Member-only content. Please Login or get a free trial of Rick's Picks to view.
On yesterday’s closing marks, our option position was showing a theoretical profit of $1,180, but there is another $1070 of potential gains over the next two days if the stock finishes the week at 115. The profit would even higher — around $2,680 — with GS at $120. You can exit between now and Friday, but officially, and unless stated otherwise in an intraday bulletin, we’ll close out the position just before the April calls expire. There is no reason to try and squeeze the last dime of profit from this trade, since it will be a certain winner over a very wide range of prices; however, you should keep in mind that a haphazard exit could cost you $300 or more of otherwise easy gains. A well-managed exit implies closing out both sides of each calendar spread more or less simultaneously and on prices that lie about midway between the spread bid and offer. Thus, if you are offering the July 120 calls on the high side of the bid/asked spread, when the order is filled you should cover the short side by buying two April 120 calls on the offer. Here is the position we hold and which was built over time: long two July 115-April 115 call spreads @ 6.00; long two July 120-April 120 call spreads @ 9.80; long four April 130-135 call spreads @ 1.03; and short an extra April 115 call for 1.40. That last price incorporates a loss we took on some April 85-90 put spreads.
Before yesterday’s moderate selloff, we were looking for the Indoos to complete a minor rally pattern to 8343, a Hidden Pivot target. The target remains valid because the point ‘C’ of the pattern, 7751, is very much intact. Moreover, we might also infer that the finishing stroke to 8343 is likely, since the midpoint resistance associated with that number, 8047, was demolished when the Dow shot up to 8113 on Monday. All of this is shown in the accompanying chart. However, we can use the corrective pattern from Monday’s top to judge whether the bull may be waning. It projects to 7841, and if that Hidden Pivot support is breached Monday morning it would be a sign of more weakness to come.
The futures would need to pop to 948.60 this week to turn the daily chart bullish, but 918.00 would do the trick on the hourly. More immediately, in trading early Tuesday night, a minor rally with potential to around 896.00 was developing. However, it would take a little more than that — specifically, a print at 897.10– to turn the lesser charts positive. That would exceed by a tick a subtle look-to-the-left peak made on the way down Tuesday. The peak occurred at around 7:45 a.m. EDT and is visible on the 5-minute chart. ______ UPDATE: Gold’s gratuitous spasms have become too stupid to watch, and so I will avert my eyes for a while.
We’ve been bidding 7.60 for a September 260 put, predicated on a rally to 387.70, a Hidden Pivot target. The option price looks about right, since it was trading for 9.70 when the stock peaked the other day at 379.10. Since my DJIA projection implies another rally leg for the market, we should continue to bid for the put. The goal is to acquire it as Google is making an important high, and then to short a May 260 put against it after the stock has fallen. A single calendar spread legged on at ideal prices has the potential to produce a gain of as much as $4000 with relatively little risk.
Member-only content. Please Login or get a free trial of Rick's Picks to view.








Goldman Madness, Part II
by Rick Ackerman on April 15, 2009 12:01 am GMT · 4 comments
No sooner do we crown Goldman Sachs our Bear Rally King than…THWUMP!…the stock gets socked with a $15 loss, its worst day in recent memory. There were some lurid stories on the Web to help turn yesterday’s selloff into a gang-bang, including one at SeekingAlpha.com that wondered aloud whether Goldman deserved to share in AIG’s bailout booty if, as is rumored, Goldman made a ton of money shorting AIG stock before the » Read the full article