I can't afford real estate in Palo Alto (yet), but I can comfortably afford to take a ride with Palo Alto's namesake security software firm Palo Alto Networks $PANW.
Today, $PANW stock popped its head above recent resistance and printed a new all-time high, flagging some bullish intentions ahead of their next earnings release in early September. And this aligns nicely with our bullish outlook in the name.
Next up in the Bull Market Rotation Wheel of Fortune: Airlines.
The S&P 500 printed a new all-time high on Tuesday (Aug 21), so naturally we should expect a broadening spectrum of sectors and stocks participating to the upside. The airlines have been a bit of a laggard in the transportation sector, but appear as a whole to have put in an important base with many names starting to breakout to the upside.
We've got a play to take flight in one of the leaders.
Logistics and package delivery services provider $UPS got caught in the volatility-triggered downdraft of late January and early February of this year. It has spent the remaining part of the year forming a base and is now showing signs of filling the yawning earnings gap from February 1. We've got a play to take advantage of this gap fill and a likely return to new all-time highs.
Excuse my cheeky blog post title -- we're bullish on United Technologies $UTX.
Consistent with our bullish stance on US equities over the near term, we continue to want to err on the long side. And we want to be in the strongest stocks in the strongest sectors.
One of those is $UTX and we've got a plan to play for a retest of all-time highs with an eventual breakout to significantly higher levels.
Not all sectors of the market are glamorous or sexy. And Agribusiness certainly isn't one of the fashionable areas of the stock market. But we're about to wade into our second name here because the opportunities are too good. At the end of the day, we go where the money is -- these are just ticker symbols, right?
Zoetis $ZTS, honestly, is a name I had never heard before. But it has been on my watchlist ever since Tom Bruni blogged about it on All Star Charts last week. I've liked the price action since and think the time is right to take a position.
During our monthly All Star Options conference call for members, JC & I laid out our bullish case for Berkshire Hathaway. These days, in spite of the diversity of industries that fall under the Berkshire umbrella, the tracking stock $BRK/B trades much like a financial.
Additionally, Berkshire exhibits high correlation to the S&P 500, and with the rotation we're seeing into financials it makes sense to be long $BRK/B while we're still incredibly bullish on the overall market. And of course, the technicals we're watching all point to higher prices.
The Agribusiness sector might not often be thought of as sexy, but it is threatening to break out above 2008 highs (as measured by the Agribusiness ETF $MOO) and individual names are starting to look pretty compelling. As such, we're on the hunt for asymmetric reward-to-risk opportunities and we've identified one using a little creative leverage.
51 days until expiration is the sweet spot for putting on delta neutral income trades. "Income Trades" are best established in underlyings experiencing elevated levels of volatility (resulting in higher options prices), but that are stuck within a price range. The thinking here is that volatility is likely to revert back to the mean and the underlying is likely to stay within it's current range. Inertia, ya dig?
In coming weeks, All Star Options will be unveiling an Income Trades Heat Map which will help direct you towards the best ETF candidates for putting on these trades whenever you're interested.
In the meantime, we've got a trade from the top of this list ready to go.
The last two trading days (Thursday-Friday July 26-27) have been somewhat challenging for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. But there was some relative strength in the financials, in particular, American Express $AXP which last week printed a new all-time high.
This isn't entirely surprising to us as we've been watching the financials absorb cash flows as one of the next to step up in the ongoing sector rotations that continue to lead this bull market higher. And we've got a plan to capitalize.
As a group, the semi-conductors sector has been underperforming this year, but signs are pointing to an upward trend declaration soon. This isn't a wildly bullish announcement, but neither do we need to be wildly bullish to make money on a mildly bullish opportunity.
With earnings coming up on July 30 and some significant recent support levels to lean against, we're going to take advantage of the 'earnings premium' being priced in to $KLAC options today.