Technical Tuesday – Charting our Future
by Phil - February 1st, 2011 6:58 am
Fundamentals don’t matter so let’s look at the technicals.
As you can see from David Fry’s chart, there’s a good reason that XLF was my Trade of the Year in December 25th’s "Secret Santa’s Inflation Hedges." The full force of the US Government is backstopping this play, in which we took the Jan $12/13 bull call spread at .80 and sold the Jan $11 puts for .40 for net .40 on the $1 spread. I said, just 37 days ago, that this could be the easiest 150% you ever make.
Just 5 weeks later, the bull call spread is .90 and the short puts are .30 for a net .60 – up 50% in 5 weeks. That SHOULD help keep us ahead of inflation, right? Keep in mind this was a trade, among others, that I published for free to the General Public on both our subscription site as well as Seeking Alpha and then it was syndicated on Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, MarketWatch, AOL, etc. I’m told that about 250,000 people read my free public posts when I make them available, so it’s not like these trades were so secret.
Yet, however many people decided these were good trade ideas and followed them – it didn’t matter because our counter-party wants to lose! Yes, that’s right, we are riding on the coat-tails of the Banksters, who are taking our future tax dollars from the Federal Reserve and betting them on rising commodity prices and monetary inflation. In order for us to bet on that, we need some idiotic counter-party to take the other side of that bet – one that assumes falling commodity prices and no inflation.
Even in under-educated America, who would be foolish enough to take such a bet? Why it’s us, of course! Well, it’s the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America who are spending $100Bn a month buying Treasury Bills at the lowest rates every (assuming no inflation) while trying to justify their misuse of our money with BS statistics that we’ve stripped away in "How the US Government Manipulates Inflation Data" along with this helpful video:
The Fed is using YOUR money, through debt, taxation and devaluation, to buy notes that a rational investor wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole and the ONLY way you can prevent yourself from getting screwed…
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Monday Market Movement – Do or Dive!
by Phil - January 24th, 2011 8:14 am
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Big week ahead!
$30Bn in POMO from the Fed runs headlong into earnings reports from 15 of the 30 Dow components along with MoMo darlings like VMW (tonight), BLK (tomorrow morning), POT (Thursday morning) and AMZN (Thursday night). I already sent out an Alert to Members this morning outlining our strategy and Stock World Weekly did it’s usual amazing job of wrapping up last week’s action and laying out the week ahead so I won’t be too redundant here. The key driver for the markets continues to be the dollar, which is making more sense now as it saved the Dow and the S&P last week (50% of revenues come from overseas) but not the Russell (only 10% of revs from overseas) or the Nasdaq (30%).
The Dollar was relentlessly driven down last week, bottoming out at 78 on Friday evening, back to November lows, where they ditched the Dollar all the way down to 75.63 in early November before it broke back up and ran to 81.44 on the last day of the month. Now we’re back down 4.2% from the Thanksgiving highs for the Dollar and the Dow and S&P are up 8%, which is our usual 2:1 correlation yet Uncle Rupert’s Journal would have you believe that the Dollar no longer matters and that this rally is about (please sit down, PSW cannot be responsible for any beverages you are about to spit on your keyboad) – wait for it – Fundamentals!
According to the Journal: In recent weeks, for example, moves in stocks and the U.S. dollar have had little connection—a breakdown of the trend during much of 2010, when they were virtual mirror images of each other. Stocks were considered risky and would rise when investors were feeling confident, while the dollar was a haven, benefiting when investors were worried. Commodities, too, have broken away from rising and falling with risk perceptions. Now more old-fashioned concerns, like the weather, are having an impact. Corn, soybean and wheat prices jumped this month after supply estimates were cut due to dry weather in South America and floods in Australia.
Really? So the run in DBA from 22.85 in June of last year to 31.65 (38.5%) in early November was speculation but the run from 31.65 to 33.50 (6%) since then has been based on solid fundamentals. ROFL!!! That…
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Which Way Wednesday – Topping or Popping?
by Phil - January 19th, 2011 8:30 am
When we first began following the Alpha 2 TradeBot pattern on Jan 3rd (see Stock World Weekly for current chart) back on Jan 3rd, I said: "Let’s assume we get that extra 2.5% between Friday’s close and expiration day – that’s going to take us to Dow 11,850 and S&P 1,285." Yesterday the Dow hit our 11,850 mark, 2 days ahead of schedule! If we break higher here (and the S&P is already at 1,295 – see David Fry’s chart) then we are "off the charts" and possibly running a whole new series – which is very possible as last year the IBanks didn’t have $25Bn worth of POMO a week to feed into their machines – that has to be worth something right? At least 10 S&P points…
If, on the other hand, S&P 1,300 becomes a hard stop and the Dow can’t hold 11,850, let alone break up over 12,000 – then the second part of my prediction was that we would pull back to Dow 10,900 and S&P 1,188 – a test of the 200 day moving averages. If we get that pullback and those levels hold, THEN we will be happy to get on the bullish bandwagon – we just want a test!
Not, of course, that we are waiting around doing nothing. We already had our "Secret Santa Inflation Hedges" and, at this point, you either have them or you shouldn’t even look as they are up well over 200% already and the market is "only" up 2.5% since then. We were waiting patiently for Russell 800 to confirm our Breakout 2 levels and we not only got that but we got several nice tests since then so we’ll have to put that one in the "win" column as well for the bulls.
While I don’t like chasing the MoMo stocks higher, AAPL and IBM show us that there are some solid fundamentals underlying the big boys and I mentioned in the Morning Post of the 6th that I did like CSCO ($20.77 at the time) and GLW ($18.98 that day) as solid, go-forward positions. Even without our option plays, they are both up nicely in less than two weeks – certainly a higher percentage (5% for GLW, 2.5% for CSCO) than AMZN, which is up $3.50 (1.8%) or NFLX, which is up $6 (3.2%), who I cautioned…
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13% Thursday – When Will You Capitulate?
by Phil - January 13th, 2011 8:16 am
It’s starting!
The last of the bears are now capitulating. We’re hearing it in Member Chat and we’re reading it in analyst reports and we’re seeing the fund managers on TV – it is very out vogue to be a bear.
Just a few weeks ago, I pointed out to Members how few bears remained by saying "Look to your left, look to your right, look in front of you and look behind you – you would be the only bear." That was way back when "only" 20% of investors were bearish – as of yesterday, we lost 1/3 of those poor creatures and now only 13% of the market is bearish. Now you can look diagonally as well and you’ll STILL be the only bear!
Certainly the market seems to be proving the primary axiom of "You can’t fight the Fed." Pretty much no matter what happens, the market goes up. Bryan Leighton from Traddr! Makes a good point saying: "It’s a neutral to positive market and the only thing that can change that is some sort of surprise event out of Europe or out of Asia or something major out of the US that the Fed is not ready for or prepared for. If they are prepared for it – it will not happen – it will not have a major effect on the markets."
That’s the reality we’re dealing with out there. As long as the Fed and their pet IBanks are running the markets and as long as volume is at 3-year lows, allowing the TradeBots to control each move – then it is wrong to be a bear. But, is it 87% wrong? 87% bullish sentiment isn’t just "very" bullish – it’s a new, historic high. It’s like going to a fight where the entire crowd only cheers for one guy which, like professional wrestling, would be an automatic indication that the game must be fake, Fake, FAKE!
As you can see from this longer-term chart, we are as extremely bullish now as we were extremely bearish in the two worst market events of the past quarter-century. Much the way that Black Monday of 1987 and the Crashes of 2008/9 were unique buying opportunities at 15% bullish, this may be a unique shorting opportunity at 15% bearish that you are not likely to see again for…
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Take-Off Tuesday – Playing the One-Way Market
by Phil - January 11th, 2011 8:28 am
Up, up and away!
It’s Super Market! Strange index from another reality, who ignores bad news and achieves p/e multiples far beyond those of rational markets. Super Market, who can break resistance on low volume, move higher without consolidation and who – disguised as a genuine Price Discovery Mechanism, an actual indicator of the true-value of listed companies – Instead fights a never-ending battle with rational thinking and negative data because, in America, the market is only allowed to go one way!
OK, I got that sarcasm off my chest, now we can cheer-lead. Go Russell 800 go! Is today finally the day? After a rational-looking sell-off yesterday on very legitimate concerns over the fact that Portugal is now borrowing money at over 7% interest (a rate that would cost the US over $1Tn in interest annually), we had essentially a "Free Money Day," where the market goes up and up and now we have even better futures, where another 0.5% is being tacked on in early trading (7:30).
Let’s embrace the positives first and foremost. Both Japan and China have now stepped up to assist the 17-member EU to beat back high rates by pledging to actively participate in this week’s bond auctions, the first of the new year. The IMF (mostly the US) has also pledged to backstop loans – all this is giving the Euro a nice 0.5% bounce that has knocked the dollar down to 81, which is down 0.6% from yesterday’s open so of course our markets are up 0.6% – THATS WHAT ALWAYS HAPPENS!
What doesn’t always happen is the Nasdaq punching through the 2,700 mark on the back of AAPL’s run to $345 as the expected announcement of the Verizon IPhone is pushing Apple’s expected 2011 earnings past the $20 per share mark so $340 (p/e 17) sounds almost conservative compared to BIDU (p/e 87), AMZN (p/e 74) or NFLX (p/e 71) and, if you think about it, Apple has a search engine, sells things on-line and has Apple TV, which does Netflix’s job so if Goldman Sachs can call Netflix the "killer app" for tablet computers – what does that make Apple TV, which is designed to run off the IPad and includes Netflix as just one of its offerings?
The Wednesday before last, we made shorting the AAPL 2013 $175 puts at $8 the base for buying…
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Wednesday Chart Watch – The International Perspective
by Phil - December 29th, 2010 7:56 am
So, how are we doing?
I liked David Fry’s tweet (is that the right word – I feel so old when I don’t know this stuff!) yesterday which said: "SPY volume again pathetic at 55M shares. What’s there to write about today? Seems many investors still stuck on planes that aren’t moving." Dave was smart enough to take the day off – me, not so much. We did pick up another .20 with up the DIA Weekly $114 calls at 10:41 in Member Chat for $1.60and those were done at 1:05 for $1.80 as the market looked too risky to me. That was kind of silly as we do know that low volume is the bulls best friend but we’re trying to get back to cash each day on quick trades – especially on calls that expire on Friday!
As you can see from the Euro chart (click to enlarge), I’m not ready to give up on my bearish premise, which is essentially that Europe may be in worse shape than the US and the Dollar and – IF the EU runs into crisis – then the Dollar looks RELATIVELY better and, despite all of Timmy and The Bernank’s best efforts to destroy it – a strong dollar will pretty much undermine everybody’s bullish premise since the only real bullish premise people have is that our worthless currency will drive people into equities and commodities since Treasury and the Fed will artificially keep bond rates so low as to make them unpalatable alternatives.
Even Glenview’s Larry Robbins, who I thought would perhaps have an original thought in his Dow 20,000 premise, does not. The man entrusted with $4.8Bn of other people’s money predicts that p/e multiples will expand by, get this, 45% by the end of 2013 – rocketing the Dow to 20,000 despite just 5% annual earnings growth. Larry Robbins thinks those investing in 10-year treasuries aren’t doing so for the paltry return. They’re in it to front run the Fed and make a quick buck at the expense of the taxpayers. Once this trade is over, Robbins says, they have nowhere to go except the high quality equities in the stock market.
Read into any bull premise and you’ll find inflation at the heart of it. The Global Economy is not really improving but the numbers are looking up because it costs more money to do everything. Now,…
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Testy Tuesday – Topping or Popping?
by Phil - December 28th, 2010 8:24 am
Looks like we picked the wrong week to short FCX!
Copper hit a new all-time high in Shanghai this morning (as the guy who owns 90% of London’s closed for the holiday exchange supplies sold it to himself for more money than he did yesterday) and gold is back at $1,400 in the futures and that should give us a better entry on FCX puts than we expected for round 2 but Paul Krugman has me worried now that maybe commodity prices are just high because the World hasn’t got enough of them to go around. Usually Paul and I agree but i think he may be discounting the effect of a 10% decline in the dollar a little too much – which is understandable as he is still arguing for more stimulus while I’m arguing that the way they are stimulating now is causing this problem and can not and should not be sustained.
Still, we have to be pragmatic. That’s why, this weekend, I posted our "Secret Santa Inflation Hedges for 2011" as a follow-on to the "Breakout Defense – 5,000% in 5 Trades or Less" ideas of the 11th and, in the week between the two, we had bullish bets on HMY, XLF, CAKE, TNA, IWM, CCJ, CHK, EXC, TNA, XLF, UNG, GLD, AAPL, GLW, TOT and AXP – which I had mentioned on the 19th in the weekend post "It’s Never too Early to Predict the Future." Just because I think there’s going to be a disaster doesn’t mean we can’t go with the flow while we wait, right?
We don’t have to like the market to buy it above our breakout lines but we do need to keep in mind that this is a very thin rally that is very likely nothing but window dressing aimed at dragging money off the sidelines so the IBanks who have been propping up the markets can, once again, stick the retail shareholders with the bag as they load up on puts (watch the VIX to confirm) and crash the markets once again. I’ve seen it happen in 1999, I saw it happen in 2008 and, both times, the rally lasted longer than seemed logical but the smart play was to hit and run – not to leave your money on the table but to participate in the upswings and then…
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Thoughtful Thursday – The True Meaning of Christmas
by Phil - December 23rd, 2010 8:19 am
Why it’s almost Christmas Eve, Mr. Scrooge!
The Global markets are closing for the weekend and we’re bound to have a very slow day – if you are waiting for a Santa Clause rally on today’s trading, you are very likely to be disappointed. Today is a day for relaxation and reflection. Remember, the words of Jacob Marley, who said:
Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!
Marley was a man who worked and worked until the day he died and regretted it every day after. If you don’t believe in an afterlife and you don’t believe in leaving behind the World a better place than you found it, at least find some time for yourself so people don’t call you "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner" after you’re gone.
I was inspired this morning by a post on Barry’s site titled "Give and You Will Receive" listing 13 good ways we can all give every day. ’Tis the season of giving and goodwill to all man and all that and my children just completed their annual ritual of wrapping up all the toys they are done with to give to children who need them more than they do. It’s a little thing, but if you want your kids to learn the benefits of charity, actually parting with things they like or liked and physically giving them to kids who clearly appreciate it is much more gratifying than writing a check to some anonymous organization. The same goes for volunteering some time (and money!) at a local shelter and helping some people come in from the cold for a nice, warm meal – it makes you appreciate your family dinner a LOT more!
Anyway, end of commercial. Let’s just see who’s being naughty and who’s being nice this morning. We have quite a bit of data today with November Durable Goods at 8:30 (which have been tailing off) along with Personal Income and Spending. 2010 has NOT been an exciting year so far with monthly gains of about 0.4% but, on the bright side, there were only small negative months but this report only covers November and will not…
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Tinsel Tuesday – Market Decorations Make Us Merry
by Phil - December 21st, 2010 8:24 am
I figured out how to get bullish!
Just read the Wall Street Journal. On the front page we have "Nuclear Pact Adds Backers" above the fold along with a fluff piece on the weather in Europe. There are 3 other featured articles on the front page of the World’s most widely-read financial paper and one is a fluff piece on the Jimmy Stewart museum, one is on the obscure concept of betting people are going to die (very fun and interesting but "The World’s biggest financial paper"?) and the last is on the SEC looking into Mark Hurd’s exit from HP. On the left is "What’s News" with about 30 summaries of articles in the paper so one would think you could look this over and have a really good idea of what’s going on in the World.
I see that "Spain said its regional governments are on track to meet their budget targets" and Dow component Boeing (who fell off yesterday) announced a "$1 Billion commercial satellite deal with the Mexican Government" and Blackstone is starting a $15Bn fund and TD is buying Chrysler Financial for $6.3Bn and (and this is a real XMas gift to Wall Street) "A Senate deal to fund the federal government until early March doesn’t include money to enact the health-care overhaul or stepped up regulation of Wall Street" and also that North Korea held their fire during a South Korean artillery drill. Wow! All seems right with the World, doesn’t it?
If I just read the WSJ, I find no reason to be bearish at all. Certainly there is no mention of Spanish Bond Yields rising 37% in a month to 5.5% at today’s $4Bn bond auction. There is no mention of China’s Vice Chairman of National Development saying that China "needs to prepare for a long- term fight against inflation" or that oil imports into China are expected to fall off next year as their economy cools down. You would think the fact that BAC, JPM and four other lenders facing a suspension of foreclosure activity under court order in New Jersey would be a news story or perhaps some mention of the 29-year high in sugar prices would be of interest to investors along with the limit-up trading in cotton to record highs for no particular reason other than…
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Monday Market Movement – “Like Moths to a Flame!”
by Phil - November 29th, 2010 8:01 am
"Investors are drawn to China like moths to a flame." – Neil Woodford
That’s a great quote. Neil is the head of investments at Invesco, running the UK’s largest investment fund with a decade of 15% average returns under his belt so let’s take the man seriously for starters. Mr Woodford’s concerns coincide with figures showing that food prices in China were 10.1pc higher in October than in the same month last year – a level of inflation not seen since mid-2007. This is deepening concern that China’s economy is now starting to overheat.
"I do not deny that in the long term an economy like China will grow much more rapidly than the West. But I think one has to be very careful about correlating growth necessarily with economic opportunity, and opportunity to make money," said Mr. Woodford.
And so it is that the moths are all drawn to the light, even as it burns them. For they are blindly drawn to its grace, hitting their heads about the light, destroying their senses, going without food, and becoming easy prey to those that hunt them. Even those few moths that will get within the embrase of the light will burn unable to escape, ever.
There was no escape for Ireland this weekend as the IMF and EU pinned the country down and forced them to swallow a $130Bn aid package at (get this!) 6.7%. $17.5Bn of this money is to come out of Irish pension funds all just to make sure Bill Gross doesn’t lose any of the money he lent to Ireland! I honestly cannot tell you who is the more vile, despicable villain in this debacle. Is it the banks, who started this mess with their idiotic lending practices? Is it the lobbyists and lawmakers, who turned Ireland into a tax haven for EU Corporations and destroyed the economy by funneling tax breaks to the wealthy? Is it the Irish Government, who stupidly bailed out the failing banks with guarantees that put the nation on the hook for more money than their entire GDP. Is it the bondholders, who drove up the cost of financing Ireland’s newfound debt to levels that threatened to break the National Bank or is it the EU & IMF, who are effectively playing the role of loan sharks, borrowing $100Bn at…
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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 Favorites backup site
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