You’d be forgiven if you read this headline and completely discarded this blog post to the trash heap. I feel you. But assuming you’re reading these words, you seem to be willing to entertain the possibility of “unpopular” ideas.
In my experience, when getting bearish on a stock or an index, it is rarely a smart play (statistically speaking) to purchase straight long puts. The reason being that if I’m spotting a bearish opportunity, then likely the rest of the world sees it too and therefore people are probably getting nervous and beginning to hedge their long positions with puts or are starting to bid up speculative downside bets. In either case, it usually inflates the implied volatility in the options pricing, making puts an unfavorable purchase.
But every so often, we find a case where a stock or an index has really just worn people out and people have just lost interest. And when the security starts to show signs of losing support, the opportunistic speculator can get ahead of the crowd before the opportunity becomes obvious to everyone else.
This appears to be the situation in the Energy Sector ETF $XLE. [Read more…]