Love Letters (Weekend Reading on Valentine’s Day)

by Phil - February 14th, 2010 8:25 am

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Last Valentine’s Day was as Saturday, following a frightening Friday the 13th, where we had fallen through the 8,000 line on the Dow.  I wrote a very interesting post that morning discussing how I came about my political views, which is good for new Members to check out.   We also flipped short that day on SKF, too early at $130 but that ended well as we kept after them and it was our biggest bet by March 6th, which eventually returned over 1,000%.  We also stopped shorting GOOG at $350 (it did keep going to $300 but the upside was nice too).  I closed the morning post with:

For us, it’s all about the levels as we try to remain unbiased as investors, no matter how voraciously we defend our political views.  Dow 7,800, S&P 820, Nas 1,460, NYSE 5,100, Russell 437 and SOX 203 all better continue to hold today but, even if they do, we’re nowhere near where we want to be and we’re going to take some bearish covers into the weekend – just in case.  So whether you are a witch celebrating the horrors of the 13th or waiting for a rose from your true love the next day, remember to be careful out there – we are certainly still deep, deep in the woods!

That Tuesday (Monday was President’s day) we fell 300 points and another 300 points by the end of the week!  That was a fitting way to mark the 80th anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre when Al Capone’s "South Side" gang, dressed as cops, rousted a garage run by Bugs Moran’s "North Side" gang and had them stand against the wall and then executed all 7 men.  They shot them 70 times with machine guns and made their escape by using the Capone men dressed as cops to "arrest" the other Capone men and drive them away from the scene in broad daylight.  Now that’s what I call a good plan! 

Here’s a great chart that summarizes our year to date. Someone else found this, I wish I knew how to use StockCharts this well, they have tons of good things in there:

It’s a bit worrying that XLU is doing so poorly – so much for diversification keeping you safe…  It’s going to be worth rummaging through the utility companies looking for good dividend payers who are on sale.  SO…

Tags: AAPL, AINV, ANF, CF, CHL, CIM, DT, ELNK, GOOG, HIMX, KFT, MRK, MSFT, NFX, OTE, PDLI, Q, SKF, SO, STD, TEVA, WFMI, XLU

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Optimistic Trader Initiates Call Spread on ConocoPhillips

by Andrew Wilkinson - January 29th, 2010 4:29 pm

Today’s tickers: COP, EEM, DE, SIRI, JPM, FCX, T, PCS, MSFT & EK

COP – ConocoPhillips– Oil and gas company, ConocoPhillips, attracted an optimistic options player to the January 2011 contract today. Shares began the trading day on the up-and-up, but reversed direction in the latter portion of the session, falling slightly by 0.20% to $48.26. The long-term bullish strategist purchased a debit call spread to position for upside gains in the underlying share price by expiration next January. The spread involved the purchase of 5,000 calls at the January 2011 $50 strike for an average premium of $3.91 apiece, marked against the sale of the same number of calls at the higher January 2011 $65 strike for about $0.60 each. The net cost of the transaction amounts to $3.31 per contract. The investor responsible for the trade stands ready to accrue maximum potential profits of $11.69 per contract if COP’s shares gain 35% over the current price to reach $65.00 by expiration day. Shares must rise at least 10.5% from today’s price before the call-spreader breaks even on the transaction at $53.31.

EEM – iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index ETF – Shares of the MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund fell less than 1% in afternoon trading to stand at $38.47. September contract options trading suggests one investor is positioning for continued downward movement in the price of the underlying stock by expiration. The pessimistic trader established a bearish risk reversal on the fund by selling 5,300 out-of-the-money call options at the September $45 strike for a premium of $1.35 apiece, spread against the purchase of the same number of put options at the September $33 strike for $1.77 each. The investor paid a net $0.42 per contract for the transaction. Profits to the downside accumulate only if shares of the EEM slump another 15.3% from the current price to breach the breakeven point at $32.58 by expiration in the next eight months. We note that the fund’s share price has remained above the $33.00-level since July 15, 2009.

DE – Deere & Co. – Shares of agricultural equipment maker, Deere & Co., are trading 1.80% higher to stand at $52.03 in the first half of the trading day. Notable options activity appeared in the January 2011 contract where one investor initiated a long-term protective play using put options. The trader established a put spread by purchasing 10,000 puts at…

Tags: COP, DE, EEM, EK, FCX, JPM, MSFT, PCS, SIRI, T

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Thank GDP it’s Friday!

by Phil - January 29th, 2010 8:30 am

At 12:52 yesterday I officially went long on the markets.

This could be a big mistake (in fact, that’s what I said to Members at the time) but the logic was Bernanke would be confirmed (he was) and that we’d have a big GDP number today.  Now the reason we’re going to have a big GDP number is because we will have a big build in inventories (we discussed this effect on Jan 14th) as manufacturers got all excited and produced goods that nobody bought and, because it is assumed that goods are only produced in accurate anticipation of demand – this kind of nonsense comes in a positive to our GDP. 

Production collapsed during the recession as companies sold from their existing inventories but didn’t order new goods, because of uncertainty about future customer demand. These inventory declines dragged on GDP for six consecutive quarters, the longest streak on record since 1948.  The turnaround in inventoris could give us a Q4 GDP in the 5% range.  Rational economists prefer to look at final sales to domestic purchasers, a subset of GDP that doesn’t include inventories and trade, to better gauge U.S. economic activity. That category is likely to grow at only a 2% pace, similar to the third quarter but shhhhhhh! – we don’t want to wake the rational economist – who has clearly been asleep since the the mid 90s…

So we went bullish (speculatively), not because we are going to be excited by a 5% GDP number that makes us look like some overheating Third World economy even as another 2M people lost their jobs in Q4. No, we’re bullish because we cynically believe that the sheeple are clueless and will stampede into this number as if the US is recovering and nobody told them until this morning. 

Meanwhile, I have a message for the sheeple:  Please keep selling us your Google stock.  I think this chart of the day is self-explanatory but you never know.  This is a chart of the amount of money Google makes per employee, per quarter.  Currently they are generating $1.34 MILLION dollars for each person they hire (and they’ve been hiring).  For a comparison, Yahoo generates $500,000 per employee yet GOOG currently has a p/e ratio that is 1/2 of Yahoo’s. 

Microsoft’s 98,000 employees generate $623,000 each, ORCL’s 86,000 employees pull in just $267,000 each.  It’s not a definitve indicator but consider how well…

Tags: AAPL, AMZN, CCJ, EWJ, FXI, GDP, GOOG, MSFT, ORCL, SO, YHOO

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Freaky Friday – Options Expirations Promise a Wild Ride!

by Phil - January 15th, 2010 8:40 am

As Jesse notes over at Cafe Americain, it’s shenanigans central today.

We are mostly watching the action with a detached interest.  As I said to Members in yesterday’s morning Alert: "Tomorrow we have CPI, Business Inventories, Industrial Production, Empire Manufacturing (which was awful last month) and Michigan Sentiment and then the 3-day weekend so cash will be comforting until Tuesday at least!"  Yesterday was an excellent day to take the money and run on our bullish positions, even though we did finally make our levels, my final word in that Alert was: "Be very careful today, I still feel like this whole thing can snap on one bad news story." 

We did take earnings spreads on JPM and INTC, both of which seem right on target at 7:30 (see this morning’s Alert for adjustments) with INTC giving us the strong numbers we expected and JPM doing well, but not well enough to live up to the hype. 

Earnings season is like party time for options traders, especially on expiration week where we can take advantage of low premiums on the things we buy while still selling high, earnings-inflated premiums on the things we want to sell.  The INTC trade was taking the Feb $22/23 bull call spread for .27 (a cheap way to make $1) and reducing our basis by selling 1/2 that number of Jan $22.50 calls for .12 (a ridiculous price for a call that was $1.20 out of the money when we made the trade in the morning but we only sold half, just in case!) and also selling the Feb $19 puts for .17.  Those we sold the full amount of as we REALLY don’t mind having Intel put to us at net $19.04 as .17 and 1/2 of .12 = .23 off our net .27 purchase of the bull spread so we’re in for a grand net total of .04 with the upside potential of making $1 if INTC makes it to $23 by Feb expirations.  Even if we only cash out our Feb spread for .12 (less than half of what we bought it for), that’s still a 200% profit on the net spread!  This is why we LOVE earnings season!

Our Trade Idea for JPM was in that same 10:47 Post and in that one I said to Members: "JPM – Great Expectations so I like the $44 puts for .55, selling the Feb $41 puts for…

Tags: BAC, C, FAS, FXI, INTC, JPM, MSFT, SMH, SNE, XOM

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Testy Tuesday Morning

by Phil - January 5th, 2010 8:27 am

Wow – what a lot of work to get back to last Tuesday’s high! 

As usual, the vast majority of gains came in pre-market trading and the rest came in light-volume, early morning trading while the rest of the day was dominated by every buyer finding a willing seller for 75% of the day’s volume.  We saw what happened on Thursday when someone big wants to sell and there are no buyers so we’ll see how long the bull’s luck (manufactured or otherwise) will hold out as we begin to get economic data along with some early earnings reports.

The Ag sector popped 2% yesterday ahead of tonight’s earings from MOS with MON checking in tomorrow morning so we’ll see how wise those last-minute bets were in short order.  SONC also has earnings tonight and we like those guys long-term.  SONC makes a decent buy/write candidate as you can buy the stock for $10.29 and sell June $10 puts and calls for $2.25 for a net entry of $8.04 with a very nice 24% profit if called away at $10 and an average entry of $9.02 (a 12% discount) if more stock is put to you below $10 in June. 

FDO and WOR also report tomorrow morning.  FDO will be interesting but a weak dollar probably hurt them last quarter.  Tomorrow night we hear from BBBY, BLUD, OHB and Sonic competitor RT, who seem a bit pricey at $7.50.  Thursday we get our first real builder, LEN along with STZ and TXI.  After the bell on Thursday we hear from APOL, CRI and SCHN with GBX and PSMT on Friday.  AA officially kicks of earnings season next Monday with GAP, INFY, KBH, BGG, SCHW, SHFL, INTC and JPM highlighting the reporters. 

We have plenty of data this week including Factory Orders and Pending Home Sales at 10 am along with December Auto Sales throughout the day (did you get a new car for Christmas?).  Tomorrow is jobs day, with the ADP Report and Challenger Job Cuts ahead of the bell followed by ISM Services (yesterday’s ISM was a nice beat) and, of course, Crude Inventories at 10:30 which are unlikely to sustain $82 oil (USO Jan $40 puts for .80 are a good way to play this).  We talked about the other stuff yesterday so I won’t repeat it – suffice to say we have plenty of data this week to see if we justify these lofty levels.

Everyone is talking…

Tags: AA, AAPL, APOL, BBBY, BGG, BLUD, CBY, CRI, ERIC, FDO, GAP, GBX, GOOG, Greece, Iceland, INFY, INTC, JPM, KBH, KFT, LEN, MON, MOS, MOT, MSFT, NOK, OHB, PALM, PSMT, RIMM, RT, SCHN, SCHW, SNE, SONC, STZ, TXI, USO, WOR

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PSW Rewind of 2009 – The First Quarter

by Phil - January 1st, 2010 2:42 pm

Thursday’s close was very exciting, wasn’t it?

Well it sure was for us as my 10:01 Alert to Members was a play on the DIA Jan $103 puts at .56.  Thanks to the late afternoon dip, they finished the day at .90 (up 60%) after peaking out at .95, a very nice win to close off the year.  That was the only Alert trade all week as this market has been too tough to call and we don’t make trades just for the hell of it.  I had been sniping at DIA puts all week expecting a pay-off but Thursday it finally came together.

Of course, I also strongly advocated hedging on Thursday morning and listed 4 trade ideas in the morning post to hedge ourselves against the possibility of just such a drop so don’t say you haven’t been warned.  Whether there will be follow-through on Monday or a full reversal remains to be seen and, even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you here because this is a review – predictions are another article entirely. 

We treaded very cautiously into last year because our PSW Holiday Retail Survey was not looking very pretty so it was no surprise to us, on Dec 26th, when we got some horrific retail reports.  These are, of course, the same reports that we "beat" this year – but not by much.  Dec 29th was Monday and Israeli jets attacked Hamas targets in the Gaza sending oil flying up to $48 a barrel.  That gave us a nice commodity rally into the close of the year but January 2nd was a Friday and we decided (fortunately) to take the money and run on our long plays, holding open our main cover of SKF Jan $120s at $4.35, which hit $80 later in the month (up 1,732%) and USO Feb $32 puts at $3.40, which hit $10.50 in the Feb dip (up 208%) so, on the whole, not too differently positioned than we are now, coming into the new year.  Visually 2009 looked a little like this:

January – Waiting for Obama, or Something, to Change

We began January much the same way we ended December with my Wed Jan 7th comment being: "We call it "Testy Tuesday" for a reason and our 5% rule was tested twice during the day but the market failed to…

Tags: AAPL, AXP, BA, BAC, BBY, BTU, C, CAT, CBS, CCJ, CI, COF, GCI, GLW, GNW, GOOG, GS, HAR, HMY, HOG, INTC, IP, ISRG, IWM, IYR, JPM, M, MAT, MSFT, performance, TEX, TIE, TXN, VNO, X, XLF

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Friday: Dell Misses, Is Goldman Sachs Stupid or Evil?

by Phil - November 20th, 2009 8:18 am

How can a firm that never loses money be so totally wrong?

Just this Monday, Goldman Sachs helped to gap the markets higher at the open in low-volume futures trading with the following pronouncement: "Goldman Sachs resumes coverage on Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) and gave DELL a Buy rating at a 12-month price target of $19. Goldman believes that DELL will benefit from a corporate PC refresh cycle and will show better earnings as DELL is trying to optimize its cost structure.  Goldman believes Dell will report better than expected earnings and beat analysts’ expectations. Goldman expects DELL to report earnings of $1.09 for CY2009 and $1.37 for CY2010 from their previous estimates of $1.07 for CY2009 and $1.35 for CY2010."  Fact is, they missed by a mile.

That report took Dell up 2% for the day and the Dow gained 150 points and we were dumbfounded by the move, both in DELL, who were swallowing a difficult acquisition of Perot Systems and of the market, which acted like $31Bn DELL is the same kind of bellwether that $120Bn HPQ is, even if Goldman’s report had been even close to accurate.  As it was, they couldn’t have been more wrong if they were playing "opposite day."  How is it that a firm that has only 3 losing trading days in 6 months can be this amazingly wrong on crucial analysis? 

So is Goldman actually stupid and, as many have implied, simply cheating to rack up their amazing market gains or are they intentionally manipulating the markets.  Former GS-employee Jim Cramer jumped right on the bandwagon on Monday afternoon and told viewers that "obviously,"  since DELL is going to do so well (because GS says so) that INTC and MSFT must be buys too. 

This is how manipulative stock pumping works – start a rumor, push it out through the media, extrapolate the rumor out to affect market-moving stocks that don’t even have upcoming news events and then tell people they are missing an opportunity, even after the train has left the station (by Cramer’s 2:30 spot on Monday, the Nasdaq had already hit the high for the week, peaking out exactly at the moment Cramer told his retail investors to pile into the market).

Were the beautiful sheeple only buying what Cramer’s buddies were selling?  Is that how GS makes their money, buying low on Friday, making…

Tags: Bill Gross, Cramer, DELL, DIA, Dollar, FXP, Goldman Sachs, GS, INTC, Market manipulation, MSFT, Trichet, UUP

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TiVo Implied Volatility Jumps With Share Price Gains

by Andrew Wilkinson - October 23rd, 2009 4:27 pm

Today’s tickers: TIVO, ORCL, MSFT, VLO, BRCM, XLP, AMZN, MSFT & ELN

TIVO – TiVo, Inc. – Shares of the provider of technology and services for digital video recorders are soaring 8.5% higher to stand at the current price of $12.44. Investors expecting continued bullish movement in the price of the underlying purchased call options across multiple contracts. Near-term optimists picked up 6,500 calls at the November 12.5 strike for 86 cents each. Meanwhile, the higher November 15 strike had 1,600 calls coveted for about 25 cents apiece. Other traders looked to the December 12.5 strike where it seems some 5,000 calls were purchased for approximately 95 cents each. Finally, call spreads were transacted in the February 2010 contract. Investors purchased 3,000 calls at the February 12.5 strike for an average premium of 1.41 each, and sold 3,000 calls at the higher February 15 strike for about a dollar apiece. Option implied volatility on TIVO jumped 18% from an opening reading of 62% to an intraday high of 73%.

ORCL – Oracle Corp. – The software company is trading just 65 cents off the 52-week high of $22.90 today with shares up 0.25% to $22.25. Volume of 19,811 calls at the out-of-the-money November 23 strike exceeds existing open interest at that strike of 16,224 lots. The call activity appears to be the work of bullish investors buying approximately 14,500 calls for an average premium of 31 cents apiece. The December contract has also attracted the attention of option bulls. It looks like 9,000 calls were scooped up at the December 24 strike for about 40 cents each. Investors holding these contracts will profit by expiration if shares of ORCL surge 9.5% from the current price to $24.40.

MSFT – Microsoft Corp. – Investors are piling into call options on the world’s largest software maker following first-quarter earnings. The firm exceeded average analyst expectations of 32 per share by posting profits of 40 cents per share for the quarter. Shares of MSFT surged to a new 52-week of $29.20 – a 9.8% increase over the stock’s closing price – at the start of the trading day. Currently shares are slightly lower, though still up 7% to $28.44. Call options are the clear favorite with approximately 45,000 calls purchased at the November 30 strike for an average premium of 35 cents per contract. Approximately 84,400 call options traded hands at that strike…

Tags: AMZN, BRCM, ELN, MSFT, ORCL, TIVO, VLO, XLP

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Microsoft Guidance Change Leads To MASSIVE Confusion

by ilene - October 23rd, 2009 11:46 am

CNBC Blows Microsoft Guidance Cut, Creaming Stock (MSFT)

Courtesy of Jay Yarow and Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock

Update: At about 10:50 ET this morning, CNBC  and WSJ’s Digits Blog reported that Microsoft had lowered guidance on its conference call.  The stock immediately tanked.

What Microsoft actually lowered was OPERATING EXPENSE guidance.  In other words, the company said it would spend less than it previously thought.  This is good news, not bad, so all else being equal, it’s good for the stock.

About 10 minutes after reporting a guidance cut, CNBC came back and said the lowered guidance referred to costs.

Previously,

Microsoft Guidance Change Leads To MASSIVE Confusion (MSFT)

Update: We’re still trying to figure out what’s going on here, but both CNBC and and WSJ’s Digits Blog reported that at 10:50 Microsoft lowered revenue guidance.

Then about 10 minutes later CNBC came back and said the lowered guidance referred to costs. Either way, the confusion here is massive and significant, but we’re not clear whether the error was on Microsoft’s side or on the media’s side.

(A user error on our part led to us accidentally quitting the call 20 minutes in.)

——-

On its earnings call, Microsoft (MSFT) lowered its guidance for cost in the next quarter to $26.2 to $26.5 billion from $26.7-$26.9 billion.

Other notes:

• Headcount reduction of 4% was biggest in company’s history.
• Online ads were down 3%
• Xbox revenue up 50%
• Microsoft says it will get not revenue contribution from the Yahoo deal this fiscal year.
• As a matter of fact it expects $200 million in costs from the deal.
• Excited about Windows 7
• Cashback program on search not much of an impact in the quarter

Microsoft’s stock is pulling back from its highs. Though, the market at large is falling.

See Also:

Market Gets No Help From Microsoft And Amazon (MSFT, AMZN)

Microsoft Crushes Estimates, Stock Takes Off (MSFT)

Well, What Do You Know: Google Is Actually Nervous About Microsoft Bing (GOOG, MSFT)

Tags: earnings, guidance, Markets, Microsoft, MSFT

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Frothy Friday – Churn Baby Churn!

by Phil - October 23rd, 2009 8:26 am

What a wild week we are having!

We dumped our shorts as planned yesterday morning, getting a very nice dip at the open and my 9:36 Alert to Members was even titled "Take Those Short Profits!" and our upside targets were set (as they were in the morning post) at: Dow 10,087, S&P 1,096, Nasdaq 2,173, NYSE 7,204 and Russell 623.  Where did we finish?  Dow 1,081, S&P 1,092, Nasdaq 2,165, NYSE 7,182 and Russell 613 – so a bit short of all of our targets but not bad considering we were opening 167 points below that on the Dow so perhaps I can be forgiven for a 6-point miss…

If knowing about massive market moves in advance would be helpful to you – please consider subscribing to our service.  If you are already a member and know someone who might like to try our newsletter, you can send them a free trial subscription using this link and you can earn yourselves discounts on membership renewals for each friend who opts into the free trial.  We have over 19,000 people on our Newsletter list now and I want to see if we can break 30,000 by the end of the year now that our new mail server is up and running (we’ve been on hold for a month as we filled up our old server!).  Your help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.  PSW Report Members can extend their subscriptions at no cost simply by referring others to a free trial report – my little experiment in viral marketing…

Even our free PSW Report readers would have done great just following the trades we had in last week’s Wrap-Up (Report subscribers get to read our articles without the 48-hour delay).  We had GS Nov $210s shorted at .87, now .35 (up 60%), CERN short $85 calls at $4.15, now $3.10 (up 25%), ISRG Apr puts and calls sold for $39.20, now $36 (up 8%), PARD at $6.87, now $7.35 (up 7%), NTRI at $18.60, now $19.15 (up 3%)… 

We had other trades that are still in progress.  ICE notably burned us so far, but we rolled them up and shorted them some more yesterday  (now $106.56).  We’ve had a wild mix of short and long trades this week as we TRY to get more bullish on the markets but yesterday’s run-up had us reloading Thursday’s successful short plays as that set made…

Tags: AAPL, AMZN, APD, CACH, CAL, CERN, COF, DIA, FSLR, GS, ICE, MS, MSFT, NFLX, NTRI, PARD, SONC, SPWRA, SPY, SRS, STX, TUP, TZA, WDC

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