Thanks Phil for helping make this a much, much better year this year than last. Your tutelage has been so very helpful. Don't think I can say Thanks enough. And I thanks all the members here who were work hard in helping us all to become better traders, and I would say better people as well. The support many of you offered when we evacuated during the fire this past year helped me immeasurably.
Happy New Years to you all!
JBur
I have been reading the "free" PSW for about a year and have always liked Phil's style as it closely resembled the way I like to trade (mostly naked put options). I have been a paid subscriber for about 5 weeks and I have been learning a lot from Phil and other members. I had made some money on Phil's "free" ideas in the past and I joined because one of Phil's futures ideas paid for my subscription within the same day (NG). Phil deserved my subscription and I was eager to learn more. I just did a quick tally and within the last 5 weeks the ideas that I chose to follow from Phil generated over 25K in options profits and 12K in futures profits (some of my trades were more conservative than what Phil's had suggested). I have a lot to learn, experience and confidence to gain. Thanks again Phil and Successful Trading to all.
Verreaul
Thank you Nantucket. It is hard to be a complete beginner in the market with this complicated, fast moving, and very advanced group. Phil is the Great One, but the membership is absolutely amazing! Had I known this ahead I would probably log in as "awe struck" everyday.
Coke
Blessings, ALL: So we have completed two months of 2015. So far it has been a good ride with my PSW all short put portfolio showing a 15.73% gain with $83K in profits harvested in 2015.
IHS4GOD
Phil: UNH, hedged stock position, doing great, up over 50 %,
RMM
I went LEVEL 4 because of YOU! That's right, buddy!! And I started putting my options trades in my comments...also because of YOU! That's hard to do. I Love PD!! He's just a man about Work!
Chris Valley (author)
CZR – well that was fun! Opened the play yesterday. As the arb premium was now almost all gone from the box spread today, I just decided to close it. The rundown, after all commissions: my net was $183.51 profit for an overnight trade tying up $2000 margin in an IRA account. That's a 9% overnight return (3200% annualized!) …And all that learning, too! Thanks PSW!
Scottmi
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
100KP dividend plays - FYI, I'm loving them...thanks, Phil!!! Including the $0.848/share dividend, I am up 100% on my $2.38 net entry on LYG...that's pretty cool!
SSDirk
Phil – just wanted to say a sincere thank you for teaching me how to offset, hedge, roll, and not panic. My account is up 10% in the last two weeks, and far from panic, this is becoming great fun. Thanks again,
Deano
Thank you Phil we appreciate all the work you put in to teach us valuable lessons about investing.
Pat Swap
That was a quick double on the DIA calls. trailing stop in place.
Kwan
Phil Thank you very much, I appreciate your help and wisdom.
CdsdpDean
Boring trading – Phil/ Thanks to PSW, my yearly covered-writes are on pace for 15%. Add the long puts and well over 20%… and I look at it once a day and never lose sleep over it. Actually doing better than my trading account at this point (Thanks, summer 2013)
Anyway, the point is that anyone with enough money would be wise to do the 20% – 40% stuff and do trading as a hobby…
Arivera
Don't expect to get rich quick here, but you can get easy 30 - 50 % per year, just by buying good stocks at discount (as we often discuss), selling monthly premiums of calls and puts.
Tchayipov
Aapl/Phil
Thanks for your advice, always appreciated.
So, not so much a tax issue, but more to protect against a 5% or greater drop.
Here is what I did before their earnings…sold 25% of my stock at 147.50
Against the rest, I sold the June $140 calls for $8.25, protecting down to $140 if needed.
And just for fun, I bought the weekly $145 puts for $1.50( small price to pay if they bombed on earnings)
So, overall, I am happy with the insurance I was able to 'generate' for 1% of the price of stock.
Now, depending on what happens, I have the luxury of deciding and being in the driver's seat with respect to whether to sell and buy your spreads or not.
Having done all that meandering, I must say it was fun!
More important, I could not have done something like that 2 or 3 years ago and reading and thinking about your teachings has been a tremendous asset.
Thanks!
Maya1
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 - 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
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
Hi Phil,
Thanks for the free disaster hedge ideas. I implemented variations of two of them on SDS bull call spreads and EEM bear put spreads (haven't done the TZA yet) and they really hedged my short term longs nicely today. Makes it seem a lot less like gambling.
You are the man (of the people)!
Howard Roake
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
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
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
Phil, I don't know if I told you lately but you da man! I'm doing so much better following your guidelines. It's like you actually know what you are talking about. 8-) I've tried a lot of services and none of them are as comprehensive or honest AND successful. I appreciate all youz other guys/gals input as well…learning tons as a relative newbie to this game.
Aclend
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
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
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 – 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
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
Phil – Great calls yesterday, you were in top form. As I was reading your postings, I had hindsight of what the day brought. The calls were uncanny!
“We now have an economy in which five banks control over 50 percent of the entire banking industry, four or five corporations own most of the mainstream media, and the top one percent of families hold a greater share of the nation’s wealth than any time since 1930. This sort of concentration of wealth and power is a classic setup for the failure of a democratic republic and the stifling of organic economic growth.” - Jesse –http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
Source: Barry Ritholtz
“All of the old-timers knew that subprime mortgages were what we called neutron loans — they killed the people and left the houses.” - Louis S. Barnes, 58, a partner at Boulder West, a mortgage banking firm in Lafayette, Colo
ZeroHedge obtained an internal memo from Wells Fargo detailing the banks new procedures to handle what may be a flood of repurchase requests, as end investors use fraud allegations and sloppy paperwork to demand refunds on the mortgages they bought from the bank.
Here’s the gist:
Step 1
Wells Fargo receives a deficiency notice or demand from the investor. Typically, Wells Fargo has 60 days to resolve the issue.
Step 2
Wells Fargo notifies the Seller and provides supporting documentation when available. At this time, the Seller is given twenty-one calendar days to provide an explanation, facts or documentation to demonstrate that the mortgage loan complies with the requirements. If the Seller does not respond within 14 days of the initial notice, Wells Fargo will follow up with the Seller.
Step 3
Wells Fargo will begin internal research (concurrently with Step 2) to resolve the loan issues. During this process, Wells Fargo will determine if there is a missing document and if the document can be located.
For all other issues, Wells Fargo will perform research to
Thanks for writing and sharing your wonderful column. It has been very informative and educational.
Could you please help us mere mortals decipher the ALLL/LLRNPT chart in a follow up post?
I have difficulty reconciling the units, and I suspect I’m not the only one. Exactly what does that chart depict?
Thanks.
Henry
From my previous post …
Assets at Banks whose ALLL Exceeds their Nonperforming Loans
The ALLL is a bank’s best estimate of the amount it will not be able to collect on its loans and leases based on current information and events. To fund the ALLL, the bank takes a periodic charge against earnings. Such a charge is called a provision for loan and lease losses.
One look at the above chart in light of an economy headed back into recession and a housing market already back in the toilet should be enough to convince anyone that banks already have insufficient loan loss provisions.
That is one of the reasons banks are reluctant to lend. Lack of creditworthy customers is a second. Quite frankly would be idiotic to force more lending in such an environment.
To further clarify, the chart depicts the ratio of loan loss provisions to nonperforming loans across the entire banking system (all banks). There are 33 ALLL charts by bank size and region for inquiring minds to consider. The above chart is the aggregate.
The implication what the chart suggests is that banks believe nonperforming loans are NOT a problem (or alternatively they are simply ignoring expected losses to goose earnings).
The implication what I suggest is banks earnings have been overstated. Why? Because provisions for loan losses are a hit to earnings. I believe losses are coming for which there are no provisions.
The chart depicts a form of "extend and pretend" and overvaluation of assets on bank balance sheets. The Fed and the accounting board ignore this happening (encourage is probably a better word), hoping the problem will get better. With more foreclosures and bankruptcies on the horizon, I suggest it won’t.
If you or I was involved in drug laundering of as little as 2 dollars and fifty cents we would be in prison.
Wachovia bank, now part of Wells Fargo via a merger, has laundered countless sums of Mexican cartel drug money and will get off with a slap of the wrist. The reason …Wells Fargo is too big to fail.
Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.
They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.
This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.
Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history — a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.
No bank has been more closely connected with Mexican money laundering than Wachovia. Founded in 1879, Wachovia became the largest bank by assets in the southeastern U.S. by 1900.
This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.
The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.
That’s nice. Guns and ammunition cost money – lots of it. Getting that money requires some means of transporting it and "laundering" it. For that, we turn to the largest financial institutions in the world, who, it turns out, have never been prosecuted for these felonious acts.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.
Blatant disregard? Sounds like something you’d say at a sentencing hearing, right? Well, no….
No big U.S. bank — Wells Fargo included — has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again.
‘No Capacity to Regulate’
Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory.
Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering.
The theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks, Blum says.
“There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure,” Blum says. “They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line,
The Financial Reform Bill, which I’ve nicknamed The Let’s Not Allow Our Largest Donors To Embarrass Us Again Act of 2010, is not a total failure, but it fails miserably to address perhaps the worst part of the crisis - Too Big To Fail.
The bill doesn’t really address the Hexopoly of Too Big To Fail Banks. I’m also calling theseThe Systemic Six.
The big six banks (Goldie, Morgan, JP, B of A, Wells and Citi) will be limited in their hedge fund investments and trading activity, but not very limited. The interconnectedness, however, is unchanged, and this is the very crux of the matter.
Citi was saved to prevent it from dragging Wells down, Wachovia, Merrill, Morgan were all "assisted" to prevent Goldman and JPMorgan Chase from going down, and on and on. We were told that the dominoes were already falling after Lehman and so emergency measures (bailouts) were necessary.
And for arguments sake, let’s say this was true at the time or was the best option to prevent the Depression. OK, fine. But so why doesn’t the new legislation address that and seek a change for the fact that these six banks (and others) can cause such a massive chain reaction? It’s a shocking gap in the provisions of the bill.
And don’t even get me started on the Fannie and Freddie omission (consider those cans kicked down the road). If Finance Reform were a wedding, Fannie and Freddie would be placed at the farthest table from the action, over by the kitchen doors like the ugly cousins of the banks that they truly are.
Oh well, maybe we’ll get it right after the next economic evisceration. For now, The Hexopoly orThe Systemic Six are here to stay.
You may have seen this video before as it’s been on Zero Hedge and here at the Favorites, but the text below is from The Daily Bail and includes a little more description of the how the deal works. If this is true, it is truly outrageous. – Ilene
Listen to the deal OneWest Bank got from the FDIC to take over failed and seized Indymac. Don’t forget who is fundng the FDIC these days — taxpayers. Sheila’s been out of capital for months, so the bill comes to all of us now. An absolute don’t miss clip. Then do your best to spread it elsewhere.
As some of you already know, I blogged recently about being interviewed recently by our local NBC news affiliate. To read the blog, click here. Basically, IndyMac Bank (now OneWest Bank), is holding one of my clients hostage, demanding a $75k promissory note, or they will proceed to foreclosure. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why they were doing this. The BPO came in at the contract price of $275k, with a net to IndyMac of $241k. What advantage could there possibly be for them to proceed to foreclosure?
Yesterday, I figured it out. You see, IndyMac was taken over by the FDIC and sold to OneWest Bank in March/2009. Guess who the investors are behind OneWest? George Soros, Michael Dell, Steve Mnuchin (former Goldman Sachs executive), and John Paulson (hedge-fund billionaire).
Now, listen to the deal they got from the FDIC….
Basically, they purchased all current residential mortgages at 70% of par value (70% of the outstanding loan amounts). They purchased all current HELOCS at 58% of Par Value!!!
Next, in order to "sweeten the pot", the FDIC stepped…
The positive earnings announcement by Wells Fargo on Wednesday was marred by a sell recommendation from Dick Bove and a lot of chatter about credit writedowns and mortgage servicing rights (MSRs). I wanted to add a few words about the report, MSRs, and bank stocks more generally.
First of all, this has been a very good quarter for bank earnings. Many of the big names globally have surprised to the upside. this includes Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, SEB in Sweden, Credit Suisse in Switzerland and on down the line. As one would expect, most banks are profiting from record low interest rates.
The question for the big banks is whether the huge writedowns they are still taking and the run-up in their stock prices since march limits any upside in valuation. For smaller banks, we should expect weaker results as they are more leveraged to the sectors of the economy like commercial real estate and construction loans which are still suffering. Goldman and Morgan Stanley should do relatively better as they are really broker-dealers and both investment banking and sales & trading are doing well right now. On the whole, I have said I think upside is limited for the sector, but downside is vast. Hence I am bearish on bank stocks.
Let’s look at Wells Fargo (WFC) as an example of what is happening.
Wells reports record profits
Wells reported net income of $32 billion, a robust operating pre-tax profit of $10.8 billion, and record net income of $3.2 billion. Sounds wonderful. What’s not to like? That was bank analysts Dick Bove’s initial impression as well. Live on-air at CNBC, he said Wells Fargo “is proving itself to be a standout.”
But, once Bove got a peek under the hood and started to crunch the numbers at Wells, he was significantly less impressed – so much so that he issued a sell rating literally nine hours later. And he took a lot of flak for this about-face.
Prominent banking analyst Dick Bove, who caused a stir Wednesday with seemingly contradictory remarks on Wells Fargo, has decided he’ll no longer provide immediate earnings commentary on air.
Over the past week there’s been a lot of talk about Wells Fargo (WFC) and whether it mistakenly swallowed a hand-grenade when it bought Wachovia late last year.
So how’s the market reacted? Mostly ignoring it. In the middle of last week the stock took a hit, but it’s only back to where it was 5 days ago, and certainly the hit has been nothing of the scale you’d imagine if the bank were really in so much trouble.
At this point, we’re inclined to believe the market, which in the past has done a pretty good job of sussing out the banks that are in trouble. That the market isn’t freaked out by a few articles speaks volumes.
It’s no secret that the growth of U.S. shale oil has been a thorn in the sides of both Saudi Arabia and Russia. They have seen their market shares erode as the shale boom made the U.S. the world’s largest producer of crude oil. But Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, is a single entity that produces 13 percent of the world’s oil and controls 17 percent of the world’s proved reserves. That puts them in a very p...
Is the S&P starting out a new month and quarter at a very important price point? This chart would say YES!
This chart looks at the S&P 500 on a weekly basis over the past 12-years, reflecting that it has spent the majority of the past 9-years “inside of this rising channel and above its 200-week moving average!”
The weakness in March saw the S&P break below the bottom of the channel and its 200-week ma line for the first time in 9-years.
The small counter-trend rally last week has the S&...
As the world reacts to the global economic slowdown because of the COVID-19 virus event and the massive stimulus programs and central bank efforts to support the global economy, investors still expect weakness in the US and foreign markets. We believe this expected weakness will not subside until news of a proper resolution to this virus event is rooted in the minds of investors and global markets.
Hong Kong and China are currently concerned about experiencing a “third wave” of the COVID-19 virus within their society. As the economies open back up to somewhat normal, people are very concerned that a renewed wave of new infections will suddenly appear and potenti...
The Federal Reserve had a precursor before it became the lender of last resort. It wasn’t an institution or a government department. It was a single, solitary man named J. Pierpont Morgan. Mr. Morgan, he was called in the newspapers, and you didn’t need to go any further – everyone knew to whom you were referring.
Stock market panics were common in the early 1900’s because of the agrarian nature of the economy. Each summer, the local banks that catered to farmers throughout the country began calling their money back from the banks in New York City and Chicago so they could raise enough capital to bring in the h...
NanoVibronix (NASDAQ: NAOV) shares are trading higher on Wednesday.
The company announced it has received reimbursement approval from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for its PainShield.
NanoVibronix focuses on the manufacturing and sale of noninvasive biological response-activating devices that target biofilm prevention, wound healing, and pain therapy. Its principal products include UroShield, an ultrasound-based product to prevent bacterial colonization and biofilm in urinary catheters, enhance antibiotic efficacy,...
Anyone holding bitcoin would have watched the market with alarm in recent weeks. The virtual currency, whose price other cryptocurrencies like ethereum and litecoin largely follow, plummeted from more than US$10,000 (£8,206) in mid-February to briefly below US$4,000 on March 13. Despite recovering to the mid-US$6,000s at the time of writin...
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...
…
.png)
The positive earnings announcement by Wells Fargo on Wednesday was marred by a sell recommendation from Dick Bove and a lot of chatter about credit writedowns and mortgage servicing rights (MSRs). I wanted to add a few words about the report, MSRs, and bank stocks more generally.
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.