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Posts Tagged ‘SGR’

$5,000 Portfolio Update – Week 6 – $5,614

Well we’re back to cash…

After getting off to a great start, up 12% in the first 3 weeks, we were lucky this week to get back to 12% after having a run of bad luck (or bad skill actually, as we went bearish too early and got punished for it).  The goal of the $5,000 portfolio is to play around the volatility of earnings and make no mistake, it’s a high-risk way to trade $5,000 and is meant to be a small portion of a large portfolio – not something you would want to do with your only $5,000.  Of course the usual disclaimer is, this is a virtual portfolio, don’t try this at home, trading is dangerous, always consult a professional financial adviser, etc, etc.  The idea is to practice different option strategies and we’re learning from our successes and failures – I hope! 

Our first play 5 plays that we closed were on AA, DIA, SGR, MCD,  and DELL, which had a total gain of $629 in our first 6 days.  For details on those trades, go to the Day 6 post.  We have been posting all of the moves for the $5KP in member chat, of course, but also on Seeking Alpha’s Stock Talk, where we have discovered the added bonus that, like Twitter, you do not have to refresh the page to see new comments!  If you want to follow these trades, just click on "Follow" under my picture and you will automatically see any comments made there.  A full review of Stock Talk commentary regarding the $5KP is available here and please make sure you click "Follow" on my picture so that you will be able to track further updates.

We closed positions on WFC and AXP, up $258 in our last review on July 25th and we have since closed our YUM position with a $256 loss on the 28th, which was a shame as we gave up on 8 Aug $35 calls at .45 ($360) and they flew up to $2 ($1,600) just a week later.  Unfortunately, in a small portfolio, you don’t have the luxury of riding out your losses and, at the time, we felt lucky to escape this underperfomer with a relatively small loss.

A VNO put spread we couldn’t fill the week of the 21st, was an easy fill the next week and 3 Sept $50 puts were in at $3.70 ($1,110) and 3 Aug $50 puts were sold for $2.90 ($870).  The premise of this play is a tough
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$5,000 Portfolio Update – Week 3 – $5,598

We’re up 12% in 3 weeks – not bad…

The goal of the $5,000 portfolio is to play around the volatility of earnings and make no mistake, it’s a high-risk way to trade $5,000 and is meant to be a small portion of a large portfolio – not something you would want to do with your only $5,000.  Of course the usual disclaimer is, this is a virtual portfolio, don’t try this at home, trading is dangerous, always consult a professional financial adviser, etc, etc.  The idea is to practice different option strategies and we’re having a a very exciting first few weeks! 

Our first play 4 plays that we closed were on AA, DIA, SGR, MCD and DELL, which had a total gain of $629 in our first 6 days.  For details on those trades, go to the Day 6 post.  We have been posting all of the moves for the $5KP in member chat, of course, but also on Seeking Alpha’s Stock Talk, where we have discovered the added bonus that, like Twitter, you do not have to refresh the page to see new comments!  If you want to follow these trades, just click on "Follow" under my picture and you will automatically see any comments made there.    

On Wednesday, we also had an open a ratio backspread play on YUM and we sold 6 Aug $37 calls for $1.15 ($690) and bought 4 Aug $35 calls for $2.20 ($880).  The idea of a trade like this into earnings is that a large drop will hurt your callers more than it hurts you and, to the upside, you have net $800 in the net $190 spread before you have to pay your 2 open callers a penny.  That means they would each have to go up $3 before wiping out your profits.  Since YUM was at $36 at the time and we did not feel it would be likely to go to $40, even on great earnings, the play made sense.  YUM had very poor earnings and dropped right down to $34, below our strike.  We decided to buy back the 6 Aug $37 calls for .40 ($240), so a gain of $450 on that leg.  That left us with the 4 naked Aug $35 puts, which we paid $880 for, less the $450 gains so we are in those 4 calls for an average of $1.13 per contract.  We have since doubled down that position at .40 leaving us with 8 at an average entry of .77 per contract.  Currently, they are trading at .50…
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$5,000 Portfolio Update – Day 9 – $5,424

We had a pretty good week with our new portfolio.

The goal of the $5,000 portfolio is to play around the volatility of earnings and make no mistake, it’s a high-risk way to trade $5,000 and is meant to be a small portion of a large portfolio – not something you would want to do with your only $5,000.  Of course the usual disclaimer is, this is a virtual portfolio, don’t try this at home, trading is dangerous, always consult a professional financial adviser, etc, etc.  The idea is to practice different option strategies and we had a very exciting first week! 

Our first play 4 plays that we closed were on AA, DIA, SGR, MCD and DELL, which had a total gain of $629 in our first 6 days.  For details on those trades, go to the Day 6 post.  We have been posting all of the moves for the $5KP in member chat, of course, but also on Seeking Alpha’s Stock Talk, where we have discovered the added bonus that, like Twitter, you do not have to refresh the page to see new comments!  If you want to follow these trades, just click on "Follow" under my picture and you will automatically see any comments made there.    

On Wednesday, we also had an open a ratio backspread play on YUM and we sold 6 Aug $37 calls for $1.15 ($690) and bought 4 Aug $35 calls for $2.20 ($880).  The idea of a trade like this into earnings is that a large drop will hurt your callers more than it hurts you and, to the upside, you have net $800 in the net $190 spread before you have to pay your 2 open callers a penny.  That means they would each have to go up $3 before wiping out your profits.  Since YUM was at $36 at the time and we did not feel it would be likely to go to $40, even on great earnings, the play made sense.  YUM had very poor earnings and dropped right down to $34, below our strike.  We decided to buy back the 6 Aug $37 calls for .40 ($240), so a gain of $450 on that leg.  That left us with the 4 naked Aug $35 puts, which we paid $880 for, less the $450 gains so we are in those 4 calls for an average of $1.13 per contract.  The calls have fallen to .70 so we are down .43 on those ($172) so far.  While we do feel that YUM…
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Will We Hold It Wednesday? Industrial Production Edition

David Fry S&P ChartWhee, this is great!

Any excuse to take the markets higher and INTC was a good one last night.  We’re thrilled because my 2:43 Trade Idea for members was "INTC Jan $17.50s for $1.28, speculative naked call with earnings tonight."  We don’t do those very often but we looked primed for a pop and not much was expected from Intel, who were still expected to earn just 8 cents this quarter by the 44 analysts who are paid to follow them, despite the fact that they earned .11 last quarter (an 8-cent upside surprise) and had earned .28 last year in Q2.   That made the long call an excellent play since we were also willing to stick with them and add to the position if INTC had missed.   As it is, that should give us a nice 50%+ pop this morning! 

Other trades ideas from yesterday’s Member chat were a GS put spread, AIG puts (and we can’t wait for "earnings" on them!), DIA puts and calls as momentum plays, a YUM ratio backspread for the $5,000 Portfolio and a JPM bear put spread.  So we weren’t overly enthusiastic in the run-up, mainly because we loaded up the truck in last week’s dip with 18 bullish plays that I reviewed in the weekend wrap-up.  So we are looking for short plays to defend ourselves until we are sure what we have here is more than the proverbial "dead cat bounce" off our 33% retrace (which I discussed in Monday’s post).  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, our upper targets to break the dreaded head and shoulders pattern are:  Dow 8,500, S&P 930, Nasdaq 1,825, NYSE 6,000 and Russell 510.  We’re making good progress but nothing would be worse than failing this breakout and confirming the downward pattern so it will still be a tough week to get through, especially with todays manufacturing data, which we are concerned about.

David Fry INTC ChartI think David Fry summed it up for the skeptic’s camp yesterday saying:

The AP headline today read: “Goldman Sachs’ $2.7B profit shows the firm’s prowess.” Good Grief! You have to hand it to Da Boyz, they know how to bedazzle Main Street. Anyone with a HAL 9000, their bad debts taken off their books, billions in public money to trade and most of their competitors (Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros.) eliminated should do just dandy. “Prowess”? My okole!

INTC did indeed
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$5,000 Portfolio Update – Day 6 – $5,629!

We had a pretty good week with our new portfolio.

The goal of the $5,000 portfolio is to play around the volatility of earnings and make no mistake, it’s a high-risk way to trade $5,000 and is meant to be a small portion of a large portfolio – not something you would want to do with your only $5,000.  Of course the usual disclaimer is, this is a virtual portfolio, don’t try this at home, trading is dangerous, always consult a professional financial adviser, etc, etc.  The idea is to practice different option strategies and we had a very exciting first week! 

Our first play was a spread on AA into earnings, initiated Monday at 1:10 with a buy of 3 $7.50 calls for $1.75 ($525), which we later covered with 3 $9 calls at $1.04 ($312).  That put us in the $1.50 spread for net .71 and we needed AA to finish next week at $9 to collect our full profit.  We bought back the $9 calls on Tuesday, ahead of earnings as they fell to .70 (up 33%), which lowered the basis on the remaining $7.50 calls to $1.42 and we got out of that one the next day as they spiked up to $2.50 in the morning after earnings.  Net profit $324. 

The second trade we entered was a DIA call play, the $84s, which we entered Tuesday at 10:30 at .70 (5 contracts) and subsequently doubled down at .50 (average basis .60) and again at .42 (average basis .51), sold 10, leaving us with 10 contracts at .51 and got out at .60 on Wednesday’s "stick save" close.  Net profit $90. 

The third play of the week was SGR and we initiated that one Thursday at 11:12 with a straight spread of 4 $22.50 calls for $3.30, selling the $25 calls for $1.45 for a net entry of $1.85 on the $2.50 spread.  Earnings were a miss on SGR but we felt that the sell-off was an overreaction so we took out the $25 calls for .25 (82% profit), leaving us in the $22.50s for net $2.10 ($3.30 entry less the $1.10 profit on the $25 calls).  We hit our goal of $2.50 yesterday (7/14) and stopped out with a .40 gain although some hung on as the $22.50s flew all the way to $3.30 in the afternoon.  Even at .40 it’s a nice $160 gain.

Our final play of…
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Stop the Week, We Want to Get Off!

David Fry SPY Weekly ChartTGIF for sure, it seems like ending the week is the only way to stop the markets from dropping!

We failed to take back our weak bounce levels I laid out in yesterday’s morning post as the Dow failed to hold 8,250 on a very brief spike past it, the S&P failed right at 888 in the morning and again in the afternoon (where we were able to use it as a "go short" indicator), the Nasdaq flirted with 1,750 all day and barely held it, the NYSE also failed 5,700 in the afternoon and gave us a good, bearish indicator while the Russell never came close to 488 and failed our critical 480 mark at the close.  As I’ve been saying all week, we really don’t have to watch anything but the NYSE, which will test the critical 5,600 mark this morning and failing that level would be, in technical terms: BAD!

Oil ($62) and gold ($920) also failed our levels so there was nothing to be bullish about in yesterday’s action.  We were in and out of DIA puts and calls, using S&P 880 as our inflection point and we took the money and ran on our AA calls (up $330, 78%) and DIA calls (up $45, 20%) as our first two completed plays in our $5,000 Portfolio, which will now be tracked under Seeking Alpha’s "Stock Talk" feature as an experiment for non-members.  We did a day-trade as well in the $5KP on MCD, picking up the $55 calls at $1.65 for a quick ride to $2, adding another $175 (21%) to the kitty for the week.  Our only open trade in this hit and run portfolio is SGR, where we are in the $22.50 calls for $3.30, selling the $25 calls for $1.45 for a net $1.85 entry on this bullish $2.50 vertical spread (4 contracts).  Earnings were a slight miss but we’re not worried as the order backlog is fantastic and we’ll be buying more if the after-hours sell-off holds into the morning. If this play comes through for us we’ll be up about $800 in our first week and well on-track of our goal to double up over earnings season. 

David Fry SPY Daily ChartIt will be a shame to have to play the dark side but we’re back to neutral now after covering our bullish plays with DIA puts as the upside just seemed way too risky heading into…
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Phil's Favorites

Jobless Claims Improve, Leading Indicators Decline: Economic Report Card

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...



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Insider Scoop

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

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...



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Zero Hedge

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

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 ...



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Chart School

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

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 ...



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Sabrient

Sabrient Risers - 3/12/2011

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...

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Option Review

Bulls Scoop Up Sprint Nextel Corp. Calls

 Today’s tickers: S, FTR, JTX & SBUX

...



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OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of March 7th, 2011

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

...

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Stock World Weekly

Stock World Weekly

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 >

...

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Pharmboy

Biotech Junkies Update and Momenta Pharma Moving Forward

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

 

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...



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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...

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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.

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