Thirty-Three Percent Thursday - Big Chart Review
by Phil - November 17th, 2009 10:58 am
Whee - we finally made it!
In an UNBELIEVABLE move off the bottom over the past 6 months and one week, we have gained 58% on the S&P and have finally crossed into our 33% levels (from the highs) that we first set as upside targets back in our July Big Chart Review. At the time I said "I just don’t see that happening without a pullback" yet here we are, with barely a wiggle down since I wrote that on July 27th and up 20% from our July 13th S&P base at 880.
Have we been too bearish? Is it now natural for the market to rise 20% in 2 months without a pullback? Are we really 20% better off than we were 2 months ago? History tells us not to mess with the 5% rule so we SHOULD encounter powerful resistance here as we approach the zone of a roughly 60% move off the March lows as well as 30% off our highs - it’s going to be a rough 2.5% from here. As you can see from the above chart, we have already exceeded all previous recoveries by almost 100% at this point in the cycle. And why not, our government spent $9 TRILLION dollars to do it so we damn sure better have a pretty chart as a souvenir! The other rally that had a spectacular recovery was the the great crash of 1929 (the grey line).
In the 1929 crash, the stock market fell first, not the banks, which didn’t begin failing until 1932 as lack of electronic data and next-day mail meant it took a lot longer for the late payment and foreclosure cycle to start impacting bank balance sheets. Also, of course, they were nowhere near as maniacally levered as today’s institutions. In 1929 the banks did not play the market, they simply lent money to people who invested in stocks, businesses and properties that went bust so there were two distinct waves to the market crash in the Great Depression: First the people went broke, then the banks.
Unemployment in the US in 1930, a year after the crash, was only 8.7% - less than it is now. No one at that time thought it was important to help the average American get back on their feet after many of them lost their life savings and went deeply into debt as their homes dropped in value and jobs became scarce. It was only after…
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Why Worry Wednesday - The Recession Is Over?
by Phil - September 16th, 2009 8:30 am
Uncle Ben says the recession is "very likely over" yesterday:
Even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it is still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time as many people still find their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was.
Yeah, it sounds better in the headlines than when you quote the whole sentence and watching the video gives you even less confidence. Speaking of confidence - I reminded members yesterday that there is no economic forecaster we should have less confidence in that Ben Bernanke:
- July 2005: "There was no housing bubble and housing prices are supported by the strength of the economy."
- Nov 2006: "The motor vehicle sector is already showing signs of strengthening" and "The rate of decline in new home construction should slow as inventory is worked off."
- Feb 2007: "We expect moderate growth going forward. There is not much indication that sub-prime mortgage issues have spread into the broader mortgage market."
- July 2007: "Home sales should ultimately be supported by growth in income and employment… The global economy continues to be strong. Overall the US economy is likely to expand at a moderate pace over the second half of 2007, with growth strengthening a bit in 2008."
$9,000,000,000,0000 in bailout spending later, Mr. Bernanke is now telling us the recession is LIKELY over and that’s good enough for our man Cramer to tell his sheeple: "Sentiment is so negative right now it’s out of synch with reality.” This clip is worth watching just to hear the way Cramer sneers the phrase "Nobel Prize-winning economist" as if that title, by itself, means you should dismiss Joseph Stiglitz out of hand as he warns that current bank problems are bigger than pre-Lehman. Cramer calls Stiglitz’s article: "So stupid, wrong and anti-empirical that it’s just downright silly that it doesn’t even dignify the use of video-tape or digital or whatever they do now." I know this sentence makes no sense but it is an exact quote.
Jim does manage to plug his new book during this tirade against the man who has been working with the EU and other top economists to change the way GDP is measured to focus on actual improvements in the lives of the citizenry rather than just the corporations. GDP has long been an inaccurate measure of a country’s economic prosperity: It can make countries like Malaysia, who are tearing…
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Toppy Tuesday Morning
by Phil - September 15th, 2009 8:10 am
Can we break higher on this low volume?
We’ve been waiting for traders to come back from their summer breaks but no sign of them so far. Sill the market volume is at historic lows and still 80% of that volume is concentrated on a dozen financial stocks that simply get traded back and forth by robots every time the market needs a push in one direction or another.
As David Fry’s chart indicates, the only big volume stick we’ve seen in the past two months have come attached to big sell-offs. In mid-August we were "just about to break higher" but gapped down instead and then again at the end of August, we reversed our low volume "recovery" with a big sell-off. Here we are in the middle of September (that every two week thing) and THIS TIME, the analysts say it’s different. Different I guess because the volume has dropped by another 1/3 since our last fake rally.
This, of course, does not stop us from "going with the flow" as running with the bulls can be very profitable but we are hedging A LOT and very cautious in our trade set-ups as we know how fast this can all turn around. We took our short profits at yesterday’s morning dip and added a mix of long and short plays during the day. We did put our foot down on SRS and the Russell, playing the SRS to go no lower than $10.25 and the Russell not to break $600 this week and we’ll be sweating out that one this morning as the pre-market pump has already jammed the futures up 40 points since Europe’s open.
Asia was mostly flat this morning but that does little to describe the madness at the Hang Seng, which was closed for the morning due to a Typhoon and opened for just 90 minutes in the afternoon where they dropped like a rock that was tied to a rock that was wearing cement shoes into the close. Still, thanks to a 200-point gap up into the delayed open, the Hang Seng managed to finish the day down just 68 official points. As soon as the US markets closed, dollar repair crews were rushed to the scene and they managed to get it back over 91 Yen in time for Japan’s open and that helped the Nikkei stay above that critical 10,200 line we’ve been watching for over a…
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Pharma’s Green Shoots
by Phil - September 15th, 2009 6:43 am
Courtesy of Pharmboy
Hello all! Not a bad month since our first plays in the Pharma and Biotech space. Phil summed up last week the positions and the nice profits on our picks, and I think it is time for a few more companies to focus on for our portfolios (e.g., 100K), after all, it’s about tilling the soil and making some money on our Pharm….
First, the healthcare debate is going to rage on after the holiday weekend, and I am expecting this sector to take some lumps with our good ride up. I would expect the economies of scale to weigh in, as even though price may be lower, picking up more coverage (patients) is what it is all about. Those dependent upon high priced biologics may be the ones that take the biggest hit, as the costs are quite different than popping a pill every day for a few $$$. Just things to ponder and we will react as developments take shape on the horizon.
Mid-summer and early fall are the times for the biotech and pharma segments to provide the greatest returns. I cannot decide if it is the cyclical nature or if more clinical data are being released during this time. Looking at XBI and XPH over a five year period, the biotech fund (XBI) has done a bit better on overall return, but the two charts follow the same overall pattern. Thus, we are entering the final stretch for this sector, and should be prepared for a slight pullback during the holidays.
5 yr XBI and XPH Chart Here >>
Now, on to the good stuff….
Shire PLC (SPHGY), founded in 1986, aims to be a market leader in meeting the needs of specialist physicians in targeted segments. Its core therapeutic focus areas are attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; within central nervous system, CNS) and increasingly biopharmaceuticals that address specific genetic disorders. Consistent with this strategy, Shire has been made a number of important acquisitions, including the 2007 purchase of New River, the developer of Vyvanse (the successor for Adderall XR ADHD treatment; and a series of biopharmaceutical acquisitions, following the Transkaryotic Therapies entry acquisition in 2005. In 2008, Shire acquired German biotech company Jerini, which brought along Firazyr, a treatment for hereditary angioedema.
Recently, Shire has sent its treatment for Gaucher disease, an alternative to the Genzyme (GENZ) drug Cerezyme, to the FDA for approval.
The Company focuses its drug research and development on the relatively common mental abnormality Attention…
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Monday Markets - Mr. Obama Goes to Wall Street
by Phil - September 14th, 2009 8:29 am
Today should be very interesting!
One year to the day after Lehman Brothers collapsed and precipitated a financial crisis that reverberated across the globe, President Obama will deliver a major speech on the financial crisis at Federal Hall in New York City at midday on Monday. According to the White House: "He will discuss the aggressive steps the Administration has taken to bring the economy back from the brink, the commitment to winding down the government’s role in the financial sector and the actions the United States and the global community must take to prevent a crisis like this from ever happening again."
As I had mentioned in our Year One Review of the Stock Market Crash, Obama and Wall Street did not get off to a great start but, even after the March crash, we are still up 20% since he was sworn in in January as the President has been EXTREMELY accommodative to Wall Street’s needs (ie. free money) so far. That has been the carrot - perhaps now it is time for the stick…
The Treasury just released a document entitled: "The Next Phase of Government Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies" which, at 51 pages, is a pretty neat review of the crash as well but I still prefer mine as it saves you an hour and has much better pictures. There are many charts in the government’s documents and they are not all that encouraging. As the report concludes:
We must address the structural weaknesses in our financial system that this crisis revealed. The Administration is working to gain approval of a detailed set of proposals to reform our regulatory system to address these weaknesses and keep our financial markets and economy on track to a sustainable recovery.
In addition to Obama speaking at noon, we have 3 Fed Governors making speeches today. Duke speaks on Regulatory Reform at 8:30, Lacker talks about Financial Regulation at 12:30 (right after Obama) and Yellen gives an Economic Outlook at 3:50, just in time for a stick-save into the bell so we could have a wild ride this morning!
Speaking of the Fed, I just read a great book called "The Creature from Jekyll Island," which our man Ron Paul calls: "What every American needs to know about central bank power. A gripping adventure into the secret world of the international banking cartel." The book tears down the wall of our monetary system and the secret meetings that…
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$101,674 Portfolio Update - Week 3
by Phil - September 13th, 2009 8:26 am
Slow and steady wins the race!
We had a big run and capped our gains a little early for the week by doubling up on our PSQ (short Nasdaq) calls on Thursday’s mad run. This did the job of locking in our profits but that hedge is now making up $450 of losses, which is 1/3 of all our losses for the month. Still we managed to gain $396 for the week with still just $28,537 in positions so that’s another 1% for the week, a pretty good clip…
I am happy to say that our $100K Portfolio is now live and available on WallStreetSurvivor.com at:
We’re actually well ahead of our cash goal as we also have $86,101 in cash along with our $28,537 in positions with $13,768 in margin devoted to some of the longer hedges we’ve sold. That leaves us with $147,935 in margin buying power and we’re going to use it to do a few "stupid option tricks" into expirations that should pick us up a little extra cash over the next 5 days and Wednesday or Friday we must expect to make our rolling moves for the current month and I’ll be sending out Alerts to Members later in the week. For now, we are very happy with all of our current positions as we have 16 winners and just 7 losers - that’s very good for a well-hedged portfolio…- AMZN has a great premium and selling 5 $85 calls for $1.25 and 5 $85 puts for $1.75 (any net $3 combo) will either put $1,500 in our pockets or become a trade we will roll out to October.
- BAC is one we already have in the portfolio and we can double up on…
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The New IPad Is Here!
by Phil - September 11th, 2009 7:26 pm
Finally I’m getting my IPad!
It was almost a year ago when I said to members on Dec 30th: "AAPL just announced a deal to do Ebooks on IPhones and ITouch and that is the intermediate step towards the IPad, which should be a 2-3x size version of the IPhone that takes the place of a Kindle or a laptop or a notepad or…"
At the time AAPL was trading at a paltry $86 a share and we were BUYBUYBUYing. The context of that chat comment was AAPL had been under attack on the Steve Jobs health concerns and Jim Cramer was "fomenting" a rumor that AAPL was going to issue a warning on Q4, which I referred to as "typical pre-holiday BS…. Day before a holiday, little chance of getting a confirmation or denial from AAPL as key execs aren’t reachable." As AAPL continued to fall, we continued to buy because IT DID NOT CHANGE OUR FUNDAMENTAL OUTLOOK ON THE COMPANY. I went on to say:
Notice the timing of this article that hit the Mac Daily News at 12:09, just ahead of the rumors. This way, the hyenas who plant the rumors cause GOOG to bring up a "legitimate" news story concerning Jobs’ health to make the whole thing seem legitimate. Don’t forget MacWorld is next week and these attacks often occur ahead of AAPL events.
Here’s some real news on AAPL, IPhone browser share jumped 36% Christmas week. 57% of all mobile browser requests came from IPhones, up from 42% the week before Xmas so either a lot of people opened up IPhones under the tree or they are just so darn usesful that people who are home for the holidays use their IPhone like a computer.
If you want the real lowdown on the Cramer conspiracy, don’t take my word for it, Apple Insider got the goods on him by March 13th of this year but, by then Apple was back at $95 and on it’s way back to $170 already. As fundamental investors, you just have to know when to put your foot down! Apple Insider is a great read but here is the part you MUST know if you want to understand why we love to go against what the Crookmeister General says to his sheeple on TV. This is a great view of how the guy "who just wants to educate you" really operates:
Following the original iPhone pre-launch rumors Cramer talked…
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Friday Market Follies - Up, Up and Away?
by Phil - September 11th, 2009 8:27 am
And away we go!
We have finally broken through all of our breakout levels and no one is more surprised than I am to see this coming without a pullback (perhaps David Fry - see chart on right). We will, of course, remain cautious through the weekend but we’re already preparing to throw caution to the wind (sort of) as I’ve posted a primer for our Buy/Write Strategy, so we can start picking up the stocks we want at roughly 15-20% discounts. This is why we can afford to be patient as we wait for our breakout levels - WE DON’T MISS ANYTHING! At PSW, we can STILL buy BAC for $14.41 (16% off) and C for $3.43 (27% off) and PARD for $3.79 (51% off) and now that we have made our tops, we feel a lot more comfortable working in at those prices than we would have when the market was 20% lower in early July.
Hopefully that floor holds (Dow 8,000). We’re looking good so far as our breakout levels have been Dow 9,600, S&P 1,030, Nasdaq 2,038, NYSE 6,700 and Russell 577 and now they form a floor we will be able to watch so we’ll know when to be worried that the rally is running out of steam.
We are also well-protected with our disaster hedges from the Aug 24th post and, if you don’t have any - it’s still a good idea to get some (and cheaper now too!). Only 2 33% (off the top) levels remain and that’s 1,056 on the S&P and 6,959 on the NYSE and we will be officially raising our mid-point from Dow 8,650 to 9,500 if we can take those out and hold them for a day or two, which will make 9,000 our new expected floor on the Dow and that means we should be buying here! There’s no point in having watch levels if we don’t act on them.
The dollar continues to fall and that’s supporting oil and gold but not the Nikkei, who fell 100 points off their open and finished down .666% for the day as the dollar failed to hold 91 Yen against the world’s mightiest currency. Even a 50-point "stick save" into the Nikkei close couldn’t paint a positive close for the day. A 100-point boost into the close was enough to give the Hang Seng a 91 point gain on the day, capping off a 700-point week (3.5%) and exactly 10% off the September 2nd low at 19,500, matching the Aug 4th…
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How To Buy A Stock For A 15-20% Discount With Our Buy/Write Strategies
by Phil - September 11th, 2009 7:55 am
We are finally over our watch levels, now let’s see if they hold!
Our watch levels for our next set of bullish market plays have been Dow 9,600, S&P 1,030, Nasdaq 2,038, NYSE 6,700 and Russell 577 and now they form a floor we will be able to watch so we’ll know when to be worried that the rally is running out of steam. Only 2 33% (off the top) levels remain and that’s 1,056 on the S&P and 6,959 on the NYSE and we will be officially raising our mid-point from Dow 8,650 to 9,500, which will make 9,000 our new expected floor on the Dow and that means we should be buying here! There’s no point in having watch levels if we don’t act on them and the best was to work our way into new bullish positions is with our famous Buy/Write Strategy - simply the best way to initiate new stock positions for the average investor.
Given that it is now much less likely that the market drops more than 10% from here, picking up stocks for 20% below their current price is a sensible way to begin building some new positions. By picking value names and concentrating on plays that give us much better prices than the ones paid by the average retail investor using very basic option strategies we can stay ahead of the game and buy with some comfort. This strategy, which we call a "buy/write", as we buy the stock and write options against it, is one of our most effective tools for dealing with a uncertain markets.
Not only does the Buy/Write Strategy give you an initial discount on your ownership of a stock, but you can use variations on this strategy to give yourself another 10-20% three to four times a year! If you have a retirement account that allows you to write covered calls and sell puts in it (check with your broker, of course, some do, some don’t) why wouldn’t you want to generate an additional discount off the stocks you plan to hold long-term? If you plan on accumulating a stock over time, why on earth would you even consider paying "retail" when we can teach you a simple method that can put money in your pocket?
We no longer have the absolute bargains we used to have but there are still plenty of stocks that are trading at 50% off their highs and, if this rally is going to continue,…
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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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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
(