Toppy Tuesday Morning
by Phil - November 10th, 2009 8:05 am
That was some day yesterday.
We even had to flip bullish in the afternoon (slightly and reluctantly) but, when push came to shove and they asked me for my opinion on TV, I had to tell them I still thought we were toppy. I said that despite the Fast Money crew sitting in the studio right below me actively advising their viewers to chase the performance and, right after them, our friendbuddypal Jim Cramer told his viewers that no news is good news and the market is in a "a positive and delicious void" where we don’t have to worry about any pesky facts interfering with our buying premise.
To that end, Cramer suggests chasing AAPL, GOOG, GS, BAC and WFC and anything else that is not nailed down. "There are only 35 days of trading left in the year," Cramer says, "so we can expect money managers to pile into these companies when they realize the 2010 numbers are too low. Retail investors should be sure they aren’t left behind." Yes, we should blindly follow the money managers because they’ve never steered us wrong before (end sarcasm font).
Does it bother me to have be on the other side of the trade from "the finest minds on Wall Street"? A little, to be honest. As I pointed out yesterday in reminding you about what happened in 1999 and as John Maynard Keynes reminded us all decades ago: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." We discussed this logic back on October 12th, when I warned the bears that you can’t keep supporting the wrong team when they are clearly losing the game.
We had stayed about 55% bearish into the weekend but quickly covered up in the morning after all that stimulus talk against the declining dollar. In my 9:43 Alert to Members I said: "If we break over 10,120, then the selling the DIA $103 puts, now $2.55 are a great momentum play if you have the longer covers to protect you." Those puts finished the day at $1.70, a nice, quick 32% gain on the day and that’s how fast you can rebalance using index covers and those profits came AFTER buying back the Dec $99 puts we sold for $2.50 at $1.80 - 28% from Friday to Monday.
In the morning post, I had set up a chart for the week and added our 25% targets of Dow 10,250, S&P 1,100, Nasdaq 2,187, NYSE 7,000 and Russell 600 and,…
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Weekly Wrap-Up - 10,000 or Bust!
by Phil - October 17th, 2009 8:27 am
I think I was right on the money last week when I said:
The bar for corporate earnings is still set at very easy to beat levels yet, like this limbo-playing child, when they announce their beats of very low expectations we’re going to get all excited and tell them how great they are doing. The problem is, these are not kids who we hope may grow up one day to be President or CEOs of major companies. these ARE CEOs of major companies and they are being paid top salaries for top performance and we, the stock purchasing public, are paying top dollar for what should be SPECTACULAR performance, not beating 75% off last year’s earnings by a penny!
In that post, I rattled off a list of stocks that seemed overpriced to me: AMZN, BIDU, AM, PALM, NFLX, PCLN, URBN, UHS, CERN, CREE, GMCR, CY, SWM, TRLG, BKE and you would have had a fabulous week just shorting those stocks as only NFLX, URBN and CREE stayed positive. Now most newsletter writers would quit right there and make a giant ad saying they were 12 for 15 on the week but, as our members know, THAT’S NO BIG DEAL AT PSW! I’m just going to remind members that they can refer friends to FREE advice like that in our trial newsletter and earn 20% or more off their subscriptions for doing it.
Picking stocks is easy but a few percent here and a few percent there isn’t much fun is it? On that list, the two we attacked were AMZN and BIDU, both of which ran (in our opinion) way too high AND had very liquid and very overpriced call options that we could sell to collect premiums. AMZN is a staple short in our $100K Portfolio and we had set up BIDU the week before, selling Oct $420 calls for $8.30 and the Oct $430 calls for $7,20. While both went higher on Monday, the fact that we had a plan for managing the trade kept us from panicking and, thankfully, Monday was the only day those positions gave us trouble and both finished the week worthless (100% profit for us).
Adjusting our positions kept us busy this week as we STILL have a slightly bearish bias and I apologize for that but, as I said in Friday’s post: Every time I try to get a little more bullish, they pull me back in! It’s the curse of being a fundamentalist, it’s not enough…
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Frightening Friday - You Mean Markets Can Go Down Too?
by Phil - October 16th, 2009 8:10 am
Every time I try to get bullish, they pull me back in!
We have struggled for two weeks trying to get more bullish but even at yesterday’s exciting close we remained 55% bearish and decided to hold that stance into the weekend. As I updated our $100K Portfolio last night, I was surprised and disappointed that I could find no justification to raise my targets on AMZN, BAC, C, GE, UYG or XLF, sticking with our generally bearish positions, even though they burned us this week. While both GE and BAC beat on earnings this morning, both companies missed on revenues and what’s surprising is how sharply the markets reacted to such small misses.
We’ve been saying for quite some time that revenue projections are in fantasy land. Overall wages may be up 0.2% for the year but the average workweek is down 7% and 10% of our population isn’t taking home a paycheck at all - of course revenues are going to be down, how is that even surprising? For the week, revenues of reporting companies are down about 18% so I consider a winner anyone who’s ahead of the curve (not counting financials, who were given special gifts this year). Even with that gift, it was the financial unit that dragged GE down, with GE Capital’s profits down 87% for the quarter, dragging corporate earnings down to just 23 cents a share, but better than the .20 expected by analysts (see my weekend rant against low expectations).
We also have low expectations for today’s Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization Report. Pretty much anything better than terrible is likely to be celebrated after looking at this chart:
The bounce we got in last month’s report was due to an increase in the production of foods and beverages (up 1.6%) as well as chemicals (up 0.7%) and utility production (up 1.9%) and, of course, the Auto Sector, where Cash for Clunkers ramped up motor vehicle assemblies 12.1% overall. Outside of motor vehicles, production was up just 0.4%, which is what is expected for this month. As expected by the unemployment numbers, Cap Utilization is hovering around 69%, 11% lower than "normal," a strong indication that you do still need people to run those machines despite decades of robotics advancement. 
Hey, there’s an idea - let’s create an army of robot shoppers and equip them with American Express Black Cards and program them to go out and BUYBUYBUY. They’ve been programming the American people to be shopping…
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Wrong Way Weekly Wrap-Up
by Phil - September 19th, 2009 8:28 am
I am trying to get bullish, really I am.
As I said to Members on Thursday morning in chat, like Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction: "I’m trying hard to be the (bullish) shepherd" but the data makes it hard - so very hard! Anyway, I’m not here to complain about the market forces moving against us but to review the carnage of our picks going all the way back to Sept 10th, when we decided the prior day’s beige book was not going to be enough to break out over 9,600 on the Dow. Now, with the Dow at 9,820 after testing 9,900 it’s a good idea to look back and see what we missed in this last 2.5% leg up.
On Thursday the 10th, we talked about patterns. One pattern I recommended following right in the morning post was the famous "stick save" investment. Simply buying high-delta DIA calls at about 2:30 each afternoon and selling into the pumped-up close. That was a winning play on the 10th, 11th (Fri), 14th and 16th but not the last two days, when we turned a lot more bearish - but we’ll get to that further down this review. 4 out of 5 days is pretty good for a patten and seeing it broken 3 of the past 5 days is also significant. I did promise that Thursday that we will look for more bullish opportunities once we have a clear break over our last two levels (NYSE 6,959 and S&P 1,056) and we did make those this week. If we hold it through Tuesday, it will be time and we’re going to line up some trades this weekend. True to my word on that Thursday, we chose a variety of bullish and bearish plays in Member Chat. I’m posting the plays along with suggested adjustments if needed as it’s a nice way to review our various strategies in progress - especially under "adverse" conditions.
Trade ideas of the day for Members were:
- DIA $95 puts that ended up being rolled and doubled down for a net 20% gain (too much bother to detail).
- SUN at $23.36, now $28.45 (up $5.09), short Oct $25 calls at $2.20, now 3.70 (down $1.50) and short the Jan $22.50 puts at $1.15, now .70 (up .45).
- Another buy/write at net $23.01/22.76, already up 17.5% so can be closed early here.
- FDO short Apr $25 puts at $2.10, now $2.40 (down 14%). No change.
- CEPH 2011 $50/$60 bull call spread at net $5.50,…
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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 Cramer at the time as he was blatantly ripping off my ideas and trying…
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Wild Weekly Wrap-Up - August in Retrospect
by Phil - August 29th, 2009 8:28 am
It has been a crazy few weeks!
I went back over our Long Shots list from August 9th, thinking all our picks must be doing great but really only C, with a 67% gain, is really outperforming. Long spreads on UYG and BHI are on target for nice gains but haven’t moved much. Looking at our original picks in Pharmboys Phavorites from the same week, GSK is on track and up nicely already, our AZN cover is up 45% and MRK flew up 19% already. On the riskier Biotech side, ARIA’s stock is up 16% and our spreads are all performing well, ONTY has been flat, OGXI is up 33% and the Jan $17.50s are up a rockin’ 63% with that "cautious" spread up a surprising 75% already.
SPPI had a wild ride (as we predicted with TSCM’s failed assassination attempt) and the buy/write is already up 24%, the Feb vertical is up 50% and the naked Jan put sale is up 27% and our Feb hedge play is right on track so all good there and a fine example of how following Cramer and his lackeys and and doing the opposite of what they say can be very profitable! Congrats to Pharmboy for a very fine set of picks, proving once again that there is room for research and fundamentals - not a single loser in the bunch in a choppy market! It was very timely as I had mentioned just that week in my interview with AOL Finance that XLV was my favorite sector and our IHI pick of 8/10 is up 28% on the naked Feb $45 put sale while the Feb $45 calls have already jumped 16%. It was a great call as IHI outperformed XLV and all our major indexes.
So our energy service pick (BHI) and overall financial pick (UYG) have not done much in 3 weeks and those were our leading sectors into my call to cash out our exposed long calls on Aug 13th, ahead of expirations. The Dow was at 9,400 on that day and now, a bit more than 2 weeks later, we’ve gained another 144 points but to listen to the MSM, you would think you are missing the rally of the century the past couple of weeks. This is one of the reasons I’ve gotten a bit more cynical about the rally - there is so much hype and so little actual progress, something must be wrong.
Back on Thursday, Aug 6th,…
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Weakening Weekly Wrap-Up
by Phil - August 15th, 2009 8:27 am
What was that?
Did we just finish lower on Friday than Monday? We almost forgot such a thing can happen in Obama’s magic market-land but here we are with a week in which the stock market had not one, not two but three (3) red days out of 5. You have to go all the way back to the week of June 22, when the market was finishing a 600-pont down leg from June 15th, to see so much blood on Wall Street. I have, for a month, been drawing parrallels betwen this market top and the market top that ended on June 12th and it’s all about next week as options expire and things begin to get very interesting.
As you can see from David Fry’s chart on the right, we hit the very tippy top of our expected range on the Qs and then could not close the deal above our $40 line. It didn’t seem too much too ask - just a teeny, tiny little breakout and we would have been happy to buy some GOOG and get back into SPWRA and find some other 4-letter stocks to play with, even some semiconductors if the SOX had finally taken out our 308 mark but nooooooooooooo - the Nasdaq couldn’t hold 2,000, let alone our 2,017 target, which they teased us with two weeks ago but never came back to.
And don’t even get me started on yesterday’s close. For those of you who have ever doubted the power of the stick, David and I say HA!, as there has never been a more bogus end to a trading session than the despicable display of market manipulation that went on yesterday, just before the close. The only good thing I have to say about this very sad state of unregulated market affairs is that at least we called it practically to the penny and played it perfectly because, as I often say to members: "We don’t care IF the markets are rigged as long as we know HOW they are rigged so we can place our bets accordingly."
As shamefully despicable as these "stick saves" are at least they fall into a pattern that we have learned to recognize and profit from in Member Chat. I was, of course, very bearish in the morning post as we expected a minimum 1.25% correction (1.27 on the SPY chart) by Monday, on the way to a 3% dip, minimum, so we can properly let some…
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600-Point Weekly Wrap-Up: Selling High
by Phil - July 19th, 2009 12:01 pm
Holy cow, what a week!
It is hard to believe that last weekend I wrote: "You can hardly find anyone who doesn’t think we’re going back to the March lows. I stand by my statement to Members in yesterday morning’s Alert where I said: "It’s ridiculous for the Dow to go back to 7,500 and ridiculous for the S&P to go back to 800. While it’s easy to make squiggly lines on a chart show 10% drops ahead (which seems like a normal 50% retrace of the gains overall) I just think it’s dead wrong from a valuation perspective so I’m not inclined to play it, especially when those valuations are about to slap you in the face over the next few weeks. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe earnings will suck and Q2 will be a miss and guidance will be lower but right now I say - Show me the misses."
Here we are, just 7 days later and I found myself writing an article about the ridiculous media cheerleading that went on last week. How did the MSM go from 100% bearish to 100% bullish at the stoke of Monday? Well, according to Cramer, it was Whitney, Whitney, Whitney and the logic seems to be that, since she called the problems in the financials early on, she MUST be right by calling an end to the problems now. Of course what Whitney actually said was the banks should have a good quarter as the government pushes for massive mortgage refinancing (all those 1% fees really add up!) and she also said she sees unemployment shooting up another 35% to 13% or higher but hey - at least she said something positive about the banks and that’s all the media needed to hear to tear up the previous week’s entire playbook and switch sides so completely, you have to review the tape just to be sure we didn’t imagine the whole doomed, "head and shoulders" outlook of the week before.
What did I have to say about all this nonsense last weekend? I was emphatic, and I’m usually not, and I said for those who would listen: "So here we are, back at the bottom of the trading range I predicted back in March and even as far back as November, when I said that, based on the fundamentals the crash should settle out at Dow 8,650." I need to be clear about this so you…
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Options Expriation Day - Back Where We Started!
by Phil - July 17th, 2009 8:10 am
"And now we’re back where we started,
Here we go round again.
Day after day I get up and I say
I better do it again.
Where are all the people going?
Round and round till we reach the end.
One day leading to another,
Get up, go out, do it again." - Kinks
That’s right, we often talk about various market scams but there is no bigger scam in the world than options expiration day when all the stocks are herded back to prices that benefit the largest number of SELLERS of options while the buyers of options can only stare in shock as momentum shifts and trend-lines break and stock after stock magically settles into a value that wipes out the most possible premium. There is something in options called the "Max Pain Theory" that says that stocks will always settle at the strike where the most puts and calls expire worthless but I think that’s a self-fulfilling prophesy as options activity tends to center around the strike as it moves so of course the strike is surrounded by the most options.
What isn’t a theory is what we can observe happening time and again. This is why, at PSW, we primarily SELL options, not buy them. Buying options is gambling, selling options is a business! I often point out to members that options is the game in the world where you can be the "house" with no disadvantage. In Las Vegas, you can bet with the house but they still have an edge but in options, there is no edge and day’s like this remind us why selling options beats buying them - not EVERY time but certainly OVER time.
Our last option expiration day was June 19th and I will give you today’s levels to watch because they are the levels of June 19th: Dow 8,540, S&P 921, Nasdaq 1,827, NYSE 5,934 and Russell 512. All the markets have to do to take out the calls sold that day for a nickel or a dime is to hit those levels at some time today. Of course, anything within 2.5% of those numbers is fine to as you can roll the calls you sold to the next month at no cost, collecting another premium for another month. This is the centerpiece of our Buy/Write strategy, which we discussed last weekend and I will be putting up a new Buy List for Members…
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Turning Up Tuesday - Can We Hold It?
by Phil - July 14th, 2009 8:18 am
I WAS really excited about yesterday’s rally.
Meredith Whitney gave us the catalyst for the bear squeeze we expected But THEN I saw Cramer last night. Nothing scares me more than watching Cramer’s bandwagon do a 180 degree turn and head my way as he’s been wrong and wrong and wrong and then wrong for months now. Still, I’m going to try to ignore that noise and keep a level head, dealing with facts rather than fads to figure out which way thing will be going. We were happily buying last week while Cramer was herding his sheeple out of the market and we’ll be enjoying the free ride as he stampedes the masses back in, especially during expiration week but we’d rather see some honest, uptrending consolidation based on earnings than going back to early May’s roller coaster model that hurt so many investors on both sides.
We are, of course, thrilled with the move so far, as you can see from the new buy list that I put up over the weekend. We cashed in our FXPs right at the top and went long on the DIA $83 calls at .40 as our 2nd trade of the day (the first was a long on GOOG into earnings). Those calls finished at $1 (up 150% and we are done, of course) and we also went long on GLD while it was still low in our 10:31 Alert and I put up a hedged play on TNK but that was it. We did all our buying last week, when things were cheap and we just spent the rest of the day waiting to see if we would make our target levels.
As I said in yesterday’s morning post, we were looking for 1,750 to hold on the Nasdaq as our primary indicator that we were going to hold our 33% pullback levels on the broader index so it’s not really rocket science to see where that DIA trade came from as we timed it for right when the Nasdaq crossed back over the line after the morning dip. Having a trading premise is always helpful and, in the 9:32 level watch to Members I had said: "Without $60 oil the best we can really hope for today is to claw back to our middle set of figures. Earnings can take us up over the higher numbers as the market rotates out of commodities (if they see that other stocks look "safe"). So that’s the outlook…
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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
(