Spending Money

spending-moneyI wasn’t really expecting to spend much money this week.

What I really wanted was to replicate last week and to do that for the remaining 51 weeks of 2017.

Back in the days when I did initiate lots of new positions, if you go all the way back to 2015, it always seemed as if money was burning a hole in my pockets or that maybe I believed that cash was only good to wipe one’s butt.

That’s pretty far from the truth, but that’s what it looked like and that’s what it felt like, even though I know myself pretty well.

So no one was more surprised than me, after having toiled hard to raise cash reserves for about a year and finally getting to a point that I felt was good enough to be prepared for whatever awaited, that within 30 minutes of the opening bell I had already opened 2 new positions.

I’m still of the mindset that I would like to see my existing positions get used on a much more frequent and regular basis through the sale of calls, but I just couldn’t resist this morning. read more

It Really Shouldn’t Come As a Surprise

supriseThere’s really no reason to be surprised, but I woke up this morning realizing that earnings season has to be starting soon.

As if it ever really ended.

What really makes things different this quarter is that Alcoa, even though it has now been out of the DJIA for a little while, is no longer the official/unofficial start to earnings season.

The official start of earnings season honors went to JP Morgan after Alcoa left the DJIA, but Alcoa still came first.

No more.

This week, earnings start for real on Friday morning, with JP Morgan getting things started and Alcoa doesn’t announce  until a full 11 days later.

It’s a whole new world order.

 tweetI was greeted this fine snowy Sunday morning with a very nice Tweet.

What was also very nice was not having to write an article in a rush to meet an unclear deadline in order to get potentially time sensitive material posted.

Or, for that matter, writing it at all.

My response to the Tweet was that 300 of those articles was enough and so I then did what was the only seemingly natural thing. read more

Santa Steals Away Joy from Retailers

santaclausFollowing a pretty good day today, where we really did come close to the mystical 20,000 level of the DJIA,. there was a big surprise after the closing bell.

The surprise that came can give you just a little idea of how well anyone really knows what’s truly going on.

If you were following the market today, you may have noticed that national retailers were really strong.

In fact, I took the opportunity to sell some calls on a couple of lots of Macy’s shares that have been sitting around uncovered for the past week or so.

I like to at least consider selling calls, even if the strike price isn’t something to really make me salivate, as long as the shares are moving strongly at the time.

That described Macy’s, as it was more than $1 higher earlier in the trading session.

While I didn’t think about selling calls on Coach, Kohls, nor Abercrombie and Fitch, they too were all strongly higher during the day.

You may also remember that I sold calls on The Gap, yesterday.

Then a funny, well maybe not too funny thing happened after the close.

The bottom fell out as Macy’s and others reported the not so good Christmas sales news.

Sales stunk.

Not only did sales stink, but guidance was moved lower.

How could that be? Especially as the economy is supposedly heating up?

So we await tomorrow’s Employment Situation Report and will be left to wonder, if the news continues to be good, just where people are spending their money.

The obvious answer is that they’re doing it on Amazon or they’re just not spending it on old fashioned things like sweaters and place settings.

Maybe they’re spending it on streaming data plans. read more

Let the Partying Begin

partyfavor What a way to start the new year.

Not even close to the way 2016 started, but then again, 2016 wasn’t all that bad.

Right?

For a little while it looked as if 2017 was going to start off with a major disappointment as the market decided to do something that it hadn’t done for a while.

In fact, it hasn’t really happened since we accepted the fact that we were getting someone very unexpected as our new President.

What happened today was that the stock market actually followed oil, again.

That was the story for most of 2016 and the story worked out pretty well, as long as you didn’t sell your oil losers in 2015, or repeatedly went back to the literal and figurative well in pursuit of the gains.

Even though there wasn’t too much evidence that the rise in oil prices was actually tied to increasing demand, the stock market just looked at a year of slowly, if not steadily increasing oil prices, as a good thing.

Who would have guessed? read more

Rolling the Dice with Earnings

With earnings season ready to begin its second full week there are again some opportunities to identify stocks whose earnings may represent risk that is over-estimated by the options market, yet may still offer attractive premiums outside of the presumed risk area.

While in a perfect world good earnings would see increased share prices and bad earnings would result in price drops, the actual responses may be very unpredictable and as a result earnings reports are often periods of great consternation and frustration.

For the buy and hold investor, while earnings may send shares higher, this is also a time when paper profits may vanish and the cycle of share appreciation has to begin anew. Other than supplementing existing positions with strategic option positions, such as the purchase of out of the money puts, the investor must sit and await the fate of existing shares.

Occasionally, a covered option strategy, either through the sale of puts or buy/write transactions, may offer opportunity to achieve an acceptable return on investment while limiting the apparent risk of exposure to the large moves that may accompany good, bad or downright ugly news. Although a roll of the dice has definable probabilities, when it comes to stocks sometimes you want something that seems less predicated on chance and less on human emotion or herd mentality.

As always, whenever I consider whether an earnings related trade is worth pursuing I let the “implied volatility” serve as a guide in determining whether there is a satisfactory risk-reward proposition to consider action. That simple calculation provides an upper and lower price range in which price movement is anticipated and can then be compared to corresponding premiums collected for assuming risk. It is, to a degree based on herd mentality in the option market and has varying degrees of emotion already built into values. The greater the emotion, as expressed by the relative size of the premiums for strike levels outside of the range defined by the implied volatility the more interested I am in considering a position.

My preference in addressing earnings related trades is to do so through the sale of put contracts, always utilizing the weekly contract and a strike price that is below the lower range defined by the implied volatility calculation. Since I’m very satisfied with a weekly 1% ROI, I then look to find the strike level that corresponds to at least a 1% return.

While individuals can and should set their own risk-reward parameters, a weekly 1% ROI seems to be one that finds a good balance between risk and reward, as long as the associated strike level is also outside of the implied volatility range. If the strike level is within the range I don’t assess it as meeting my criteria. I sometimes may be less stringent, accepting a strike level slightly inside the lower boundary of the range if shares have already had some decline in the immediate days preceding earnings. Conversely, if shares have moved higher in advance of earnings I’m either less likely to execute the trade or much more stringent in strike level selection or expecting an ROI in excess of 1%.

While conventional wisdom is to not sell puts on positions that you wouldn’t mind owning at a specified price, I very often do not want to own the shares of the companies that I am considering. For the period of the trade, I remain completely agnostic to everything about the company other than its price and the ability to sell contracts and if necessary, purchase and then re-sell contracts repeatedly, until the position may be closed.

However, for those having limited or no experience with the sale of put contracts, you should assume a likelihood of being assigned shares and the potential downside of having a price drop well in excess of your projections. For that reason you may want to re-consider the agnostic part and be at peace with the potential of owning shares at your strike price and helping to reduce the burden through the sale of calls, where possible.

Since my further preference is to not be assigned shares, I favor those positions that have expanded weekly options available, so that there is opportunity to roll contracts over in the event that assignment appears likely using a time frame that offers a balance between return and brevity.

This week there are a number of stocks that will release quarterly earnings that may warrant consideration as the reward may be well suited to the risk taken for those with a little bit of adventurousness.

A number of the companies highlighted are volatile on a daily basis, but more so when event driven, such as with the report of earnings. While implied volatilities may occasionally appear to be high, they are frequently borne out by past history and it would be injudicious to simply believe that such implied moves are outside the realm of probability. Stocks can and do move 10, 15 or 20% on news.

The coming week presents companies that I usually already follow. Among them are Amazon (AMZN), Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF), Cree (CREE), Deckers (DECK), Facebook (FB), Gilead (GILD), Microsoft (MSFT) and Netflix (NFLX).

The table above may be used as a guide for determining which of these stocks meets personal risk-reward parameters, understanding that re-calculations must be made as share prices, their associated premiums and subsequently even strike level targets may change.

While I most often use the list of stocks on a prospective basis in anticipation of an earnings related move, sometimes the sale of puts following earnings is a favorable trade, especially in instances in which shares have reacted in a decidedly negative fashion to earnings or to guidance.

Regardless of the timing of the sale of puts, before or after earnings are released, being more pessimistic regarding the potential for price drops may be an enticing trade for the generation of income.