Yentervention Wednesday – Kan Baffles Bulls
by Phil - September 15th, 2010 8:22 am
As we discussed yesterday, it was meet the new boss, same as the old boss in Japan as Naoto Kan’s re-election sent the Yen to new highs as he was considered the least likely candidate to back intervention. Well surprise, surprise this morning as Japan officially intervened in the FOREX markets and sent the Yen down a full 2.5% as they used their Yen to purchase an undisclosed basket of currencies.
Since the Dollar is up today against both the Pound ($1.55) and the Euro ($1.29), we can assume the dollar is one of those currencies and demand for Dollars means upward pressure on rates so that should be the end of the TLT bounce for the moment. Stock boys want bonds to die so the money can come this way and bond boys want you to fear the stock market so you will let them hold your money (and charge you fees) at ridiculously low rates of interest. That’s they Yin and Yang of the markets.
“Investors were starting to doubt the government’s commitment to its pledge that it would take bold action,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, a senior economist at Itochu Corp. in Tokyo. Kan and Noda in recent weeks repeatedly said that Japan was ready to take “bold” measures to stem the currency. The Japanese government official said European and U.S. officials were informed of the move in an effort to avoid a negative reaction. It took a while to convince Europe because authorities there didn’t like the idea, the person said.
We’ll see if the stronger Dollar today puts pressure on commodities but we’re in pretty good shape as this rally, for a change, has not been led by commodities as the market is now flat to the August despite an 8% drop in oil prices (see USO on chart):
I often complain about rallies that are led by Financials and Commodities as those are things that suck money OUT of the economy and are not long-term drivers of growth. The entire 2006-7 rally was this kind of rally and I bitched about it all the way up. We also had housing back then, another type of commodity, but that’s so dead now it’s hardly worth mentioning, is it? Actually housing is where we used a lot of commodities like lumber and copper etc. 33 months after the onset of the Great Recession, new home sales are still down 70% and non-residential construction is down 36% – that market is dead, dead, dead.
We get housing starts next week but who really cares? …
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Turning $10K into $50K by Jan 21st – Week 12 Update (Members Only)
by Phil - September 4th, 2010 9:24 am
What an exciting 10 weeks these trades have had!
The most important thing to take away from these hedged play reviews is how important it is NOT TO TOUCH THEM. We orginated this group on June 11th and the Dow was at 10,200 and it ran up to 10,600 and down to 9,600, back to 10,700, down to 9,800 again and is now back to 10,400. We could have made some good adjustments and we could have made some bad adjustments but the best move is to do nothing with long-term, hedged positions while the market gyrates UNLESS something fundamentally changes in your range outlook.
Rather than panic out of positions like these examples, a simple disaster hedge was used in the July 26th update to ride out the dip, while letting time (theta) decay contine to do it’s work on the premiums we sold…
The VIX was at 30 back on June 11th and that, in part, determines the nature of the trade ideas we decide to use. The higher the VIX, the more we want to sell premium as we simply profit from the declining VIX (now 23.5). The idea of these picks was to find $10,000 worth of small plays that we thought could gain 500% by Jan 21st as part of a larger portfolio. If you can do this with just 10% of a $100K portfolio or 5% of a $200K portfolio, that’s plenty of risk for these uncertain times and it’s a nice 25-50% bonus on the entire portfolio if it works out. Risk can be a component of a conservative portfolio if we wall it off safely.
Our first play was a fundamentals play on YRCW, assuming they wouldn’t go bankrupt. 10,000 shares at .21 was the original entry ($2,100) and I called an audible on this one on 7/7 to add 2x at .11 rather than stop out. That brought the net down to 0.143 on 30,000 or $4,290 so a bit more than a DD overall and we took 1/2 off the table this week at .29 ($5,850), turning this one into a free play ($1,560 profits in pocket) with 15,000 shares to ride out but we lost our nerve at .41 because we couldn’t get .10 for the Jan $1s so we gave up (and rightly so it turns out) and cashed out for another $6,150 in profits for a total profit of $7,710. YRCW is once again…
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Smart Portfolio Management Update – The $10,000 Portfolio
by Phil - August 7th, 2010 8:25 am
Options Sage submits:
“Never risk what you do have and do need on what you don’t have and don’t need”
Smart portfolio management is a world apart from conventional portfolio management. While conventional portfolio management offers generic guidelines to diversify capital, smart portfolio management is tailored to your personal circumstances. With that in mind this article has been divided into a three-part series. The first discusses a $10K portfolio while the second will offer suggestions for a $100K portfolio and the final article will discuss $1M portfolios.
Although this first article in the series addresses prudent strategies for a $10K portfolio, many conservative investors are likely to find the strategies addressed throughout suitable for their own portfolios – though the % allocations will differ as we will see in the future articles. No matter what your risk tolerance, a portfolio comprising some relatively conservative trades is always prudent!
Phil once commented that, when trading a $10,000 portfolio, “every $100 counts”!
Capital should be allocated judiciously in a $10K portfolio. NEVER allocate a majority of your capital to any single trade. Dedicating 20% of your portfolio to relatively conservative trades (shown below) is appropriate but exceeding 30% is far too risky when dealing with limited capital. With a $10K portfolio, it becomes increasingly imperative to be right first time. Financial constraints limit your ability to scale into trades at different threshold levels and that makes timing critical unless….
Unless you figure out how to trade without requiring perfect timing of the market! Those of you trading along with Phil’s earnings spreads have already seen some of the ways we take advantage of stock movement, whether they go up, stay flat or even drop to some degree…
Strategy A: The Covered Call – With a Twist – Making 30% in 5 Months
The original trade was 5 June $3/4 bull call spread at net .87 ($435), which finished at $500 for a nice $65 gain (15%) in 7 weeks. A lot of small portfolio player spend too much time "going for it" with risky trades when there is very good money to be made on sensible ones. – Phil
Instead of placing the short call out-of-the-money in the conventional format, the short call is actually placed in-the-money.
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Pass/Fail Friday – Europe’s Stress Test at High Noon!
by Phil - July 23rd, 2010 8:23 am
What a way to end the week!
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….
- Since XLF is also $14.45, we can also have some math fun. In theory, XLF should move 1/3 of what FAZ moves so for XLF
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Tech Wreck Tuesday – IBM and TXN “Disappoint”
by Phil - July 20th, 2010 8:13 am
Wheeeee – this is fun!
Well, it’s fun when you have disaster hedges anyway. I already sent out an Alert to Members this morning reminding them that there’s no point in having disaster hedges if you don’t use that money to buy on the dips, though. Yesterday we added downside, leveraged plays on SDS (2) and DXD and our focus short was on NFLX (last week it was MA, and that went very well) along with our usual DIA Mattress play. That shifted us a bit negative as we failed to hold our watch levels and now we are sadly looking all the way down to those low closes of: Dow 9,686, S&P 1,022, Nasdaq 2,081, NYSE 6,434, Russell 590, SOX 332 and Transports 1,905 as a possible re-test if things get really ugly.
On July 3rd I laid out "5 Plays that Make 500% if the Market Falls" and, fortunately, we didn’t need them as we took off on Monday but they are still good plays and a little cheaper now than they were when we last tested our bottoms. If you are not well-protected – I strongly suggest you read this post and at least be ready to initiate a hedge if we can’t turn this morning around. As with most day’s lately – it’s all about copper and the $3 line…
That being said, I do think we will turn this morning around eventually - because IBM is down $7 and the Dow moves about 8 points per $1 of component value so that’s hitting the Dow for 56 points all by itself. IBM’s earnings were great but revs missed, in large part due to currency issues. BRIC revenues were up 22% for the company, despite the crap exchange rate.
TXN got whacked too on their report that profits nearly tripled on a 42% jump in revenues (not kidding). "Demand has continued very solid and very broad-based," said Ron Slaymaker, the company’s vice president of investor relations.
Mr. Slaymaker said the biggest positive surprise in the period was stronger demand from companies that buy industrial equipment, which have rebounded much slower than consumers from the recession. One notable area of weakness, he added, was sales of chips used in cellphones. TI has long been a major supplier to handset-maker Nokia Corp., which in June lowered its second-quarter forecast.
The company reported net income for the period ended
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FinReg Friday – Goldman Gets a Wrist Slap and BP Stops the Flow!
by Phil - July 16th, 2010 8:24 am
Dip, what dip?
I didn’t see any dip, what dip are you talkin’ about? Oil spill? I don’t see no oil spilling, do you? Goldman did what? They’re regulating who? Fuhgeddaboudit! That’s right markets, move along, nothing to see here. In fact, exactly as we predicted since the market first started dropping – it’s all just noise in between options expiration days, a way to traumatize the retail suckers who run in and out of positions under the direction of their chosen media messiahs. Clearly most market analysis is nothing more than "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
If you think this chart looks a little like someone is laughing at you – you are not being paraniod. This smiley face pattern is bought to you by the chart painters at GS and the rest of the Gang of 12 and their media lapdogs who push and pull the markets around on a daily basis. I asked back on the 6th, when I very accurately called for a "Turnaround Tuesday – Will CNBC Apologize to America?" as I pointed out the ridiculous degree of negativity that had contributed to the mini crash, which I had predicted on Monday the 21st, when my 9:40 Alert to Members said:
Good morning!
I have to go with my gut initially and stick to our plan, which is roll up the USO and DIA short plays (rolling the open puts to higher strikes) and, if the Dow holds 10,500 and USO holds $36 ($80 oil), we’ll have to sell June puts and roll our puts to a longer month – hoping for a post-holiday sell-off.
Upside levels are 50 dmas at: Dow 10,600, S&P 1,140, Nasdaq 2,350, NYSE 7,130, Russell 683, SOX 366 (already over), Transports 2,130, Oil $78 and Gold $1,200 (already over). Anything less than that is just a move to the top of our range and then we can expect a nice pullback by Wednesday.
Obviously, it’s a great time to add some disaster hedges, I now like selling TZA $6 puts for .45 and buying the TZA $6/8 bull call spread for .50 and that’s net .05 on the $2 spread so even if you have to margin $3,000 for 10 short TZA puts, the $450 you collect plus another $50 buys you $2,000 worth of downside insurance.
I like those DIA June
…
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Testy Tuesday – Already?
by Phil - July 13th, 2010 8:19 am
Wheeeee, this is fun!
It’s only been a week since I called for "Turnaround Tuesday" and asked the question "Will CNBC Apologize to America" for their ridiculous, sickening parade of negativity that chased their poor viewers out of the market (now 600 points ago) by completely misrepresenting the economic outlook in order to protect the TERRIBLE advice given by Jim Cramer, the Fast Money Crew, their sponsors etc. etc. – it was all one national frenzy of media negativity designed to shove retail investors entirely out of the market while the cognoscenti went shopping.
It’s not just CNBC, of course, it’s a problem with the whole MSM but I ranted about corporate (top 0.01%) control of the media last week so let’s move on as we wave bye-bye to all the beautiful sheeple who were kind enough to sell us their stocks at the bottom, despite my warnings. Our 500% upside plays are now well on their way to making 500% for us and our "9 Fabulous Dow Plays Plus a Chip Shot" are also looking good already. Even the trade ideas I mentioned right in last Tuesday’s post are well on track as I said last week:
On Friday, I had said to Members right at 9:38, in the Morning Alert: "If we run up, then it will be prudent to get more neutral into the weekend but if we stay down and hold our levels, then saying a little bullish will be fine. Out of short-term short trades if you haven’t already. Keep in mind we have some great 500% upside plays you can still grab here if you think you are too short."
The latter was a reference to our 500% upside plays. We also went with EEM July $38 calls at .99, and a QLD $50/53 bull call spread for $1.30 (selling puts as well for more profits) as well as long plays on RIMM, AA, HOV, VLO and TASR. My optimism was based on the considered TA analysis I shared with Members at 2:39:
After completing last month’s "Omega III" market pattern on the Trade Bots, it’s now time to spring the bear trap and run the "Apha II" into options expiration on July 16th. Maybe there will be as little logic to the rise as there was to the fall – who really cares – it’s just our jobs to try to
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Thursday Already? This Week Is Flying By!
by Phil - July 8th, 2010 7:55 am
Woops – blink and you miss an opportunity in this market (see David Fry’s chart).
This is where we (fundamental analysts) have a great advantage over the TA crowd. We don’t need to wait for "confirmation" of some pattern to tell us when to buy. I tell members that waiting for TA signals is like going to a store and seeing your favorite jeans on sale for 30% off but then refusing to buy until you see other people buying them – by which time you often miss your chance as they sell out.
TA people don’t believe stocks have a "value" outside of what the "trend" says the value is. If I say: "Hey, you can buy C for $3.65" they don’t say "How much can I buy?" they say "which way is it heading?" If I say: "BAC is down to $13.50 and you know that includes MER for FREE!" they say "yeah but they are forming a right shoulder." I’m not a contrarian – really, I’m not. I just believe things have actual long-term values.
I told Members to run out and buy Toyotas on sale (cars, not the stock) when they had the big recall because it was a known issue so the new ones wouldn’t have problems and and meanwhile dealers were giving all kinds of crazy incentives. A Camry that was worth $30,000 on Monday is a good deal at $25,000 on Friday isn’t it? Should you stand at the dealership and say "Well, I like the Camry but the price is forming a right shoulder pattern and I can extrapolate that the price will be $15,000 if it breaks the trend-line from 1987." If you said that, people would think you were an idiot, right? Why should a stock be different?
On Monday I detailed my 9 Favorite Dow Plays (+WFR to make 10) and not only do we look for stocks that are already "on sale" but we have a coupon, in the form of our FABULOUS Buy/Write Strategy, to give ourselves an additional 20% discount off today’s low prices. How can people say no? Yet they do say no to net 50% discounts on Dow components and I do get frustrated as it’s obvious to me that it’s a barrage of media negativity that scares people and keeps them on the sidelines, just when a stock sale is reaching it’s peak discount.
We’ve been very fortunate to…
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America is 234 Years Old Today – Is It Finished?
by Phil - July 4th, 2010 5:57 pm
"The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage." – Professor Joseph Olson
Is America, then, living on borrowed time? Are we so far past our prime and so into old age as a civilization that we are now senile and oblivious to our present surroundings, causing a danger to ourselves and others? Do we find ourselves living in the past and repeating the same old tales of our former glories over and over again to anyone who will listen? Are we barely kept alive by various medications that only stave off conditions that are getting worse every day while still imagining that, if there were a need, we could rise up and be strong again — but not today as there’s rice pudding for desert and we don’t want to miss that!
Well I have news for you – This country isn’t old and it isn’t sick but it has been drugged and it has been beaten down and robbed and I am going to tell you that I not only saw it happen, but I think I got a pretty good look at the 10,000 guys who did it. It was the top 0.01%! Who are the top 0,01%? They are the top 10,000 income earners in the United States of America. If you THINK you are in the top 0.01%, you are not. People in the top 10,000 know only KNOW they are in the top 0.01% but they know where they rank as well. The median ANNUAL income of a person in the top 0.01% is $50,000,0000. They have $350,000,000 in assets and, since 1978, that is an increase of 550% – how have you done the past 30 years?
Now we are (or used to be) a pretty rich country and the median income of the 118M people who earn enough money to pay income taxes is about $50,000 but the cost of living in the same country as people who earn an average of 976 times more than that is pretty high as well (see "The Dooh Nibor Economy"). Even worse, The 10,000 paid just $112Bn in taxes last year – that’s just over 20% of their income, while the rest…
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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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