Phil's Stock World, Stock Options Trading & Information

Daily Stock and Options Tips & Updates; Get Our Daily Newsletter Here

Thanks Phil, I have adjusted my position by getting rid of the IYF puts, and selling the FAZ puts. You have so many of these awesome little tricks in your playbook that it really amazes me. I toally love your analogy by the way: Do you want insurance that you have to pay for, or do you want insurance that pays you?

- Craigzooka

All I can say is — I understand that the Universe sent me to PSW for a reason. So, I'm listening!! …and studying. Your commentary is literally outstanding. …and your members are impressive as well.

- Seaquill

Phil - I know I am small change compared to most others members, but I just wanted to let you know that during the last two weeks with the shorts you and others suggested I have 6 winners and 5 losers. My losers were small because I tried to follow your guidelines as best I could. On the other hand my winners on average were around 50%. Consequently, I am up $2000 in 14 days. Thank you for your patience and help. I think I am making progress getting rid of some of my poor trading habits of the past!

- DCalrk41

WOW, glad I went bearish… Phil, thanks for the help on the QID calls yesterday, I turned it into a partial cover rolling down to the Feb 52s selling the 55s 1/2 covered. Sold 1/2 and now lowered my cost basis to $4.38 on the $52s (fully covered).

- Texasmotion

Phil - Your logic not only makes sense, but it made a lot of premium profit for me over the past 12 months. I have recovered much of the massive equity losses of last year. My Monday play is the sale of long term puts on FXI. Love the premium!

- Gel1

Dear Phil, I have followed along with your commentary and alerts and have been flabbergasted at your quick analytical skills and your journalistic skills to explain it clearly. In a little over three weeks I have cleared almost 1000.00 dollars and got an intensive education at the same time. I would like to immediately upgrade my membership. It is hard for me to follow all evening as I am in Tokyo but I can join you at the beginning of the market and read the next day.

- Tokyolife

Joined last year and and started profitably trading options thanks to everything I have learned here. THANK YOU!!

- OnWisconsin

I have been here a year, and made most of my money back from the 14K fall. The people here are more than willing to help whe Phil cannot get to it. FWIW - This site is my brokerage firm, I was with Wells Fargo Portfolio and it was costing a fortune to trade, the costs here are more than offset with the data, trade ideas and profits you should make.. and I get a chuckle out of Cap and Phil's rantings on healtcare, guns, oh, yeah, and government….

- Pharmboy

You guys gotta give it to phil–the voice of reason yesterday, last nite and this morning.

- Corleone

Just closed out my V put for 50% in 24 hours thanks Phil!

- Humvee

thanks for the DNDN recommendation last week phil. that was moneeeee….

- Kwan

Phil, I have the SRS 2011 $7.50 short puts you recommended awhile back. I sold them for $2.20 and now $1.51 (up 31%) although SRS has been down since inception. This was a nice mellow way to play it like you said, thanks.

- Jomptien

Phil, thanks for the call on the SKF puts earlier, I'm riding that horsie downhill right now, giddyup!

- MrMocha

Being a bear is easy (and I am not convinced we are doing all that well on the whole as an economy), but one cannot fight the trend (didn't Phil say that a while ago)? Just cover, make 5-10-15-20% and move on. It really does add up by chipping away. All I can say is I am back to 2007 levels in my account b'f the crash with this run up and some very nice help on this board….so kudos to us (and me!!)…

- Pharmboy

Phil is a master at keeping you laughing, as well as making you money. - It is like " laughing all the way to the bank!"

- Gel1

Phil, 26% on the week for the 20% I day-trade, and since drinking the kool-aid last fall, the whole portfolio has doubled. Have a great weekend !!

- JRW III

BTW Phil, I wanted to relate a conversation I had with my business partner yesterday. I told him that I have been much more relaxed about my investments ever since I joined your site. It's funny how a 15-20% cushion does to your nerves. My returns have increased dramatically and my risk diminished. Many thanks for the guidance and patience. Good thing I am doing better financially as you might have increased my life expectancy as well!

- StJeanluc

Phil/Everyone here/Thank you - What everyone here with their insightful comments (including yourself) has helped me with is that I'm greatly increasing my ability to trade more psychologically neutral, although I've got a ways to go. Two years ago I'd wake up early and my heart would race if futures weren't pointing exactly how I wanted… I've noticed an exponential leap in my discipline skills especially over this past two weeks. The old me would have ran with that trade for profits without even asking. Now I know that there are ALWAYS more trades and that I have PLENTY of options to turn a bad trade even. Also, it's more logical and less emotionally draining which lets me focus my faculties on my wife, college, my job, and studying for the ol' Series 7. Would it be safe to say that one of the most important skills to develop is the ability to adjust? I'd love to get to the point where I can look at a bracket and know, for example, what I need to sell for cover in what month in order to get my desired results. Both COF and my past DMM venture have been excellent learning experiences. Thanks, everyone. I look forward to further lessons.

- Skasiah

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!! How will I ever do anything else in my life that will compare to the wild ride you get trading an ultra etf in the most volatile sector in the stock market the day before option expiration?

- Matt1966

Kudos on the POT puts! I studied the charts last night and you couldn't have hit the inflection points more perfectly. Since there are often many head fakes in the charts, that was very well done. I know they can't all work this well, but that was an extra unexpected bonus yesterday.

- Ocelli7

I think that Phil is super, I am up 39.3% YTD. Thank you for your kindness and the opportunity to observe Phil from February.

- KMisko

Phil, Passed a milestone today since joining 2 months ago. 25% of my account is in buy/writes, bull call spreads and disaster hedges. A majority of the trades were taken directly from your ideas or someone else`s contributions. Some were daytrades that became spreads. That part of my account is up 30% as of today. I don`t worry about it, or mess with it much, did a few rolls etc. Rest of the account is there to day trade, cover the writes and take advantage of opportunities. Thanks to everyone who contributes here, what a sweet way to trade, so many opportunities.

- Ben1Be

Market manipulation…. One of the things I've gained from this site is the concept of market manipulation. I never thought it was so prevalent, but now I know it is. I actually consider its effect when I make trades. Several days ago, when AAPL was moving toward 220 I sold 210 calls. My reasoning was that they will probably pin this month at 210. They came in big time as the stock moved ever closer to 210. I agree with Phil's comment that one of the things we need to do is find out what they are manipulating, and how, and hitch a ride. They are doing this with several equities. I've actually seen one article describing several equities that were being manipulated to pin at expiration each month, and describing how it was done, and of course Phil has described it well. In some ways it's easier to figure this out than it is a ‘normal' market behavior, and thus easier to make money in certain equities.

- Iflantheman

On Optrader's section yesterday he was asked how he works with AAPL as an investment. He replied that he just ‘plays with the covers'. I've got a separate portfolio where I use primarily this technique over the past 6 months. Up 60% The principles involved are stock selection, patience, patience, using covers to protect profits, rolling covers to maximize premium return, and exiting when covers are gone and stock price is high. Sometimes it's hard to remember where you learn to do this stuff, but much of it is from integrating principles I've learned here with thing I already knew. Thanks for the help on this, Phil and others.

- Roaster

Phil I have been applying your arsenal (matresses, Edz plays, Ugl verticals etc.) to my gold holdings . So a big thank you for "teaching me how to fish" rather than just giving me the fish...

- Magret

Hey Phil, Your HOV suggestion about 3 months ago basically paid for my Philstockworld subscription for years to come. My average cost is about $1.

- Ether

Brilliant covering of the arcane, the profane , but never the mundane! Easy to understand the reason for your huge following, Phil, and why you have become a must read on my daily agenda. Please accept my complete appreciation.

- Seeking Truth

I did the same thing via your logic (sold puts that is). I glanced one time and they were already up 15% which is considered a good return for an overnight hold in most circles. This is PSW though and to us it's just another day…

- Kwan

Phil: UNH, hedged stock position, doing great, up over 50 %,

- RMM

The best play I made this year was PSW. Will renew my membership tonight. Looking for the same trading profit percentages next year, but will have an advantage from the compounding, and much better skills acquired from you and the many skilled PSW co-pilots. Thanks!

- Gel1

Posts Tagged ‘QLD’

TGIF – Stop the Week, We Want to Get Off!

by Phil - August 20th, 2010 8:29 am

This week cannot end soon enough for the bulls.

While it’s no shocker that we are finishing the week where we started and, in fact, finishing the options expiration period where we started last month (July 16th), it’s still very disappointing that we are making no progress. This weekend I asked if it was "Time for a New, New Deal?" I went to DC over the weekend and I’ll write about that this weekend but let’s just say I’m not seeing the political will to actually do something major to put Americans back to work and, as I said last Friday, when I said "Hoping the Weekend Brings Perspective":

Weekend stance – off this disappointing two-day run I’d say as neutral as possible over the weekend. I do think we need a good blow-off bottom now because we blew our chance to turn it around on volume yesterday.

Trading Range – I was counting on QE2 AND a stimulus announcement by next week. After the weekend we may have neither so it’s really going to be all about watching our levels in absence of any fundamental market forces. Monday we have the NY Fed and NAHB Housing Index. Tuesday is Housing Starts, Building Permits and a PPI that will also be BTE along with Industrial Prodcution (probable disappointment) and Cap Utilization (dragged down by refiners). Thursday is Leading Economic Indicators and the Philly Fed and that’s it for the week so, once we get past housing, the newspaper is more likely to move the markets than the data points.

We got so-so Leading Indicators yesterday and a TERRIBLE Philly Fed, leading me to send out a 10:03 Alert to Members saying:

Whoa! Philly Fed is disaster! -7.7. Leading indicators are up 0.1%, which is in-line but Philly was expected at +8 so this is TERRIBLE! We should test yesterday’s lows at least on that.

DIA $103 puts give good bang for the buck at .74 to stop the bleeding – just keep in mind thay have a ton of premium and need to be taken off quickly when momentum stops

While that play worked out very nicely, the bleeding I referred to was my 9:43 Alert to Members where I reiterated my "small gambles" on SSO, QLD, DDM and USO – but I did say at the time: "Don’t forget we get Leading Indicators and Philly Fed at 10 and…

Tags: BWA, DDM, DIA, FAS, HOV, INTC, JNK, QLD, SQQQ, SSO, USO, VLO

Join Member's Chat - 198 Comments Here »

POMO Thursday – Bernanke Serves Up Another Round

by Phil - August 19th, 2010 8:29 am

Today we get another round of Permanent Open Market Operations.

POMOs are the Fed’s way of creating additional bank reserves to finance asset purchases and loans for it’s Primary Dealers (the Gang of 12 or, as David Fry calls them, Da Boyz). GS and Co. then turn around and use this money to fuel their bots to buy equities and we believe we saw a little test run of those programs a couple of times this week as we had very irrational, sharp rallies for no particular reason and I had commented to Members, during chat, that it looked like some Bot testing.

Note that in David’s picture, Bernanke is still playing the role of the generous bartender he played in the hit video "Hayek vs. Keynes – An Economic Smackdown." Note this all ends badly for Keynes but WHAT A PARTY!

We made 3 aggressive upside spreads looking for a big finish for the week in yesterday morning’s Alert to Members on SSO, QLD and DDM. Fortunately our timing was good as my call to look for a run once we got past the 10:30 oil inventory report was on the money but then we were very disappointed by the size of the sell-off in the afternoon – even though we were short at that point (we can root for the bulls while betting against them). It’s all about jobs this morning and we need to see less the 450,000 pink slips handed out in the past week to get a little more aggressive.

SPY 5 MINUTE CHART

My prediction in the morning was: "We should get our bottoms with the crude inventories at 10:30 so no hurry on bullish plays, most likely. Selling XOM $60 puts for $1 or more (now .47) on a dip today is a nice play into expirations as you can always roll them along." The XOM puts topped out at .63, so no luck there, but the action (see Davids chart) was right on the money for us:

We took a long play on USO at the bottom that did well (and we took money and ran) and we flipped back to bearish at 1:41 with put plays on IWM and DIA that did nicely into the close. As I had said in the morning post – blissful agnosticism!

8:30 Update: 500,000 jobs lost last week! Ouch!!! Looks like we should have held onto those puts because this is going…

Tags: DIA, Dollar, DXD, INTC, IWM, MFE, QLD, SSO, USD, USO, XOM, Yen, Yuan

Join Member's Chat - 214 Comments Here »

Turnaround Tuesday – Will CNBC Apologize to America?

by Phil - July 6th, 2010 8:24 am

I wasn’t worried, were you?

Actually, we were worried enough this weekend to revisit "5 Plays that Make 500% if the Market Falls" as we took off our very profitable April 28th disaster hedges in last week’s dip, leaving us net long and just a little nervous going into the weekend. As I mentioned last week, I find myself in the very strange situation during capitulation cycles of having to push back against general Member sentiment as even the most experienced traders tend to fall victim to the combination of market and media manipulation when it’s as relentless as it has been for the last 10 sessions as the markets dropped 7.5%, pretty much without a break.

We first noticed the all-out media attack on the markets way back on June 15th, when CNBC featured the tag-team combination of Pimpco’s Mohaned El-Erian and Nouriel "Doctor Doom" Roubini – one who is pushing his bonds and one who is pushing his book and both of whom can be counted on to spin things as negatively as possible. That very effectively put the breaks on the rally from 9,800 on June 7th to 10,450 (6.6%) on June 15h and ran us back down to lower lows as EVERYTHING that happened since then was put into a negative light. I won’t rehash all the idiotic statements made by Cramer or the Fast Money crew or the rest of the Criminal Narrators Boosting Commodities – it’s either obvious to you or you’ll never see it at this point.

CNBC has been woking the markets over since May 21st, when I first pointed out how negative their coverage had shifted. Over the weekend, we discussed the workings of the game and the players that CNBC work for and, wouldn’t you know it – this morning, timed for lunch in the EU, Dr. Doom Roubini is their very special guest – AGAIN! El-Erian and Gross were kind enough to warn people this morning that "shares are no bargain as the recovery fades" and Barton Biggs is telling anyone who will listen that he liquidated half his tech holdings last week. Funny how they don’t tell you WHEN they are buying or selling, just a mention after the fact to "help you" make the right decision.

“The psychology of the stock market couldn’t be worse, yet the valuation probably couldn’t be a whole lot better,” said Phil Orlando, the New York-based chief equity…

Tags: AA, EEM, HOV, QLD, RIMM, TASR, VLO

Join Member's Chat - 193 Comments Here »

Weekend Wipe-Out, the Second Wave!

by Phil - January 29th, 2010 5:57 pm

Another week another 100 points lower.

Yep, that’s all it was, we lost all of 100 points more than last week, when we fell from 10,725 to 10,172 (553 points) and this week we dropped from Friday’s Dow close of 10,172 all the way down to 10,067 yet you would think the world had come to an end to hear the media and the traders freaking out. I’m not going to try to explain it, I can’t. Maybe it’s because going into last week we were very bearish but, starting on the 22nd, we let ourselves finally get a little more bullish AND THE MARKET BETRAYED US!

How could the market not zoom right back up? It always zooms right back up, doesn’t it? As I said a week ago Friday: "Boy, when sentiment shifts – it REALLY shifts!" My closing comment on Friday the 22nd was "Back to cash but leaving disaster hedges, which are looking great now as this is shaping up to be some disaster" and our weekend "Global Chart Review" showed us to be at some very key inflection points, letting us go well prepared into this week:

Manic Monday Market Movement

My Jets lost on Sunday so I was not in the best of moods on Monday. My outlook that morning was: "We still have our disaster hedges in case things get worse but, on the whole, we’re expecting a 1% bounce in the very least off our 5% lines (anything less will be a bad sign)." We were pretty much at the 5% rule on Friday’s close so we focused on the bounce we wanted to achieve in order to get more bullish.

I noted that the levels we were looking for were not exactly 1% retraces (see post for reasons) and our target retraces were: Dow 10,300, S&P 1,105, Nasdaq 2,225, NYSE 7,100 and Russell 625. What were the highs for the week on those indexes? Dow 10,310 (+10), S&P 1,103 (-2), Nasdaq 2,227 (+2), NYSE 7,098 (-2) and Russell 621 (-4). So that’s a net of +4 points out of 21,355 points worth of predictions on the retrace, accuracy to within .019% - not a bad showing for our patented 5% rule.

Please, under NO circumstances subscribe to our daily newsletter, where you would have this kind of information every morning and DO NOT get an Alert Membership where we send out our amazingly accurate watch levels to you every day. Having this sort of advanced information…

Tags: AAPL, ABX, AMAT, AMZN, BRK.B, CME, DIA, EDZ, FDX, FTR, GOOG, GS, INTC, LVS, MBI, MOT, PBT, QLD, QQQQ, RSX, SDS, SLX, SYMC, T, TASR, TBT, VZ, XOM, YRCW

Posted in Immediately available to public | Join Member's Chat - 23 Comments Here »

October Overview – When the Goblins Come Home to Roost

by Phil - November 1st, 2009 8:15 am

Rollercoaster monks What a crazy month we had!

The Dow began the month of October at 9,712 and finished the month of October at EXACTLY 9,712. Now I don’t want to say the market is manipulated but… No, I’ve got nothing, there are no buts – the market is totally manipulated! Either that or you believe that the random outcome of tens of millions of traders around the globe trading hundreds of billions of shares of stock would just so happen to begin and end the month within .50 after going as low as 9,378.77 (on the 5th) and as high as 10,157.94 (on the 21st). So that is literally a 1 out of the 779-point swing coincidence to hit that 9,712 nail on the head.

At PSW we couldn’t be happier about this frankly. As I often say to members: We don’t care IF the game is rigged, as long as we can figure out HOW the game is rigged so we can play along. We were bearish in our September 27th Wrap-Up when I predicted that Earnings season would bring about a "Return to Fundamentals." We targeted retrace moves of Dow 9,512, S&P 1,020, Nasdaq 2,030, NYSE 9,496 and Russell 556 – all of which we hit the following Friday.

68017.strip.sunday

That week I highlighted my fundamental market concerns and Monday (9/28) my topic was "6 Unemployed People Per Available Job," Tuesday I said "Consumer Confidence is Key," Wednesday we caught the turn perfectly as I predicted "End of Quarter, End of Pump," and Thursday, October 1st was the day that "REIT’s Turned Rotten" – which was something we had been playing for during the September rally so we were thrilled with what is NOW the 2nd worst down day of the month. That was the day GS decided to agree with me that REITs were over-valued and gave us a signal that the Gang of 12 were no longer all on the same page. Friday, the 2nd, we were back to looking at the Jobs numbers when I asked "Is Anybody Working for the Weekend."

We could not have been more pleased with what was the worst week in the market since then end of August, which was a,most as bad at the beginning of July (are you beginning to see a pattern?) and I said that Friday: "Just like any good roller coaster, market plunges can…

Tags: AAPL, AM, BIDU, BKE. O, BMY, CERN, CREE, CY, EMC, ERX, GMCR, MZN, NFLX, PALM, PCLN, POT, QLD, RIMM, SPY, SRS, SWM, T, TRLG, TXN, UHS, URBN, VZ, WFMI

Posted in Immediately available to public | Join Member's Chat - 21 Comments Here »

Testy Tuesday – Apple Leads Earnings Boosters

by Phil - October 20th, 2009 8:29 am

Wheee, being bullish is fun!

We’re still not great at it as we shorted a few toppy-looking calls yesterday (WFMI, QLD, SPY and POT) but that was a normal offset to bullish plays on SO, ERX, VZ, RIMM, BMY, EMC, AAPL, TXN and T. Of course, we’re also playing our bullish Watch List, which still has plenty of laggards that we’re picking up. SRS was irresistible as they fell below $9.50 again but clearly we tipped bullish and all those bullish plays from last week should start bearing some fruit as well. The best thing about being a bull is – the markets went up for no reason on low volume and we were happy about it – Imagine that!

Of course we are still skeptical because the economy still sucks but it is fun to get a little more bullish while it lasts. Even our too bearish $100KP enjoyed yesterday’s action, finishing the day $101,364. That won’t last if we keep going higher and I’ll be looking for some bullish plays to officially add there if we hold our levels today (we didn’t yesterday).

AAPL is going to be a huge winner for us this morning. We’ve been selling Jan $165 and $170 puts for weeks as our key way to play earnings (collecting between $5 and $7) and yesterday, in Member Chat, I suggested selling the $185 puts for $7 as well as the April $180/200 bull call spread, also at $7. It was my position that you would be better off putting $2,000 into either of those plays than you would be spending $18,750 to buy 100 shares of the stock ahead of earnings. It will be interesting to see which position fares better today.

In other earnings fun, we are strategically taking well-hedged earnings plays. ZION was a ratio backspread, buying 4 Apr $21 calls for $2.10 and selling 6 Dec $19 calls for $1.55 in a bearish play on their earnings. Looking good so far. BSX was also played for a miss, selling an even amount of Nov $10s against the Feb $11s, both at .65 and we went bullish on TXN, buying 6 Jan $25s for .82 and selling just 4 Nov $24s for .70 as we expected good but not great earnings there. We’ll see how those do today but they’re all looking like winners in pre-market. The nice thing about plays like this is the are fairly low-risk and not capital intensive…

Tags: AAPL, BMY, EMC, ERX, POT, QLD, RIMM, SO, SPY, SRS, T, TXN, VZ, WFMI

Join Member's Chat - 145 Comments Here »

Weekend Wrap-Up – Dynamic Portfolio Adjustments!

by Phil - March 14th, 2009 11:40 am

Was that a great week or what?

No really, I’m asking as I’m not sure yet… We had a great rally once we got Monday out of the way but, all in all, it was a hell of a lot of work to get back to where we were last options expiration day (Feb 20th). We nailed the market turn to a tee, beginning with my calls to go long on QLD, HOV and FAS while shorting the SKF at $250 (now $138) in last Friday’s appearance on LiveStock. In fact, my closing comment in Friday morning’s post was: "We EXPECT a 400-point BOUNCE along this downtrend so we’re not even impressed with anything less than 7,000 next week."

We did a little further investigation in member chat yesterday and decided that we need to break 7,450 on the Dow to actually be impressed next week. Our main concern is we get a quick spike up to that level and then a rejection that sends us racing down to the bottom so we will be positioning to guard against that next week. At the moment, we ended the day slightly bullish but would not be surprised by a drop back to the 7,000 line and we’re positioned for that, as we sold the 3/31 $72 puts against our longer puts. The $2.25 we collected from those pays for us to roll up our long protection 400 Dow points but, to the downside, put a break on our insurance at the 7,000 line (the point at which they go in the money).

By contrast, last Friday, my advice to members was to cover the long DIA puts with $70 puts at $4.32. Those are now .61 and the profits from that already paid for more than half the cost of our long June puts. This is very important to understand as we often talk about being 50/50 or 60/40 bearish but when you can offset 1/2 the cost of your 60% bearish side like this, it makes it very easy to go with the flow on a market rally. The only other stock I picked on Friday was AMZN as $62.50 for reasons I elaborated in the live show, they finished up near the highs at $68.63 but the FAS as $2.85 was a real winner, finishing up at $5.15 yesterday – not bad for a week’s work.

Of course nothing says…

Tags: C, CBS, CCJ, DIA, FAS, FAZ, GOOG, HOV, IWM, LVS, QLD, SKF, SPY, TM, UYG, V, XHB

Posted in Immediately available to public | Join Member's Chat - 25 Comments Here »

Phil's Favorites

Jobless Claims Improve, Leading Indicators Decline: Economic Report Card

September 22nd, 2011 5:36 pm

Courtesy of John Nyaradi.

Jobless claims improve while leading indicators decline in today’s economic report card

by Wall Street Sector Selector Staff

Weekly jobless claims declined to 424,000 from last week’s 432, 000 but stubbornly stayed above the all important 400,000 level for another week.

August Leading Indicators came in at +0.3% compared to 0.5% for July, as the economy continues registering weakness.

Good news came from July Home Prices which rose to +0.8% from the previously reported +0.7%.

But the biggest economic news of the week came yesterday when the Federal Reserve said it saw “significant downside risks to the economic outlook, including strains in global financial markets.”

Global stock markets responded negatively yesterday an...

Insider Scoop

Priceline.com Trades Higher on Q1 Earnings Results (PCLN)

May 5th, 2011 5:10 pm

Courtesy of Benzinga

Shares of Priceline.com Incorporated (NASDAQ: PCLN) are trading higher in the after-hours following the release of its Q1 earnings results. Currently, shares are up 2.74%, trading at $548.60; they closed the regular session down 0.67 %, at $533.97.

The company said that its Q1 EPS came in at $2.66 on revenues of $809.3 million; this compares to the Street's estimate of $2.46 per share on revenues of $779.5 million. Revenues rose 38.6% year over year.

"In the 1st quarter, the Group benefited from strong growth in our global hotel business, particularly at Booking.com and Agoda," said Jeffery H. Boyd, Priceline President and Chief Executive Officer.

He added, "Room nights booked grew by 55.8% and our international gross bookings grew by 79% compared to prior year...

http://www.insidercow.com/ more from Insider

Zero Hedge

Fukushima Explosion Update: Core Presumed Intact As Sea Water Used To Bring Temperature Down, Radiation Level At 1015 Microsieverts/Hour

March 12th, 2011 9:41 am

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

The damage control to the Fukushima explosion reported earlier is coming fast and furious. According to CNN, "the explosion at an earthquake-damaged nuclear plant was not caused by damage to the nuclear reactor but by a pumping system that failed as crews tried to bring the reactor's temperature down, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Saturday. The next step for workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant will be to flood the reactor containment structure with sea water to bring the reactor's temperature down to safe levels, he said. The effort is expected to take two days." While the government is trying to play down the threat from the explosion, it has nonetheless double the evacuation zone radius from 10 to 20 kilometers: "Radiation levels have fallen since the explosion and there is no immediate danger, Edano said. But authorities were nevertheless expanding the evacuation ...

Chart School

The Mega-Bear Quartet and L-Shaped "Recoveries"

March 12th, 2011 9:35 am

Courtesy of Doug Short

Note from dshort: I retired this chart series last summer in deference to my prefered inflation-adjusted series that aligns the S&P 500 2000 high with the Nikkei peak in 1989. However, I continue to receive requests for this version, despite the "V" shape of the the recovery since the March 2009 low. This chart series overlays the current S&P 500 with the L-shaped "recoveries" after the Dow Crash of 1929, the Nikkei 225 after Japan's 1989 bubble, and the post Tech Bubble NASDAQ. Click the chart below for a larger version and use the links to see various comparisons.

Click for a larger image

I've ...

Sabrient

Sabrient Risers - 3/12/2011

March 12th, 2011 12:00 am

Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...

more from Sabrient

Option Review

Bulls Scoop Up Sprint Nextel Corp. Calls

March 10th, 2011 4:33 pm

Today’s tickers: S, FTR, JTX & SBUX

...

OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of March 7th, 2011

March 6th, 2011 11:25 pm

This post is for live trades and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current virtual trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).

We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.

Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.

To learn more about the swing trading portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here

Optrader

Swing trading portfolio

One trade portfolio

...

more from OpTrader

Stock World Weekly

March 6th, 2011 8:22 am

Here's the newest Stock World Weekly: Illusion Based on a Fantasy

Comments welcome... share your thoughts.

Download Newsletter 3/6/11

Stock World Weekly archives here >

...

more from SWW

Pharmboy

Biotech Junkies Update and Momenta Pharma Moving Forward

March 1st, 2011 9:42 am

February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.

Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;

Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...

As Seen On:

About Phil:

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...

Learn more About Phil >>

About Ilene:

Ilene is editor and affiliate program coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site (blogroll, archives, more). Contact Ilene to learn about our affiliate and content sharing programs.

Favorites Site >>