Stocks showing relative strength in this environment remain on our radar since the list of them has shrunk day by day over the last month.
For our Institutional Clients, we provide more tactical trade ideas or "plus-ones" that don't necessarily fit a broader theme but are still an attractive opportunity worth exploring.
Today I want to share one of those ideas from a subsector of the market that may surprise you...Retail.
The drama queens have been in full force this weekend coming into the opening of trading this Monday morning. Here was my observation after rolling out of bed:
Geez, I shoulda checked $ES_F before I checked my twitter stream this morning.
FinTwit: THE MARKET IS CRASHING. ARMAGEDDON!!!
Futures: Down 6. Barely a rounding error.
Back to bed.
— Sean McLaughlin, NLD 📈 (@chicagosean) June 3, 2019
I rarely seek to be contrarian simply for the sake of being contrarian, but the mini hysteria I'm sensing amongst market participants feels a little hollow. Is everyone too leveraged? You're not trading based off headlines are you? ...are you??
If so, knock it off. Scared money don't make money.
With the S&P 500 re-acquainting itself with it's 200-day moving average, here's how we're going to play it...
I know some people who haven't taken a vacation in years. The excuses come in all shapes and sizes. For me, I think that does much more harm than good. I know this for a fact because I used to be one of those people. I used to think that I didn't deserve a break. "I'm not there yet", is what I'd say. I skipped vacations with my family and encouraged them to go without me. I've regretted those decisions ever since.
Over the past 5 years I've made it a point to get away regularly. I've written about it the benefits before and I feel more strongly about this than ever. Even if you take a week off where you just stick your computer in the closet and make it more of a staycation, that works too. It's important to be self-aware. I know myself enough that I do not have the discipline to stay away from my computer if I'm home. I like my work. I know I'll jump on and check out some charts. I can't help myself. So I need to go away completely to accomplish my goal of 'getting away'.
Wall Street is a game of relative performance and we each are tasked with our own mandates/constraints in managing our portfolios.
The good news is that even when the market is a hot mess on an absolute basis, there are still plenty of ways to find performance within the context of those constraints.
If you need to have most of your capital allocated most of the time, then your focus is on either avoiding/shorting areas of relative weakness and owning areas of relative strength.
If you have the flexibility to raise cash and go to the beach or have short exposure on your books, that works too.
At the beginning of May, we put out a note about the failed breakout in many of the major indexes and why a more cautious stance was warranted for US and global equities. The divergences we were seeing slowly add up had finally been confirmed by price and we raised cash and stepped aside.
As we head into June Expiration, there are a number of open positions with options expiring in June that may need some attention. Generally speaking as we approach any expiration, it is a Best Practice to begin aggressively weeding out or rolling out positions that aren't working. Why? For long premium plays, unless positions are comfortably in-the-money, theta decay will begin to accelerate and whatever premium is left in our options will quickly disappear. For short premium plays where we haven't yet reached our profit target, gamma becomes our enemy making our position more sensitive to fluctuations of the underlying. A small winner/loser could quickly get away from us. Best to roll it out to the next monthly expiration cycle to buy ourselves more time, or close it down and look for newer/better opportunities.
In no particular order, here are some currently open positions with June options that we'll be looking to take action on next week:
We're tracking a household name that -- with the exception of four wild days during the Christmas nadir -- has been riding it's 200-day moving average quietly higher and is setting up for what could be a big move.
Two weeks ago I was scheduled to film two segments for Real Vision and the experience brought up a good topic that I've been meaning to write about using my personal experience; Perfectionism.
The night before I was supposed to film the segments I didn't get much sleep, hadn't exercised in a few days, and just wasn't feeling 100%. Needless to say, these were not the conditions I'd prefer for important filming.*
Regardless, I'd agreed to do it and I needed to show up and do the work.
Now that I've had time to reflect, let's see what perfectionism, failure, and fear of "shipping" have got to do with that experience.
When you're bullish on a name and options prices -- in terms of volatility -- are the cheapest they've been all year, the prudent move is often the simplest move: buy longer-dated calls. And the decision is even simpler when you have a clearly defined level to show you where the trade idea is busted.
One of the hardest things to do in life and in markets is admitting you don't know. But when you're only in the market to make money, and not to be right, saying I don't know can often be the best answer.
That's why I put out a post titled "Relatively...Confused" just two days ago because when I go through my chartbooks I see extended themes that are not offering great reward/risk opportunities right now.
Elections, as with other major world events, introduce a lot of new information that market participants need to digest. This often causes increased volatility as expectations are adjusted and buyers and sellers battle to establish a trend.
So far this week we've seen an expansion in the intraday trading ranges, but not much resolution in terms of overall trend direction.
