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TODAY'S ACTION for Friday
Rick's Picks for Friday
All our ducks are in line now that we’ve successfully legged into the December 12.50-15.00 call spread eight times for a net CREDIT of 0.15 per. The short sale of some December 15 calls for 0.45 yesterday morning clinched it, allowing us to capture premium in this series when the options were fat and juicy. Let’s put in a stink bid of 0.20 to cover the December 15s, good through Wednesday. It would be worth our while to get ’em in at that price if we can do so within the next few days. Our goal would then be to re-short them on rally. _______ UPDATE: We weren’t able to cover the short December 15 calls, since they never traded below 0.35. However, with the stock pushing toward $13 our position is looking better than ever. We have a chance to make as much as $2120 with SLW trading $15 or higher at expiration, but even if SLW plummets we’ll still make at least $120.
I usually ignore hot tips, but a pen-pal of mine, Phil C., sent me a breathless note predicting that the Dow would rally 100-150 points this morning, forming a top from which it will collapse when traders return after Labor Day. Putting aside the details, this sounds so absolutely right to me that I’m inclined to speculate modestly. Mr Market loves to spring dirty, nasty surprises whenever possible, and what could be nastier — or more surprising — than a tsunami to greet us as we return from summer’s final fling? To get short, we can use the midpoint resistance at 95.07 shown in the chart, buying two September 93 puts (DAVUO) if and when the Diamonds get there. _______ UPDATE (11:52 a.m.): Stocks are only modestly higher today after an other-then-depressing unemployment report, so a short-squeeze to the levels where we’d wanted to get short seems unlikely. We’ll do nothing officially, but personally I’m going to take a couple of puts home with me over the weekend. My hunch is that the best prices of the day will obtain near the close. (Note: I bought some September 93 puts — DAVUO — for 0.86.)
The futures pushed slightly above a 16.265 pivot that had served as a short-term, minimum upside objective. The overshoot hints of further upside progress, presumably to the next Hidden Pivot resistance worth noting, 16.640.
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A major top? It’s certainly conceivable, since the futures peaked last week within 1.25 points of a compelling rally target I’d spotlighted at 1984.50. Although this Hidden Pivot resistance looked very short-able, I have my doubts that it will stand for long as the all-time high. The target’s main value lay in its clarity, and in that respect it did not disappoint us. As you can see (inset), bulls exceeded it by a mere inch before diving — so far — 22 points. Subscribers who used the target to get short should have covered at least half of any positions by Sunday night and deployed a generous trailing stop for what remains. If you prefer using a stop-loss based on impulse legs, put it at 1979.25, just above a small peak on the hourly chart that was recorded Friday on the way down.
As GDXJ was working its way south from around $43, my bearish forecast called for a washout low at exactly 40.42, a Hidden Pivot support of great clarity. I’d suggested buying down there ‘aggressively’ and with an ‘absurdly’ tight stop-loss. This advice would have paid off handsomely for anyone who followed it, since the stock trampolined 64 cents yesterday off an actual low of 40.43, a penny from my target. Since a subscriber reported doing the trade as advised, I’m establishing a tracking position for the further guidance of all who may have gotten long. (He reported having bought 1000 shares off a 40.44 bid, but I’ll assume a more conservative 400 shares.) Accordingly, I’ll recommend exiting half the position on Friday’s opening if you haven’t done so already. We’ll impute any profits thereof to the cost basis of the 200 shares that will remain. _______ UPDATE (July 27, 9:48 p.m. ET): Exiting 200 shares on Friday’s 41.20 opening leaves us with a tracking position of 200 shares whose imputed cost basis is 39.66. Exit another 100 shares on today’s opening and tie the rest to an impulse leg-based stop-loss on the 15-minute chart. At the moment, that would imply bailing out on an uncorrected dive touching 41.73.
A subscriber reported success yesterday legging into the 1340/50/60 August 16 call butterfly that I’d advised. He did so 32 times at no cost, as suggested, but it took a $10 move in the stock between legs to get filled so advantageously. His maximum profit would be $32,000 with the stock trading at 1350 come August 16. Since he owns the position without cost, no loss is possible even if PCLN should all to zero or rally to $1000. We’ll do nothing further for now, but I’d suggest that those of you who were unable to buy the spread keep trying. We’ll shoot for a partial profit if the stock rallies $40-$50 in the next few weeks but otherwise do nothing further. I’ve reproduced a chart that shows why our expectation of a $120 rally from current levels, to a 1358.18 Hidden Pivot target, is not exactly farfetched. To that end, a pop above the 1270.59 midpoint pivot would be most encouraging.
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I haven’t tracked currencies that closely, but because they tend to move very precisely to Hidden Pivot targets, traders should consider exploiting them whenever possible. Notice how EUR/USD has broken beneath a midpoint Hidden Pivot at 1.34841 after noodling around near that pivot for a few hours on Thursday. This suggests that it is bound for D=1.34197, at least. You can bottom-fish there with a stop-loss as tight as 3-4 ticks. Notice as well that there are two slightly higher possibilities for point ‘A’. The correction targets they yield lie, respectively, at 1.34114 and, worst case, 1.33992. I expect these numbers to work very precisely, so use them in whatever way suits you best. Note as well that a last-gasp rally to p=1.34738 after EUR/USD has fallen a bit would be short-able. _______ UPDATE (July 24, 5:35 p.m. EDT): Yesterday’s short-squeeze feint topped precisely at a midpoint Hidden Pivot (see inset, a new chart) that was originally support but which is now resistance. This price action confirms the pattern we’ve chosen as well as its ‘D’ target at 1.34197. At least one subscriber has confirmed getting short in the chat room. _______ UPDATE (July 27, 10:43 p.m.): Friday’s low occurred at 1.34206 — 0.00009 above our 1.34197 target. Shorts should have covered there, but if you were able to bottom-fish the low and catch a piece of the 144-tick rally that ensued, please let me know in the chat room and so that I can establish a tracking position for your further guidance.
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This Just In... for Friday
The following questions about my option strategies came up in the forum, but I am republishing them here because they may be of interest to a wider audience:
What is the advantage of going long one call, and then locking in a given spread via shorting another call, versus “locking-in” the spread by going long on puts instead?
My answer below is more generalized, but to address your specific point, we should prefer to “lock in” a profit by shorting a wasting asset rather than buying one ourselves. For most option traders most of the time, shorting calls is MUCH more profitable than buying puts. Indeed, in the several decades I have been trading options, I cannot recall a instance when put buyers were happy for more than three consecutive days. Even those who owned puts ahead of the 1987 crash had just two days of sheer bliss to get rid of them.
Is it that in the latter scenario, one is long twice, and can thus get screwed twice by the pros? I always thought the latter scenario would be a good one in cases of low implied volatility, where the loss on one is mitigated, and the gain in the other is increased when implied volatility rises during larger underlying moves. (That may just be retail-customer theory, which the pros have long beaten. But what do I know? I’m still waiting for someone to start offering straight options on the VIX. Thanks!
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The spreads I prefer are intended to provide a highly leveraged shot at big profits, but without the usual, horrendous time decay. This tactic is especially useful if we expect a stock to rise (or fall) over a period of several months. We also seek to take advantage of fleeting spikes that goose option volatilities to the moon. If, for instance, SLW opens on a gap this morning (it did), we may have a chance to short Dec 15 calls when they are hugely overvalued — sell them, perhaps, for even more than the 0.45 we’d intended. (They topped at 0.50 before receding with the tide.). And, of course, we do so with the expectation that Silver Wheaton will be strong in the coming months, but not so strong that the December 15 calls will go in-the-money. We may ultimately decide to exercise our December 12.50s, a step in building a long-term position. RA
Were you aware that the Bureau of Labor calculates unemployment in various and sundry ways that are not shared with the press? Neither were we — until we heard about ‘U-6,” which reckoned U.S. joblessness at 14.8 percent back in February. We would assume it’s much higher now, but unfortunately February was the last month given. Incidentally, if 1933’s rate of 24.7 percent had been calculated using today’s dubious metrics, it supposedly would have been lower by at least five to ten percentage points. Click here for the link.
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The Hidden Pivot Webinar is two-day event is designed to teach you the risk-averse trading strategies Rick has taken to his seminars around the world. Once you have learned his proprietary secrets, you will approach trading and investing with enough confidence to make your own decisions without having to rely on the advice of others. The next Webinar will take place on August 13-14, 2014. For more information, or to register, click here.
With $1000 Looming, Gold Fever Is Back
by Rick Ackerman on September 4, 2009 2:15 am GMT · 5 comments
We’re no fans of head-and-shoulder formations, since they are everywhere the amateur chartist might want to find them. But there is something to be said for the bullish reverse head-and-shoulders pattern that gold futures have been tracing out for the last year-and-a-half. The pattern is shown in the chart below, and it is predicting that December Gold, which settled yesterday at 997.70, its highest close since February, is about to run up to $1060. Trouble is, just about everyone we know thinks gold is about to pop to 1060, give or » Read the full article