bell rings we move right to the other side of the table and happily run with the wolf pack. We've tried to fight the power – it's not fun, nor is it profitable…
We remained fairly conservative last week and, as I discussed in our "Weekend Trend Spotting" post, we are more inclined to believe we are in a range that centers around 10,400 than about to break back over 10,700. The bounce zones we predicted when we first began to sell off in January are finally being tested (red lines on above charts) but the 5% line (blue lines) are still exerting a pull and we NEED some healthy consolidation in between those blue and red lines if we are ever going to get serious about making a real move higher.
Speaking of healthy consolidation – Congrats to our own David Ristau of the Oxen Group and all the members who played along with yesterday's specially featured selection of SAH. David nailed it in his 1pm post (also sending out a 1:06 Alert to our Members) and put us into the stock right in his target range at $9.45 and…
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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.