It's not just the U.S. that is breaking our important levels, stock market indexes all over the world are reacting to the volatility. Europe is flirting with dangerous areas but Brazil and Russia have bucked the trend, likely due to their exposure to Energy. Other countries like India and Tech based markets have been the ones coming off the most in the emerging group.
That's the question we always want to ask ourselves.
I get asked all the time, "Hey JC, I own this stock, it's down x amount and I'm not sure what to do?". Man if I had a bitcoin for every time I got asked that one.
To me the answer is very simple. If you woke up that morning and you could do anything you wanted with that money, anywhere in the world, with any asset class, is that stock what you would buy?
If the answer is no, then you know your answer. Go buy whatever you want to buy. Transaction costs are nothing these days, so the pennies on that are no excuse to sit in something costing you way more.
We've been bullish $CSX all year. And we had a successful options play this summer that recently came to a profitable conclusion. JC calls CSX "a beast!" I can't argue with that.
And low and behold, even as the overall market has hit a little bump in the road over the past week, $CSX just continues riding the rails, appearing to be in the final stages of completing a nice and tidy two-month base with eyes on a $91 price target and above.
With earnings on deck, the chairs are aligned for an opportunistic play to put elevated options volatility to work for us.
There are a lot of interesting developments working through the markets these days. Whether it's the relentless sector rotation underneath the surface or the divergences between small and large-cap stocks, there is no shortage of topics to discuss about the current environment. I have been in the camp that a breakdown in Bonds to new multi-year lows would likely be accompanied by a lower yen and higher stock and commodities prices. Through last week that strategy has worked really well.
Moving forward, however, how does this face-ripper in rates impact U.S. stocks? Is the relative strength in financials this week a positive sign for equities? Or are they just getting a sympathy bid because of rates? Are Semiconductors finally going to break out above their epic 2000 highs, which they've been flirting with all year? What about Gold and Crude Oil? How do they fit in?
This morning I was on the Benzinga Premarket Prep Show discussing what I felt are the most important topics in the markets right now. Here is the interview in full:
From time to time I like to review some of my Best Practices for my own benefit, but also for the benefit of readers of this blog, and for subscribers to All Star Options. So let's get right to it...
This past Friday marked an important monthly date in the regular cycle of options expirations. Friday marked the line in the sand where we crossed under 21 days until October expiration.
Why is 21 days until expiration important?
In short: because of theta and gamma.
For long premium positions, theta decay starts to become a major drag, and increasingly so with each passing day. For short premium positions, gamma has the potential to produce wild swings in your position equity. Neither of these scenarios are very appealing for obvious reasons.
Lets breakdown the risks and actions to take for a variety of common strategies.
There is a lot of noise being made this week about potential divergences in U.S. Stock markets. The one thing that gets lost in the shuffle is that just because asset A is rising and asset B is not keeping up, that asset A needs to correct and come down to meet asset B. Rarely does it get mentioned that asset B can just get some rotation and catch up to the relative strength that asset A is showing. In fact, during bull markets (which we're in, not sure if you heard) the latter is a perfectly normal occurrence.
Today we're going to take a look at a more macro correlation that I think we need to be watching. We're talking specifically about the long-term behavior patterns of the S&P500 in America and the DAX in Germany. Going back many decades, these two indexes really move in sync.
Small and mid-caps have been hit hard since late August, so rather than look for short opportunities after a large move, we're looking for potential counter-trend trades on the long side. Today's candidate is PTC India.
I have to give credit to our Intermarket Analysis work for a lot of our success over the years. This "Cross-Asset" perspective is incredibly valuable, particularly when it comes to identifying and staying with important trends. As a supplement to our Technical work in U.S. Stocks and Indexes, we incorporate a variety of Intermarket relationships to help us formulate a thesis. These include Bonds, Commodities and Currencies.
When it comes to safety, I don't care what people believe is a safe haven, I only care how the market reacts when it needs to go safe. When markets stressed and volatility rises, stocks fall in price and US Treasury Bonds and Japanese Yen reap the benefits. When did Yen and Bonds get strong? Summer of 2015 just as the S&P500 was topping out. When did Yen and Bonds peak? When stocks got going several months before the 2016 elections. Both of these are near their 52-week lows, which makes perfect sense with Stocks at all-time highs.
Earlier this month we did two Energy updates from the top-down, ultimately drilling into the best individual stock opportunities in both Canada and the US. I feel like there's been a lot of noise around Crude Oil and Energy in general because of OPEC, Trade Wars, and whatever else the media can come up with, so I just want to do a quick update on what we're seeing in Energy Commodities.
Sticking with a theme we’ve been discussing with All Star Options subscribers for the past month or so, we expect to continue keeping things simple around here until the market tells us it’s time to change.
One way we’ve been keeping things simple is to be buyers of straight long call options. It’s still a bull market in spite of what gets shouted to you on TV, and volatilities continue to be low — pricing options relatively cheaply. So as long as the volatility in any individual name is still cheap, we’re always going to be looking at long slightly out-of-the-money call options to participate in bullish plays while affordably limiting our risk.
One variant of this play that also holds a lot of interest for me — especially in higher priced names where I might wish to limit my risk a little bit more — is the long call calendar spread which consists of a short call in a near month combined with a long call at the same strike in a further out month for a net debit. It gives us three ways to win!
There's always a tell. Before the most recent rally we've seen in U.S. stocks since August, Aerospace & Defense stocks were breaking out. It was hard to be bearish equities with this A&D group, an important part of the Industrials sector, and a leader among leaders, coming out of an 8-month base to new all-time highs. Also, this came within the context of a tremendous uptrend, so an upside resolution was perfectly normal. That breakout was telling for stocks as an asset class. Today I think it's Technology. What this sector does here should tell us a lot about this market.
After the new weightings, Technology is going to represent 20% of the S&P500, which is still a large chunk, despite being cut from 26% of the S&P500 pre-adjustments. It's funny, strong markets do splits, not reverse splits. I'll take this as a positive for Tech. And if it's not, then I think we have a problem. That's what we're looking at here today.
