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
Being a bear is easy (and I am not convinced we are doing all that well on the whole as an economy), but one cannot fight the trend (didn't Phil say that a while ago)? Just cover, make 5-10-15-20% and move on. It really does add up by chipping away. All I can say is I am back to 2007 levels in my account b'f the crash with this run up and some very nice help on this board….so kudos to us (and me!!)…
Pharmboy
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
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, Passed a milestone today since joining 2 months ago. 25% of my account is in buy/writes, bull call spreads and disaster hedges. A majority of the trades were taken directly from your ideas or someone else`s contributions. Some were daytrades that became spreads.
That part of my account is up 30% as of today. I don`t worry about it, or mess with it much, did a few rolls etc.
Rest of the account is there to day trade, cover the writes and take advantage of opportunities.
Thanks to everyone who contributes here, what a sweet way to trade, so many opportunities.
Ben1Be
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
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
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
Phil, I've got to give you props on the ICE spread play. Tremendous call! I jumped in on Friday when you made the recommendation and closed out today. Nice 57% return ($2,300) over a mere 3 trading days! This is why I dig your site!
Samlawyer
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
Man, what a week: Bought C at 1.40, sold half at 1.59 (relatively big position), another quarter at 3.04 just now. Ran SKF down from 270 with one April put, still holding some 115's expiring in a couple days. I'm going to gamble this position like a champion Friday. Bought FAS at all sorts of levels and started cashing out. Long HOV, stock and some nickel calls for fun - Mocha up your buy-out from 5 to 8 and that's 10,900% return for the May-2.50's . Ha!
Biodieselchris
PSW – Price/Value; The value of PSW on a regular basis exceeds by far the price of the annual subscription. The edition of February 26 'Which Way Wednesday – Popping or Topping?', – priceless for the serious investor.
Winston
Kudos on the POT puts! I studied the charts last night and you couldn't have hit the inflection points more perfectly. Since there are often many head fakes in the charts, that was very well done. I know they can't all work this well, but that was an extra unexpected bonus yesterday.
Ocelli7
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
Bought some QQQ's today on the dip. Added a little bit more to my son's account. Up about 8% in 2 months! I think I've learned some stuff here. Thanks to all that contribute, and of course to the boss. Thanks Phil!
JeffDoc
It was a nice day thanks to your help! Made over $1100 shorting TF every time it came up near 1260 and even more by going long oil before inventory under $46 and then waited patiently for the spike up into the close where I shorted it at 47.70 or so. Phil you gave me a road map and I simply followed the signs along the way.
Craigsa620
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 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 - Another excellent teaching article - when you write like that it blows me away. Thank you!
I had the ideas from earlier articles but what I didn't have was enough understanding. The familiarity of ideas through repetition, re-working, revision - over time - the variation, the pulling out of implications - it all contributes to understanding and mostly thats on the student - but a good teacher (worth their weight in gold) makes understanding a pleasure.
I wanted to learn about trading options because it makes my brain feel better - fitter, healthier. Actually mostly it makes me happy to think about the trade and trading options.
You are a good teacher and I know that or I wouldn't value the subscription the way I do. It pays for itself through the pleasure of understanding alone.
Redfern1
I have to say, hands down, this is one of the best educational experiences I've had in my life. I've even gotten my wife (accountant) into the webinars and she wants to master this concept of selling premium and making smart, conservative investment decisions. She'll eventually use this knowledge to manage her clients' wealth and make smart investment choices for them. Bib big thanks Phil!!
AmalfiCoast
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
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
I love it when a trade really comes together. After 4 DD's and a roll, I cashed out 16 times my initial position in TLT today for a 140% gain. Thank you Phil for the lessons in scaling in, and paying for position.
2Can
Phil, have to thank you for saving me today. I think the discipline I have learned from this site has helped me as much if not more than the actual picks.
Rustle123
Thanks Phil, I have adjusted my position by getting rid of the IYF puts, and selling the FAZ puts. You have so many of these awesome little tricks in your playbook that it really amazes me. I toally love your analogy by the way: Do you want insurance that you have to pay for, or do you want insurance that pays you?
Craigzooka
Phil – great calls this past week, esp. friday and monday. in the old days I would have let Prechter et al scare me into trimming my longs and going short at just the wrong time. your feel for the markets is Tiger-esque. CHK, HOV, BX, TLT and XLF are big winners for me today. My biggest up day in a long time. Thanks!
Terrapin22
Phil I have been telling you for a while how I feel like I am really understanding you now and thanking you. Well today may have been my most successful futures trading day since I began here and the week has been spectacular! It has just seemed so easy when you give us a range and I execute properly. Thanks once again for teaching me to fish. My portfolio gained over 10% this week which is just amazing.
Craiga620
Phil – In the event of a mkt meltdown, which of the indices, in your opinion do you think has the most potential for % move down. I'm looking at call options on SDS and the DXD. Any thoughts? Ideas?
Thanks .. and thanks for being a great teacher! I've learned so much in only a month!
Louis631
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
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 !
Welcome to Baruch at Ultimi Barbarorum.* In this post, Baruch revisits the alleged, insider trading of 3Com options, casting doubt as to whether the calls were bought by persons with inside information prior to the takeover. More likely, scared shorts were trying to hedge their positions. – Ilene
The blogosphere made the catch! The Interweb protects the rest of us from evil doers! The world is ablaze with the news that prior to the 3Com buyout announced by HP last week, there was an unusual amount of volume in the $5 november call in 3Com. We’re all pretty sensitised to insider trading at the moment, and so this looks as clear cut and beautiful a case of evil-doers caught with their hands in the till as we are likely to see in our time on earth. As Tyler Durden puts it:
This is so blatant it is sufficiently stupid that even the SEC will presumably catch the perpetrator. Here’s to hoping the trader ends up being Galleon’s Raj Raj buying options from his E-Trade account while on bail. Of course, we fully expect any prosecution case against the perpetrator to fall apart at the seams courtesy of a completely inept legal team at the SEC and the Justice Department.
Oh really? Before the Zero Hedge folks get the pitchforks out, let’s stop and think a bit. Let us be splitters, and not lumpers, and we might see that would be quite reasonable for the SEC and DoJ not to prosecute anyone at all. Using the principle of Occam’s Razor, they may well tend to conclude that no insider trading took place.
Let’s get technical here. Do forgive Baruch if you get lost (because it may be that you’re not actually all that bright and that’s not his fault). In the case of the unusual volume in the 3Com options, you should know that incredibly unusual volumes in options is not terribly unusual, if you follow me. It is in fact the case that the volume of a particular option resides, as Taleb would have it, in Extremistan. It is subject to many many days of low and limited trading, and very few days of extremely high volume, orders of magnitude above the norm, where most of the total…
I don’t believe in market calls, and trying to time turns is a perilous game. But most savvy people I know have been skeptical of this rally, beyond the initial strong bounce off the bottom. It has not had the characteristics of a bull market. Volumes have been underwhelming, no new leadership group has emerged, and as greybeards like to point out, comparatively short, large amplitude rallies are a bear market speciality.
In addition, this one has had some troubling features. Most notable has been the almost insistent media cheerleading, particularly from atypical venues for that sort of thing, like Bloomberg. Investors who are not at all the conspiracy-minded sort wonder if there has been an official hand in the "almost nary a bad word will be said" news posture. Tyler Durden has regularly claimed that major trading desks have been actively squeezing shorts. There have been far too many days with suspicious end of session rallies.
The fall in the markets overnight, particularly the 5.8% drop in Shanghai, seems significant in combination with other factors… continue here.
Your last best hope to sustain any measure of relevance is to ally yourselves with the smartest minds in the financial blogosphere and start opting for quality rather than volume. But we’ve gone over suggestions for improvement before, and you’d clearly rather create feature shows about the business of pornography. Fine. If you want to wane into a sputtering, swooshing, brightly-colored perpetual self-parody, go ahead. But there’s no need to telegraph your fear of obsolescence with displays like this: [skip ahead to 2:30 or so].
This isn’t an isolated incident – Dennis Kneale has generated some heat (and certainly not any light) with similar comments. But in fairness, maybe we bloggers are all “moronic” when it comes to the core competencies of a Kneale, a Gasparino, or a Caruso-Cabrera. I certainly don’t know the first thing about reading from a teleprompter, about parsing Goldman Sachs press releases as journalistic content, or about providing unenlightening extemporaneous verbiage without any embarrassment or shame.
Sincerely etc.,
Jared
P.S. “Tyler Durden – it’s probably not even his name!”
Now that Merrill Lynch has upgraded every single REIT and has a price target of +/- infinity, (conveniently pocketing over $100 million in the process), the company can focus on more pressing issues at hand. And no, not redecorating Thain’s legacy office in the neo-uber-criminal style). Instead, the bank has sent not one, not two, but a whopping six cease and desist order to Zero Hedge. As the recently acquired bank can finally afford to pay lawyers again compliments of Schmidt and Sakwa, it has decided to pursue the source of all evil: all those David Rosenberg posts Zero Hedge has published, that seek to educate and provide some color to otherwise confused and CNBC abused readers and investors.
If it is any consolation, now that David is literally out of the building, ML can sleep soundly that ZH will only focus on the bank’s daily REIT upgrades (no, we have not forgotten about those) as it is alas the only source amusement coming out of doomed mother Merrill.
So, dear readers, please be aware that the following six posts will be removed at some point tonight as Zero Hedge is unable to underwrite and collect on average $10 million per REIT dilution events and thus afford any lawyers (except potentially for White & Case’s Tom Lauria).
As for the 500 or so websites that fervently and automatically repost and redistribute ZH content, well, those we have no control over.
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As you’ll see from these charts, below, we are not dismissing this current upside rally and the potential that it could last for many weeks or months longer – we’re just warning our followers and clients that we believe a very volatile period or price rotation is setting up within the next 10 to 25+ days as prices reach the historical upper boundary.
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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