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I'm at the All Star Charts Portfolio Accelerator event in New York City.
One topic I discussed this morning with everyone is a volatility-triggered setup I'm seeing in the iShares Bitcoin ETF $IBIT. We have a short history to work with, but this bears attention.
News over the weekend seems to have spooked investors this morning, particularly in the tech sector. And the effects are spilling out all across the market.
Are investors being a little overly dramatic here?
The bet we're making is YES.
Today's trade is not in a tech stock, just a boring old bank that has been trending higher for over a year now.
In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza and I discuss what feels like the birth of a new leg higher for this ongoing, but recently struggling bull market.
And while I was lamenting the performance of $AAPL lately, Steve showed me the mirror opposite: $AMZN.
Watch this video to see how we arrived at today's trade, and see the details below:
Here's the Play:
I like buying an $AMZN June 250/300 Bull Call Spread for an approximately $9.65 net debit. This means I'll buy the June 250 calls and sell an equal amount of the 300 calls. And this debit I pay today represents the most I can lose if I'm dead wrong:
A stock featured in a recent Junior Hall of Famers report has triggered an entry today, and it has a lot of room to run.
Earnings are on the horizon, but we'll play this stock with a defined-risk spread that takes a little of the sting out of the options' cost while giving us the ability to participate in upside follow-through should we get it.
One of my junior analysts (Rick! He's the Man!) brought a stock to my attention that is in an attractive sector that could fly under the right conditions.
Add to this that there is a high short interest and there is "meme" stock potential, and this could really be an upside portfolio-buster for us.
In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza and I discuss our growing frustrations with the current market environment. Seems neither our bullish bets nor our bearish bets are gaining any traction in this tape.
What can we do with this information?
Watch the show below to see how we arrived at the details for today's trade.
Here's the Play:
I like entering into a $FCX February 30/35/45/50 Iron Condor for an approximately 70-cent net credit. This means I'll be short equal amounts of the February 35 puts and 45 calls, and long the same amount of 30 puts and 50 calls to cap my maximum risk:
We had a discussion in the All Star Options chatroom yesterday about differences of opinion that got my mind spinning in a very positive way.
Sometimes, we traders might get a little offended when we've done the work to come up with a trade idea and share it with others -- then someone else offers a hot take on why the originator of the idea might be wrong. For some of us, we get momentarily annoyed, then we forget it and move on. For others, the "new information" causes us to abandon our trade thesis all together, sending us back to the drawing board in a state of frustration.
In the worst case, the originator of the idea gets offended, defensive, and perhaps even verbally abusive. And then both sides engage that way and nothing good comes from it.
I'd argue my best response is to meet the counter-intelligence as an opportunity to dig deeper to see if perhaps I missed something? If I find that I have, great! I'm better for it. If not, then I'll just end up feeling better about my opinion.
But the real meta thought here is this: WE WANT PEOPLE TO DISAGREE WITH OUR IDEAS.
Today's trade offers a nice opportunity to add some diversification to my mostly long book.
It's no secret that there has been a lot of weakness that has been masked by the performance of the broader indexes.
We've got a well-diversified business that is showing signs of completing a pretty large top, so it might offer us some alpha on the downside if weakness spreads.