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, You called all the trends and market movements with perfection this week. I enjoyed it! Thanks for keeping us sane!
GClay
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
Praising PSW for enlightenment is a bit akin to praising the Pope for being holy. I've been reading PSW for about two months now and have learned more about investing technique and the world in general than I've learned from the books and seminars I've paid for. Thanks for the enlightenment, the education, the guidance and the truth, which is not a commodity these days, but a virtue in short supply.
Andy Morris
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
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
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
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 - Your logic not only makes sense, but it made a lot of premium profit for me over the past 12 months. I have recovered much of the massive equity losses of last year. My Monday play is the sale of long term puts on FXI. Love the premium!
Gel1
Newer member here, but just wanted to say thank you too. I've learned so much and I hope you'll be around for a long time helping us learn along the way.
Where
Phil - Rode the /QM down from 99.65 at 7pm and now I'm taking your advice, taking the $$ and going to enjoy a restful night sleep. I don't post often so I want to say thanks for sharing your incredible market acumen with all of us. Your site has a unusually talented group of investors (and some characters) and I enjoy my days trading more because of it.
DaveW
hil, I hit my targets for the year in my 401K (thanks in no small part to your site), so I cashed out of all positions a couple of weeks ago. Feels good... I'm conservative with this money –looking for 2% per month, which i've been able to do… thx.
Lunar
Phil - I LOVE these futures trades at random hours! I wasnt able to get in on the 612 part but if I had it wouldve been 130$ (2.6%) on a 5k contract in less than 30 minutes. I know you have to sleep, spend time with fam, ect but Im just letting you know that your posts after hours/late at night has made people who followed them a decent chunk of change. Thank you, we appreciate it!
Jromeha
I doubled down on our USO June $35 puts on Tuesday afternoon and listened to your posting yesterday and sold 1/2 midday and the rest I sold (luckily) at the top of the market yesterday with the last 1/4 of my contracts at 100% return in less than one day!
Samlawyer
You guys gotta give it to phil–the voice of reason yesterday, last nite and this morning.
Corleone
Phil, thank you for all the education here. I've gained so much knowledge being a part of PSW. Thanks to the rest of the members as well! I appreciate all of the contributions you make.
JeffDoc
We are lucky to be in America and it is great to be part of the PSW tribe. Keeps me thinkin' and gatherin' the profits. ~ 42 % gain in my trading account year to date, which keeps me happy. Half to a third of the trading account is reserved in margin capacity that Is not committed. So, again thanks Phil and all of you other members.
Newthugger
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.
DowntoEarthThinking
Phil/thankyou. Phil, I went over the recording of last weeks webinar. I liked it a lot and wanted to thank you. I thought the case studies (company reviews) were detailed, I learned more about selling puts process and also what happens if stock continues to go down after that, I liked the fact that we discuss so many different avenues like stocks, optiond, futures, oil, commodities etc… I replayed portions of it multiple times to make sure I was grasping it but wanted to say good job. Thanks…
Nramanuja
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 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
Dear Phil, I have followed along with your commentary and alerts and have been flabbergasted at your quick analytical skills and your journalistic skills to explain it clearly. In a little over three weeks I have cleared almost 1000.00 dollars and got an intensive education at the same time. I would like to immediately upgrade my membership. It is hard for me to follow all evening as I am in Tokyo but I can join you at the beginning of the market and read the next day.
Tokyolife
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
BTW Phil, I wanted to relate a conversation I had with my business partner yesterday. I told him that I have been much more relaxed about my investments ever since I joined your site. It's funny how a 15-20% cushion does to your nerves. My returns have increased dramatically and my risk diminished. Many thanks for the guidance and patience. Good thing I am doing better financially as you might have increased my life expectancy as well!
StJeanluc
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 & Ephmen85: I hadn't thought about selling the covered calls. That should be the easiest strategy for me since I'm a beginner. Thanks a bunch!
JWick1981
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
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
Phil: I am always able to figure out your trades, including the rational when put in the right context of previous comments, etc. Keep doing what you're doing. It is much appreciated, and invaluable. Your hit rate of successful trades has been very high in my 1.5 months as a member, but even more importantly is your teaching of how to repair and DD positions that haven't gone your way yet. As with most members, we all have our ‘pet' trading interests, and learning how to think about trading is much more important than a specific trade, which could see the conditions behind it change an hour later. This is the classic case, of ‘Teach us to Fish', rather than just giving us a fish once in a while. Thank you!
Neverworkagain
I subscribed to Phils Stock World full service for a year or so and found that it was extremely helpful. Now I just get the Stock World Weekly summary, which I find invaluable. Phil does not baby people and certainly can't make someone into a successful stock operator who does not make the effort on their own behalf, but he is extremely generous with his time in answering newbie questions. Although I found it difficult to follow and implement all his trades in real time, what I did find was that once you got the hang of his methodology and way of thinking, you could work out your own trades and be quite successful. Even just using his patent Rule Number One* alone is worth its weight in gold. Rule Number Two is even better.
Rookie IRA Investor
by ilene - July 5th, 2010 9:16 pm
Courtesy of The Economic Collapse Blog
The Standard & Poor’s 500 50-day moving average stands poised to cross beneath the 200-day moving average. To those in the financial industry, this is known as a "death cross", and it is a very powerful indicator that we could be entering a bearish period. So is this yet another sign that we are on the verge of a recession? Well, anyone who has spent much time trying to interpret financial charts will tell you how inexact that science can be. Financial markets can be wildly unpredictable, and there is always a tremendous amount of manipulation going on behind the scenes. However, when you add this impending death cross with all of the other signs that we could be entering a recession, there certainly seems to be reason for alarm. The truth is that financial markets across the globe are full of fear and panic right now. In fact, as noted in another article, the dominant force in world financial markets in 2010 is fear. When fear rules, markets become very volatile and they can fall very quickly. Anyone who has spent much time trying to squeeze profits out of world financial markets knows that they tend to fall much faster than they ever rise. So are we now approaching one of those times of panic when financial markets across the world fall at breathtaking speed?
Well, the truth is that nobody knows. Anyone who says that they can predict these things with 100 percent certainty is either a liar or they are unbelievably rich.
But certainly the mood in the financial markets is grim. If a death cross does happen on the S&P it is going to make things even more tense.
For those not familiar with investing terminology, Investopedia defines a "death cross" this way….
A crossover resulting from a security’s long-term moving average breaking above its short-term moving average or support level.
In this case, the death cross would be happening on the S&P 500, which is a weighted index of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The S&P 500 is one of the most commonly used benchmarks for the overall U.S. stock market.
So how soon could we see a death cross on the S&P 500?
Well, some analysts believe that it could happen almost…
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by Chart School - April 22nd, 2010 9:15 pm
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
A few weeks ago we joked that the SEC had banned all downticks. That might not sound so funny now as there have been almost zero downticks over the last two months. Stocks have rallied on 75% of all days and ever 0.5% dip has been aggressively bought into. This market is an unstoppable bear killing machine. Equities have reversed their full 1.5% losses from this morning as the “buy the dip” trade continues to dominate every minute of every day. The truly amazing rally just doesn’t quit:
******
As an aside, you might ask, who ISN’T buying?
Corporate insiders, that’s who. Look at these charts from Insider Cow:
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by Chart School - March 23rd, 2010 2:45 pm
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Lord help you if you’ve been short for the last 4 weeks. Over this time period, stocks have risen on 85% of the days and the market has felt entirely invincible. Small dips are quickly gobbled up by aggressive buyers. I would argue that this has been the most impressive portion of the entire 70% move from the lows in March 2009. Stocks have surged 8% (that’s a 96% annualized rate for those keeping track) in less than 4 weeks as the market has risen in 22 of the last 26 sessions. Impressive might just be an understatement.
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by Chart School - October 28th, 2009 4:24 pm
Mish thinks the top is either in or should be, if fundamentals matter anymore. He’s made a lot of good calls in the past. – Ilene
Courtesy of Mish
Professor David Waggoner posted the following chart yesterday on Minyanville that I think is worth noting.
click on chart for sharper image
Professor Waggoner commented "The next intermediate level pivot down is around 882. It is a 50% retrace of the entire move up from the low and is a possible pivot for an extension of the entire A-B-C pattern off the low. It is also a natural support level as shown on the chart.
These intermediate level targets are based on the interpretation that the move up from the March low is a corrective retrace of a 5 wave set down from October 2007.
I concur with Professor Waggoner’s analysis.
The important point in above chart is that the move up from the March low is likely a correction, not the start of a new bull market. That information alone is worth far more than any details as to how the market may decline from here. Many patterns are still in play.
Depending on the index, you can count these moves off the bottom as a simple A-B-C correction as shown, or as an A-B-C-D-E wedge. We’ll know which one was correct in hindsight, but both suggest stocks will eventually make new lows – either sooner (in 2010) or later. A multi-year top could be in. Fundamentally, it should be in.
In the short-term, if we have in fact seen the end of the rally, the SPX will likely decline to the 200 day moving average, currently at 916. By the time we get there, it could be in the neighborhood of the 38% retrace line near 933. If things go quickly, it could be down there by the end of the year.
This is not a recommendation to short; this is a notice that risk is tremendously high and a top could be (and in my opinion should be) in. The market may have other ideas.
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by ilene - October 1st, 2009 2:58 pm
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Some good thoughts here from David Rosenberg on the current state of the market:
It is really amazing to sift through the fund flow data because it is so apparent that it is the “pros” that are chasing this market higher. The private client is fully aware that two bubbles burst seven years apart as Wall Street product-pushers came up with back-to-back new paradigms — the first being the tech mania followed by a new era of housing and credit finance…
It is not lost on the individual investor that equities have generated no net return over the last 11 years and that we are very clearly in the middle of a classic secular bear market. What is amazing, and indeed, encouraging, is that the long-term resolve of the investor is not being overwhelmed by greed as Wall Street strategists push the theory of pricing the market on “mid-cycle” earnings and economists push the theory that data that come in “less negative” is actually bullish.
To be chasing the market after a 60% rally that is now priced for a V-shaped recovery is clearly not the strategy being deployed by the private investor, at the margin. So, what we see as evidence is the record $42.91 billion that flowed into U.S. bond funds in August, on top of the $34.7 billion intake in July. Year-to-date, bond funds have taken in a net $180 billion, about double the $92 billion during the comparable period in 2008.
It’s not as if people are selling equities — they are just watering down their already-high exposure in the stock market. Equity-based funds attracted $3.86 billion of new inflow in August, bringing the cumulative tally to $15 billion. So, it is very interesting to see where the “mountain of money”, “cash on the sidelines” and “dry powder” is going. Into fixed-income. For every dollar flowing into equity funds, twelve is flowing into bond funds.
To be sure, some will point to this as some sort of a bullish contrary data-point. Then again, maybe there is a secular demographic development that needs to be understood — a survey recently conducted by AARP (American Association of Retired Professionals) found that 49% of those between 45 and 64 years old are not confident that they have saved sufficiently for retirement. Fully 12% of this
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by Chart School - September 17th, 2009 7:41 pm
Click here for a FREE, 90-day trial subscription to our PSW Report!
Rob Hanna follows up on his previous article, "Never Have So Many Stocks Been So Stretched Above …," showing that the number of stocks trading at prices two standard deviations above their 200ma was at an all time high. – Ilene
Courtesy of Rob Hanna at Quantifiable Edges
With Wednesday’s big rally, we are now seeing even more extraordinary numbers. Not only is T2111 up to 58.51%, but T2112, which measures the % of stocks trade at least 2 standard deviation above their 40-DAY moving average, is also in record territory. It is showing that a remarkable 57.19% of stocks are now stretched far above their 40-ma’s.
The action in T2112 truly exemplifies the uniqueness of the rally since March. Below is a long-term look at the indicator. Note that from 1986 through 2008 the highest reading this indicator ever registered was 37.22% in November of 2004. That record has been blown away repeatedly over the last 6 months.
There simply is no comparison over the last 23 years to what we are seeing in this recent rally. There have now 5 distinct periods in the last 6 months where T2112 has rallied through the old high. And now we’re seeing the most extreme breadth numbers of all.
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by ilene - September 11th, 2009 11:52 am
Have you wondered, is it true, is the rally really due to tons of money lying around with nowhere else to go?
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Is the real economy rebounding or is this just a liquidity/stimulus driven rebound? David Rosenberg has an opinion:
IT’S ALL ABOUT LIQUIDITY, ROSENBERG!
This is what we are hearing. The fundamentals take a back seat because there is so much liquidity to be put to work, and it all must go into equities. This reminds us of all the liquidity talk during the bubble peak of late 2007. The reality is that the mountain of money is no higher or lower than it was when the market was plumbing the depths through 2008 — money market mutual funds back then were $3.5 trillion and guess what? Today they are $3.5 trillion. Go figure.
So you see, liquidity is a catch-all term when nobody can really explain why the market is going up. This rally is based on a lot of hope that we are going to see a V-shaped economic recovery in the U.S. The S&P 500 is priced for 4% real GDP growth. We don’t see it. Try 2%, which is what the investment-grade corporate bond market is priced for. If we get 4% GDP growth then the equity market is fully priced, but that sort of economic expansion would take Baa spreads of U.S. Treasuries down another 100bps to 200bps, if historical relationships were to hold. But if we see 2%, then at least you will clip your coupon in the fixed-income market. The S&P 500, which at one point would have licked its chops over such a possible outcome (back when it was priced for -2.5% growth last March), would now see 2% growth as a disappointment and would correct down towards 850, again, based on our models.
I would argue that it’s all about psychology really. As the global economy began to fall off a cliff last summer and fall investors began to worry. When we saw some of our most prominent financial institutions vulnerable investors panicked and sold everything. Now, we’re seeing the return of rational thinking and cooler heads. The government has certainly helped to steady the markets, but what has really returned to the market is some semblance of confidence. What the government needs to start worrying…
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by ilene - September 1st, 2009 10:17 pm
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
The observations herein regarding the nature of this stock market rally are quite in parallel with our own.
Buying the dollar to play the debt deflation trade may also be a good one in the short run, especially if leveraged foreign punters have to quickly raise cash to cover bad bets made in the US markets.
However we would have to add that this scenario assumes no black swans with regards to the heavy overhang of US dollars being held by overseas central banks.
If we were in such a position, we would be selling the rallies, given the huge amount dollars on the books.
Bloomberg
Goldman Sachs Wrong on Economic Recovery, Macro Hedge Funds Say
By Cristina Alesci
Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who outperformed peers last year, is wagering that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley got it wrong in declaring the start of an economic recovery.
Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp., Clarium Capital Management LLC and Horseman Capital Management Ltd. are taking a bearish stand as U.S. stock and bond prices rise, saying that record government spending may be forestalling another slowdown and market selloff. The firms oversee a combined $15 billion in so- called macro funds, which seek to profit from economic trends by trading stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities.
“If we have a recovery at all, it isn’t sustainable,” Kevin Harrington, managing director at Clarium, said in an interview at the firm’s New York offices. “This is more likely a ski-jump recession, with short-term stimulus creating a bump that will ultimately lead to a more precipitous decline later.”
Equity and credit markets have rallied on hopes that government intervention is pulling the U.S. out of the deepest economic slump since the Great Depression. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index jumped 51 percent from its 12-year low in March through yesterday.
The economy will expand at an annualized rate of 2 percent or more in four straight quarters through June 2010, the first such streak in more than four years, according to the median estimate of at least 53 forecasters in a Bloomberg survey.
Tudor, the Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm started by Jones in the early 1980s, told clients in an Aug. 3 letter that the stock market’s climb was a…
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by Chart School - August 29th, 2009 4:45 pm
Here’s a comparison chart of this market rally with market rallies during the 1929-1932 bear market. Today’s rally is slightly longer than the longest. But is there any reason to expect greater similarity or, for that matter, that things will be different this time around? – Ilene
Courtesy of Prieur du Plessis’s Investment Postcards from Cape Town
How does the nascent stock market rally compare with the 1929-1932 bear market, which also included bank failures, bankruptcies, severe stock market declines, etc.?
For some perspective, Chart of the Day provided the graph below, illustrating the duration (calendar days) and magnitude (percentage gain) of all significant Dow rallies during the 1929-1932 bear market (solid blue dots).
As the chart shows, the duration of the current rally of the Dow Jones Industrial Index (hollow blue dot labeled “You are here”) is longer than that of any of the rallies that occurred during the 1929-1932 bear market. The bear market rally that began in November 1929 lasted 155 calendar days and occupies the second position. However, as far as magnitude is concerned, the November 1929 rally (+48%) resulted in a better performance than the 46% gain of the Dow since the low of March 9.
Source: Chart of the Day, August 28, 2009.
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by ilene - August 25th, 2009 5:53 pm
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
* weak data = Fed ease, stocks rally
* consensus data = lower volatility, stocks rally
* strong data = economy strengthening, stocks rally
* bank loses $4bln = bad news out of the way, stocks rally
* oil spikes = great for energy companies, stocks rally
* oil drops = great for the consumer, stocks rally
* dollar plunges = great for multinationals, stocks rally
* dollar spikes = lowers inflation, stocks rally
* inflation spikes = will inflate all assets, stocks rally
* inflation drops = improves earnings quality, stocks rally
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February 21st, 2019 10:50 pm
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Submitted by Visual Capitalist
There’s nothing quite like cannabis in the plant kingdom. Beneath its humble surface, over 750 unique compounds exist within – all of which have helped propel the cannabis industry into the multi-billion dollar market it is today.
Today’s infographic from The Green Organic Dutchman takes a deep dive into the cannabis components which contribute to its therapeutic potential, how it interacts with the human body, and the ways ...
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