Phil...The hundred grand portfolio updates are helpful...Fun ..and have been profitable...really like em... made some nice entries into USB, KEY today... and I better add those FAZ calls tomorrow... Really glad you put that up this morning...
Becker
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
Phil - I celebrate today, having reached my goal for the year, trading in sync with your education and guidance, of 1 million in profit. I learned a lot, achieved much, and am profoundly grateful. To be honest, when I set the goal I thought it was daunting, as I have for many years been an investor in equities but did very little with options. Learning and doing has for me been a blast!
I reached my goal by following Phil's strategies - lots of Buy/Writes, covered calls on equities , naked put entries for income production. I did it with 2.5 mil and kept 600,000 in cash in case I got in trouble. I concentrated on stocks (many of my own choosing) that had decent dividends and wrote front month calls against (OTM) which has worked well in this market run. 25% of my gain is in dividends and premium selling, with the balance in appreciation.
Gel1
/NKD- Kownichiwa Cowboy!! One week of patience and scaling in and out pays off. This is a testament to Phil's fundamental analysis with the PSW technique. Thanks Phil.
JohnO
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
SPY/Phil, I took a big swing on January 26th following your advice to another member and bought 1615 contracts of Mar 185/190 BCS on SPY that will expire ITM today paying $290,700 on the $500k bet. I thought it might be fun to see what a winning trade looks like. Great call on your part and looking back it seems pretty obvious.
Sibe14 (premium)
I'm just starting my second year as a member, and I'd like to thank all of you for sharing your trading ideas and insight, and especially Phil of course for great all-around investing advice as well as trades! In addition to learning patience and profit-taking, I think one of the most important things I'm learning here is to stick to stocks and trades that suit my temperament. And wow, I had NO idea how hard it was to learn patience. I should say "practice" instead of "learn", because it seems to be a constant struggle. Phil, please keep reminding us how nice CASH is!
Jerseyside
Way to go Phil! Have I said how much I appreciate your site lately! Your ability to teach and your willingless to give others a forum to demonstrate their own skill sets makes your site remarkable. I got great help from you, jmm1951, and Iflantheman (special thanks!) today. Hell, if I have many more days like this I may even be able to sign up for a full year rather than doing it just quarterly. Tomorrow is another day but, fabulous job today!
dclark41
Phil you are great, and not only is your market info spot on but you have the courage to call it like it is and write about it in a great tone.
Flanger
Wishing Phil and all fellow PSW members a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2017! Thanks to all of you for your insights and comments which help make me a better investor every day. Wishing everybody the best of luck for 2017
Learner
Hi Mr. Phill, I am a Venezuelan lady tormented by our politicall situation, who use to be an emerging market trader, and many other executive positins in the finance "arena" and now is trying to built a new concept and service for asset management for clients on my own, I am in the trial and learning process at the moment, I also invest for some friends and myself. I want to congratulate you , because reading you fill my days with a touch of irony (besides ,of course the spectacular market insight) that happens to give me energy, its a joy the remarks and comments even the pictures used, sometimes I just read it for the fun, I completily agree with your thouhts, though we belong to totally different cultures and enviorements and certanly realities Your readings is like a little hand helping me out to be in the market and fight for my devastated country where every single day we looe inches and yards of liberty. You shoul try to writte a book!
Mindeyes
Thanks for all the work you put into this site. I have looked at a few other option advisory or "mentoring" services this year, but no one offers even a fraction of the content or the level of services you provide at PSW!
Jelutuck
Oxen (directly) and Wilkinson (indirectly) are making me a great day trader! Props to Andrew for another little nugget last night: HIG. $20 Dec calls paid 6% quickly this morning. And helloooo STJ - a few days, but nice pick nonetheless - esp with early cover premium.
Dstillwe
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
Phil, I'm up 34x what I paid in fees for your service, and that only counts the trades I didn't think of myself. Thanks!
Barfinger
Well that was a fun day. Cashed out my GS 140 calls for about 35% profit and my AAPL calls for 38% gain. Not bad for 40 minutes of work. Back to 85% cash.
Singapore Steve
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 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 has some great insight into the market. He's given me a different perspective on the market and I know I'm a better trader/investor because of it.
I've been trading options since the late 80's and Phil is right. Unless you know what is going to happen (how can you, unless you have insider information), then do what the smart money does - be the house. Remember guys, we're allowed to sell options. If you're afraid to be short, then do a spread to limit your liability. When I think about the money I've made and lost on options, a good approximation is that I win 30% of the time when I do a straight buy; I win about 70% of the time when I do a spread; I win nearly 90% of the time when I sell naked.
Autolander
GLD I took out my callers and rolled down my longs this morning, woo hoo!
Ephmen85
Thanks for the oil tip Phil: Bot & sold the USO May 29 calls for net $125. Not bad for few minutes work.
JWick1981
Phil/ Thanks to your obsessive bearish anxiety over the last few weeks, I made money on the long side this month, phased gradually to bearish, came in net short today and managed to make money both long and short all week, ending today [and each day this week] in the green. I don't know how you do it, but thank you.
Zeroxzero
Greetings Phil,
I am an Economist at Harvard and some of my colleagues and I would like to let you know that we follow your posts on SA, and find your analysis refreshing, rigorous, and acute. Great work! Though many of us (including myself) have our work covered in the Wall St Journal, in many ways your macro commentary is more fearless and accurate than what is generally found in that venerable publication.
Kind regards,
Daniel
Daniel
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
This site, for me, is where I have learned how to use options & futures. It is also where I get a constant flow of new ideas. In addition, it's great to know that I have many sources, mostly Phil, if I get lost in a trade. I have been here for 8 years, and am grateful to PHIL and fellow members. I manage about half a million, and although I may not always achieve what Phil does, I am not complaining. I have learned so much. Thank you Phil!
DClark41
Phil: I have 263 positions - 70% in options ( balance stocks) in three portfolios with a value of 3 mil. YTD profit is about $750,000. Thanks!
Gel1
You are doing a fantastic job. I think most of us our very well balanced and consequently have learned how to manage through these ever so short declines in the market without panic.
Dclark41
I have been with this site since the beginning and i have learned more the past 3 years than the previous 10. Information and great commentary are abound. The traders on the site are second to none and my portfolio has benefited greatly.
Kustomz
I have been very fortunate over the years as an investor. Last year was on of my best in terms of percentage gains. I have to attribute much of this success to my membership in PSW which gave me the best education available anywhere when it comes to the understanding of option trading , discipline and general trading strategies. I will be forever grateful to Phil and the many "highly skilled" traders that have offered their advice.
Gel1
Sold out my AAPL mar95 calls. Up over 100% today on them!
Randall’s portrayal of Ben Bernanke’s thinking reminds me of a professor I knew who was trying to prove his own version of the Krebs Cycle. He designed experiments that would theoretically prove he was correct, but – strangely – the students in his lab kept failing to achieve the proper results. Rather than changing his theory, he realized that something must have gone wrong in the experiment, and he would have the students do it over, and over, until the right results were obtained. A lot of rats were killed in the process, but no matter--no one really cared about the rats. – Ilene
The Fed is between a rock and a hard economic outlook.
Fed Chairman Bernanke is signaling that a second round of quantitative easing will soon begin. In the first round, the Fed’s balance sheet nearly tripled to nearly $2.3 trillion as it bought $1.7 trillion in Treasury securities and mortgage-related securities. Since the Fed appears to want to unwind its position in mortgages, QE2 will probably target federal government debt.
During Japan’s long stagnation, Bernanke was famous for arguing that the Bank of Japan could have done far more to fight deflation. Since the BOJ’s overnight interest rate target was effectively at zero, the conventional policy of lowering its interest rate target was not an option. Hence, Bernanke advocated quantitative, rather than price, activity — the BOJ would purchase assets from banks, driving up their excess reserves, until they would finally make loans to stimulate spending that would reverse the trend of prices.
So when he had the opportunity, he put theory into practice in the US, driving short-term interest rates effectively to zero and filling bank balance sheets with excess reserves by purchasing their assets. So far, the impact has not been significantly different than Japan’s experience. Indeed, Bernanke has been publicly warning of the dangers of a Japanese-style deflation, as US inflation has dropped nearly to zero, well below the Fed’s informal target of two percent.
And so we are now set for round two of QE — more of the same old, same old.
In truth, the Fed has done only two helpful things. First, during the liquidity crisis of 2007 and 2008, it lent reserves to financial institutions that faced a liquidity crisis.…
"It is PR, they got the stocks up, that’s the whole purpose of PR, make the stocks go higher. That’s what CNBC and many many PR agencies are all about."
Seven of Europe’s 91 largest banks would struggle to survive an unexpected decline in economic growth or a sharp deterioration in the value of European government bonds, and will need to raise more capital, regulators said Friday in releasing results of closely watched bank stress tests.
Banks to flunk were Hypo Real Estate, a bank based in Munich that is already government-owned after a bailout, ATEBank of Greece and five Spanish savings banks.
Several other banks passed the test, but narrowly enough that they may also face market pressure to increase their reserves. That group included Postbank, one of Germany’s biggest publicly traded banks, which is 25 percent owned by Deutsche Bank.
Like our own stress tests last year, European regulators came up with a few different scenarios, one of which was supposed to mirror sovereign default. The problem being it doesn’t exactly do that.
In the last scenario, banks will publish their estimated losses on sovereign debt held in their trading book as well as “additional impairment losses on the banking book” that they may suffer after a sovereign debt crisis, according to the document dated July 15.
Under accounting rules, banks have to adjust the value of sovereign bonds held in the trading book according to changes in market prices, said Konrad Becker, a financial analyst at Merck Finck & Co. in Munich. For government debt held in the banking book, lenders must write down their value only if there is serious doubt about a state’s ability to repay its debt in full or make interest payments, he said.
The sovereign-shock scenario doesn’t assume a European nation will default, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information is private. Instead, it will assume that rising government-bond yields will push up borrowing costs, spurring defaults in the private sector that would lead to losses in lenders’ banking books, said the person.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard already called the tests toothless over at the Telegraph. I say that’s being kind.
Again, when we did the whole stress test thing last year the numbers were strange and scenarios incredibly optimistic. Since Treasury had to act sketchy about what they were up to,…
The EU has decided to leave us hanging until the last moment as they hold off on releasing their bank stress test results until after the markets close(11:30 EST) which leads me to believe the results may not be good or they wouldn't be waiting until the markets are closed and then giving investors the weekend to digest the results. If the tests are good, then the US will rally and Asia will rally and the EU would have to gap open on Monday and that would annoy investors over there (kind of like we were annoyed yesterday) but, if the results are bad, then we can drop back to 10,200 or lower and Asia can sell off and they will gap down on Monday but perhaps less of a panic sell-off than if they got hit with the news on a Friday morning.
So, because the results were already delayed and because the ECB has chosen to wait until Friday afternoon – I'm going to have to at least make a small bet that we have a failure. We already hedged the Dow in yesterday's Member Chat as we weren't sure of the timing and we wanted to lock in our gains for the week but now let's look at a nice, profitable way to play a sell-off in the financials.
FAZ is the 3x Ultra Short ETF on the financials and you can just buy that ETF for $14.62 a share and a 3.3% move down in XLF should translate to a 9% gain to $15.94, not a bad day's work right there! Thanks to the uncertainty we now have, this trade can be augmented with the sale of the August $14 puts and calls for $2.65 and that drops the net purchase price to $11.97. If XLF finishes below $14, another round of stock would be put to you at $14 for an average entry of $12.99, which is 12% lower than the current price so this trade assumes the financials don't go UP 4% by August 20th. If FAZ finishes over $14 (.62 lower than it is now) the net return on the $11.97 is 17%, not bad for 3 week's work….
The Federal Reserve will expand its so-called stress tests of the banking system to ensure they have enough capital during difficult periods, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday.
Bernanke highlighted the positive impact of stress tests conducted earlier this year on major banks, a move aimed at ensuring their financial health and building confidence.
"Building on the success of this initiative, we will conduct more frequent, broader, and more comprehensive horizontal examinations, evaluating both the overall risk profiles of institutions as well as specific risks and risk-management issues," Bernanke told a conference organized by the Boston Federal Reserve.
The highly publicized stress tests conducted earlier this year focused on 19 major banks, and indicated 10 needed additional capital.
Bernanke said the Fed would step up efforts to review bank capital requirements to avoid a recurrence of the credit crisis that has spread around the world.
"Additional steps are necessary to ensure that all banking organizations hold adequate capital," he said.
He noted that the Financial Stability Board — a global watchdog made up of senior representatives of national financial authorities — had called for "significantly stronger capital standards," and that the Group of 20 "has committed to develop rules to improve both the quantity and quality of bank capital."
"The Federal Reserve supports these initiatives. The structure of capital requirements should also be reviewed," Bernanke said.
Should we be reassured by the new round of stress tests?
Well, let’s take a look:
Time Magazine called the previous stress tests a "confidence game" and Geithner a "con man" for running them deceptively
Paul Krugman called the stress tests a mere "self-esteem class" for banks that no bank would be allowed to fail
Nouriel Roubini said the stress tests "fail the basic criterion of a reality check"
In another case straight out of the Twilight Zone, Geithner will allow banks to repay TARP funds although a TARP panel advises running the tests again because the tests were so flawed.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley were among 10 lenders that won U.S. Treasury approval to buy back $68 billion of government shares, freeing them from added oversight that curbed lending practices, hiring and pay.
“These repayments are an encouraging sign of financial repair,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement today. “But we still have work to do.”
The decision to allow the biggest repayments to the Troubled Asset Relief Program reflects surging financial stocks and rising pressure from banks to free themselves of political interference. U.S. firms unveiled plans to raise more than $100 billion since government stress tests of the 19 largest banks found that 10 needed $74.6 billion of additional capital to weather a more severe recession.
In addition to JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, American Express Co., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., BB&T Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., Northern Trust Corp., State Street Corp. and U.S. Bancorp all said today they are repaying the funds.
The approved firms didn’t include Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, and Citigroup Inc., each of which have accepted $45 billion from the government. Wells Fargo & Co., the nation’s largest mortgage lender and the recipient of $25 billion in government aid, also wasn’t on the list.
“There will be a question that potentially overhangs some of those names that haven’t returned TARP,” said Scott Siefers, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP in New York. “How are you going to get out from under it and what will it mean for me? Are you going to issue more shares somewhere down the road?”
Firms buying back the government’s preferred shares also have the right to repurchase warrants the Treasury holds “at fair market value,” today’s statement said.
Of the 10 Banks approved, all but Northern Trust was on the list stress test banks. I called it a cake walk not a stress test at the time. See
If President Donald Trump had gotten his way, the nation would have celebrated the centennial of the World War I armistice last year on Nov. 11 with ...
BellRing Brands Inc (NYSE: BRBR) is a nutrition products company known for its ready-to-drink protein shakes and was born out of the separation of Post Holdings Inc (NYSE: POST)....
This current market environment is very reminiscent of the 2006-08 market environment where price rotated into weakness on technicals and continued to establish new all-time price highs in the process – creating what we are calling a “zombie-land melt-up”. This very dangerous price action is indicative of money chasing a falling trend. Where technicals and fundamentals are suggesting that price is actually weakening quite substantial, yet the process of price exploration is continually biased towards the upside as investors continue to pile onto the back of the beast expecting a further melt-up.
Let’s take a look at what happened to the ES and Gold in 2006 an...
Could the Gold/US Dollar ratio be sending a fresh concerning message to Gold bulls this week? Joe Friday says Yes!
This chart looks at the Gold/Dollar ratio over the past 8-years.
The intersection of two long-term channel met at (1) a few months ago. The ratio was testing the bottom of one as resistance and the top of another as resistance at the same time.
As the ratio was testing both channels as resistance, a sizeable bearish reversal pattern took place at (1).
Since the reversal pattern took place, the ratio has been heading lower.
Joe Friday Just The Facts Ma’am; The ratio is breaking below...
Bitcoin price highs in 2017 were not the result of a single trader on an exchange, the CEO of payment company Circle claims. In a series of tweets on Nov. 4, Jeremy Allaire disputed ...
Gold has performed well, golden skies are here again. In fact it has been a straight line move, and this is typically unusual and a pause can be expected.
It seems the markets are happy again, new highs in the SP500, US 10 year interest rates look to re bound, negative interest may soften. The US FED has reversed their QT and now doing $250BN (not QE) repo. The main point is the FED has stopped QT, and will do QE forever. The evidence now is the FED put is under market risk and the possibility of excessive losses do not exist.
Point: If in future if there is market risk, the FED will print it's way out of it.
Subject To: In this blog view. The above is so until the amount required rocks confidence in the US dollar as a reserve currency.&n...
But make no mistake, if the Fed wants money rates to stay down by another quarter, it will need to imagineer even more money.
That’s on top of the $281 billion it has already imagineered into existence since addressing its “one-off” repo market emergency on September 17. This came via “Temporary” Repo Man Operations money, and $70.6 billion in Permanent Open Market Operations (POMO) money.
By my calculations that averages out to $7.4 billion per business day. That works out to a monthly pace of $155 billion or so.
If they keep this up, it will be more than enough to absorb every penny of new Treasury supply. That supply had caused the system to run out of money in mid September. This flood of paper had been inundati...
As evidence of cannabis’ many benefits mounts, so does the interest from the global pharmaceutical industry, known as Big Pharma. The entrance of such behemoths will radically transform the cannabis industry—once heavily stigmatized, it is now a potentially game-changing source of growth for countless co...
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...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site
market
shadows, archives,
more.
Contact Ilene to learn about our affiliate and
content sharing
programs.
By 
What a way to end the week!
Courtesy of 
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Chinese
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