Which Way Wednesday – Fed Edition
by Phil - September 23rd, 2009 8:22 am
We’re just waiting on the Fed today, as are the rest of the markets.
Yesterday’s volume was the lowest since Sept 11th but not as low as Monday, which was our lowest volume since the end of June, just before we had a 5% correction. June 26th and 29th were our last two consecutive ultra-low volume days but June 30th was much bigger (a down 100 day), July 1st was up again on low volume and then July 2nd was another big down day and we bottomed out on July 10th. That was the time that the media was telling us we were forming a "classic" head and shoulders pattern and were doomed to revisit the March lows. It was also the last time we enthusiastically bought stocks.
At the time of that weekly review (7/11), we had CAL at $10 (now $16.82), CBS at $5.97 (now $12.58), COST at $43.45 (now $58.58), CVX – who we just shorted – at $58.20 (now $72.60), DIS at $22.41 (now $28.38), EXM at $6.05 (now $7.32), RT at $7.12 (now $8.85), SNDK at $14.47 (now $22.91), SPY at $87.96 (now $107.27), SPWRA at $22.35 (now $32.63), SUN at $22.09 (now $27.75), V at $59.86 (now $74.41), VLO at $15.57 (now $20.50), WFR at $16.61 (now 19.09), X at $30.77 (now $50.45), XLF at $11.10 (now $15.35), XOM at $65.12 (now $69.85) and ZION at $11 (now $19). Of course our members had much better entries as we had been targeting our entries on all of those but anyone reading our weekend review on July 11th could have played along at home from those prices (we even spiked down at Monday’s open) and when I say we are now bearish – it is that we are bearishly protecting these ridiculous profits – the kind of profits you usually don’t get after 3 years, not 3 months!
Overall, the broader market is up 20% over that time so it can be argued that a monkey with a dart board could have made good picks at that time but, if you read that week’s notes – you’ll notice that this monkey was screaming for people to buy and was going against what pretty much EVERY other analyst was saying and I was confident enough to lay out my picks, my strategy and my fundamental arguments for everyone to see. It would have really sucked…
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Tuesday: The Brown Booster Shot
by Phil - September 22nd, 2009 7:58 am
What a morning already!
The futures were drifting along until 3 am and the Shanghai Composite had closed down 2.3% at 2,897. At 3:23 the Hang Seng was looking to close down as well but then Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister, on his way to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh this week said:
The stimulus that we have still got to give the world economy is greater than the stimulus we have already had. What we want to do is safeguard a recovery from a recession we feared would develop into a depression… By meeting at Pittsburgh, we are looking at how we can put in place for the future the mechanism or path that can lead us to either making decisions about better ways of creating growth that is sustainable in the future, a better early warning system for the world economy about potential crises, a better way of resolving difficulties or imbalances around the world.. I have been talking to many countries in Asia as well as in Europe, and I have been talking to President Obama and others, and I believe that there is support for that framework.
WooEee! More free money!!! No sooner did the words come out of Mr. Brown’s mouth than the Hang Seng began to climb, reversing a down day to finish up 228 points, right at the 21,700 line they have been struggling to hold since last Thursday. Gold flew up to $1,020 and oil jumped to $71 worthless-looking dollars and, as usual, once Asia closed, the dollar was free once again to drift down to 91 Yen (Japanese markets were closed today). But, despite his performance, Gordon Brown may not win today’s Globey Award for blatant market manipulation.
Brown’s performance was great – make a bold statement that indicates another $13Tn or more may be dumped on the Global economy and insinuate the the whole G20 is behind him before jumping on a plane, leaving the British tabloids (owned by Gang of 12 member Rupert Murdoch) to boost the market for 2 days in a row – BRILLIANT!
But, he does have serious competition this morning by not one, not two but THREE Gang of 12 members as UBS, GS and JPM triple teamed up and all issued reports saying "Russian stocks are poised to surge, extending an 88 percent rally this year, as the economy’s recovery spurs profits." "Earnings growth is set to be…
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Stock Market Crash – Year One Review III – March Madness!
by Phil - September 10th, 2009 5:51 pm
We left off in Part II with our Feb 23rd Big Chart Review.
Even though I said: "Once again we are in a market that environment that reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer jumps over a gorge, crashes, is taken up by a helicopter (Ben) smashing against the wall along the way only to fall all the way from the top again. Pain, pain and more pain every time we try to get long" – we still weren’t fully prepared for the devastation that was to follow as the Dow fell from 7,500 to 6,500 in the next 10 days. My commentary on the environment the next day was:
According to Cap, someone on the YHOO message board was counting the number of times CNBC talking heads said "nationalization" this morning and, as of 8:15, they were up to 300 times. Sadly, this is the fear-mongering that is driving the markets to new lows while Cramer continues to keep his sheeple out of protective ETFs like SKF. So you have the man’s network telling you financials are going to zero while dog and pony boy tells his minions to sell ALL the financials, causing them to go to zero - even though they could hold on and protect themselves with conta-funds, if Cramer didn’t spend 3 days a week convincing his viewers contra-funds are poison. I’ve never seen anything like this outside of a racketerring investigation. Speaking of racketeering - Dennis Kucinich nailed it when he pinned that charge on Paulson and company back in November.
Our wall of worry continues to be a steep one. After yesterday’s failure we do not expect too much out of today, we’ll be happy to just see a bottom at this point but it’s looking a little more likely that we’re heading into a capitulation event that can take us down to frightening levels. The 60% line is a line the markets dare not cross but, as I pointed out yesterday, we already lost the SOX and the Nikkei, with the Hang Seng and the BSE hanging on by a thread. Let’s take these levels very seriously, if the administration can’t turn it around this week – the downward momentum can easily pick up steam.
I’ll spare you the details other than to say we DIDN’T turn it around that week and the downward momentum DID pick up steam. I was at war with…
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Thrilling Thursday Morning – Beijing Bop
by Phil - September 3rd, 2009 8:28 am
That is, of course, what residents of Macau are required to chant every morning in honor of Stanley Ho, who held the monopoly on casinos in China until 1992. This morning it turns out Macau’s economy contracted by 13.7% in Q2, it’s 3rd consecutive quarter of shrinkage. It’s possible that the restrictions placed on civil servants in 2008 to stop them from gambling and to curb money laundering has caused much of the decline why is the decline accelerating if things are so good in China? One thing about Macau is that all the US businesses that are now there make it harder for the Chinese government to pad the statistics and, taken at face value, Maccau is underperfoming the rest of China by 22%.
This is worth noting today as China is leading the market bounce as the vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said the authorities will promote a “stable and healthy” market, tempering investor concern that the government wants to curb equity and property speculation. Ministers from the Group of 20 nations are likely to suggest the global economy is healing when they meet in London this weekend, while the European Central Bank probably will keep interest rates at a record low today. The Shangai composite index ran right up to the 5% rule today and has pulled a turnaround in global equities. As noted in David Fry’s chart, we were oversold and due for a little bounce anyway.
As noted by Ben over in our Chart School section, copper has climbed back into the "stupid zone" on that news but still has a ways to go before getting stupid enough to short again. We’ll be keeping an eye on the copper miners like PCU, FCX and RTP as well as BHP, who got a nice pop on a UBS upgrade this morning but it’s a little early to short until we see jobs reports today and tomorrow.
This is not surprising to us as we read the Fed minutes yesterday and the greenest shoot they could find was that things were picking up in other countries, a favorite ploy we discussed in Monday’s post as the Shanghai was falling 6.7% that day. Fortunately, we were playing bullish into the close as we know how this game works and I had said to members just ahead of the Fed, at…
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Which Way Wednesday – Fed Minutes Might Help
by Phil - September 2nd, 2009 8:26 am
Wheee what a ride!
I don’t think we could have had a better day as the move up allowed us to place our bear plays (we went naked on our DIA $98 puts right at the top at 10 am) and the only fear we had was the morning data but by 10:10 I sent out an Alert to Members reviewing the bullish-looking data but then concluding: "Still this should give us a big boost with volume still light at 30M at 10am. Unless we break 9,600 with some authority, this should just be another shorting opportunity." We were still concerned about good Auto Sales numbers boosting us back up but they were actually a series of disappointments all day long.
As David Fry points out in his morning post: "Most trading systems don’t have a “feel” component and mine doesn’t either. The only logical thing which we’ve commented on repeatedly as have others is light volume and how the news hasn’t jived with reality. And, recently, investors have been selling good news versus buying bad news as before." This is why PSW always stresses the fundamentals in stock trading. The market can trade against them for quite some time but, eventually, the true value will set you free (and often can make you a very nice profit!). I’ve had a very tough month in August pointing out the the news hasn’t "jived with reality" and suddenly we have gone from feeling overly conservative to being the only well-positioned people around – in cash, with plenty of winning puts and ready for another round of bottom fishing with the VIX right back at 30, which gives us exactly what we need to run our favorite plays.
We still have tons of cash in our $100,000 Portfolio and I’ll be initiating some buy/writes this week. I already proposed one for TTWO after last night’s earnings but now it looks like I’m not the only one who thought they looked pretty good and we’re not going to chase – there are, once again, plenty of fish in the sea! The last time we ran a Buy List was the week of July 6th and if you want to see what an actual list that goes 18 for 18 with an average upside of over 25% looks like, you can check that week’s wrap-up, which has a lot…
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Testing Tuesday Morning – S&P 1,010 Edition
by Phil - September 1st, 2009 8:30 am
So far so good.
As I said in yesterday’s post (and the weekend wrap-up), we were well-positioned for the drop – It’s just a quesiton of finding a bottom now. It didn’t take very long as we found it at 9:46 when I sent out an Alert to Members saying: "Once again it’s a good time to sell the DIA $95 puts at $2 as the volume on this sell-off is not at all exciting so far. As long as the Dow holds 9,450 (now 9,475) it’s a good play." We had a couple of spikes below but, on the whole, 9,450 held like a champ and those puts hit our 20% target by the day’s end (some of our quicker traders even had a chance to double dip). That level and 1,010 on the S&P will be our critical tests today as well.
As you can see from David Fry’s SPY chart, that 1,010 line on the S&P represents the bottom of the range we broke out of on Aug 21st after failing it several times earlier in the month so it either holds this week or last week begins to look like noting more than a blow-off top at the tip of a downturn.
We followed through with our DIS play but we’re still hoping to do better on the call sale to complete our buy/write. We took an early stab at shorting OIH but chickened out by the end of the day and we took advantage of a nice drops in ITMN, LZB (hedged) and CIM (hedged) while adding protective plays by going long in TZA (hedged) so it was a busier day than we planned. We also picked up some more fills for our $100K Portfolio, as per our weekend plans and that portfolio jumped $500 on the day, which is nice for a down day and indicates we are doing pretty well on that balance thing…
At 1:03 I sent out an Alert to Members saying: "Should be stick time after a blow out bottom - I still like those DIA $95 puts sold naked for $2+, looking for .25 to .50." We got a false run at 2:30 then a drop down to a blow-out spike at 3:30 and then, of course, the daily stick, that took up right back to good old 9,500. The movement is getting so aggregious that even conspiracy…
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Monday Mandarin Market Meltdown
by Phil - August 31st, 2009 8:17 am
The Shanghai Composite fell 6.7% this morning!
I mentioned our love of FXP (ultra-short China) in our August Market Review and the short sale of FXP puts (a bullish play) was our primary cover in the last $100KP since early August for exactly the reason we are seeing play out today. Of course China’s problems were my theme on Friday and on 8/16 we warned that China’s GDP wasn’t real and on 8/7 we pointed out that China’s 2009 growth was nothing more than an accounting trick after my August 6th article in which I pointed out that GS was desperately working to pump China up at the top (likely while they were dumping their own shares on unsuspecting suckers). Do fundamentals matter? Sure they do — evenutally. But we had to roll and DD our August FXP short puts (big winners now) as it always pays to remember the words of John Keynes: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
We nailed the move in the Shanghai, which is now down 25% since we turned negative on it but the Hang Seng, which is much easier to manipulate as it’s controlled by foreign IBanks (our beloved gang of 12), has mysteriously flatlined near their August highs, maintaining the myth of the Chinese recovery so Uncle Rupert could run his almost daily articles telling you how great the global economy is on the other side of the world, where you can’t see it. Interestingly, in China he’s running stories telling them how the US economy is leading the way back and in Europe he has total control of the media so whatever he wants to tell them is the truth anyway.
By the way, this is your LAST week to get Stock Market Truth with a FREE Trial Subscription to the PSW Report
Ler’s see how rational the markets get as mainland China falls to it’s lowest level since May and let’s keep in mind that "limit down" on the Shanghai is 10% so a 6.7% drop in one day indicates that scores of companies were likely halted at 10% down. It’s going to take some really big plate spinning by GS et al (already attempred by GS last night with this idiotic release calling China a "bright spot" and raising outlook 50%) to get this one back on track. As I keep saying – the one thing "THEY" can’t fight is a…
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Thrill-Ride Thursday, Finally Some Earnings!
by Phil - July 9th, 2009 7:24 am
Wheee, what a day yesterday!
Of course we hit it out of the ballpark with our ICE puts as that stock melted so fast it turned to vapors (or at least the calls did!). Fortunately, we had the puts and the Aug $95 puts I mentioned in the morning post, that we had taken at $6.20 on Tuesday, opened at $8.50 and ran up to $14.35 (up 131%) at the day’s end – all without a significant pullback to stop us out. Since we LOVE to go back to a well that’s paying off, we jumped on the Aug $90 puts for $3 as our first trade of the day at 9:39 and those finished the day at $7.35 (up 145%), not bad for our 3rd play on the same stock in 48 hours!
The best thing about having 100%+ put side winners in a downturn is it gives us free reign to speculate on the upside. Since we had a bottomish view of the downturn yesterday, we were able to use the cushion provided by the gains on ICE (as well as our longer-term DIA and USO short positions) to establish a bunch of speculative upside positions on stocks we thought were bottoming. The key to this strategy is position sizing and portfolio management. If you invest, for example, $2,000 per position and are willing to take 20% losses as a stop-out, then having a 100% winner on ICE (and we had 3!) allows you to take 5 bullish position as the total risk on $10,000 is the $2,000 you gained on the bear side. We don’t just mindlessly flip-flop of course. In fact, it’s been more than a month since we picked up bullish positions for more than a quick trade and we’re not SURE these are going to work but, since we had the winning put plays, it’s a good place to make a stand – dipping our toes in the bullish waters once again.
I mentioned our brand-new $5,000 Portfolio yesterday and our first play was a net .71 spread on AA where we bought the $7.50 calls for $1.75 and sold the $9 calls for $1.04. On yesterday’s dip, we had the opportunity to take out the $9 calls for .70, which was a .35 profit and left us with the naked $7.50 calls at net $1.40, with a break-even at $8.90. We tried to sell them for $2.10 at…
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Reversal combinations at play in Lamar Advertising
by Andrew Wilkinson - May 1st, 2009 6:03 pm
Today’s tickers: LAMR, SVU, DIS, CHRW & OI
LAMR Lamar Advertising Company – Shares of the outdoor advertising company have remained relatively flat and currently stand at $16.92 today. LAMR appeared on our ‘hot by options volume’ market scanner after one investor appears to have taken a bullish stance on the stock in the June contract. It looks as though this individual sold about 5,100 puts at the June 12.5 strike price for an average premium of 58 cents apiece in order to fund the purchase of some 5,100 calls picked up at the June 20 strike for 1.32 each. The net cost of getting long of the calls amounts to 47 cents. In order to profit from the bullish position shares would need to rally by about 21% to the breakeven point located at $20.47 by expiration.
SVU Supervalu, Inc. – The grocery retailer has climbed by about 1% to $16.51 per share. We observed some investors taking a bullish position on the stock by selling about 1,400 puts at the June 15 strike price for about 72 cents each in order to fund the purchase of 1,400 calls at the June 17.5 strike for an average premium of 65 cents. The trade results in a 7 cent credit to the investor who is looking for shares to climb by 6% from the current price in order for the calls to land in-the-money by expiration. The same strike prices described above were also targeted by a trader who appears to have established a sold strangle by shedding approximately 3,600 puts at the June 15 strike for about 72 cents while also selling the same amount of calls for 68 cents each at the June 17.5 strike. The strangle strategy yields a gross premium of 1.40 and will be fully retained by the investor if the share price remains ‘strangled’ between the two strike prices. The trader would face losses at any share price below the breakeven to the downside at $13.60 or at any price above the breakeven to the upside at $18.90.
DIS The Walt Disney Co. – Shares have declined by about 3% to $21.20 today amid news that the entertainment company plans to obtain a 27% stake in the third most popular video website, Hulu.com. The DIS ticker jumped onto our ‘most active by options volume’ market scanner after one investor fiddled with put options…
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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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