While this certainly is not the market environment to be taking aggressive long bets in, there are some stocks that are displaying tremendous relative strength that we can play with strictly defined-risk positions to protect ourselves.
Our Young Aristocrats Report shows us stocks that aren’t just paying dividends but are doing so while they’re going up and thus paying us via price appreciation as well.
And this week's report serves up a great opportunity.
Look, we're not going to sugarcoat it: it's hard out there right now.
Regardless of your timeframe, if you're trying to make aggressive long or short bets in this tape, you're getting chopped up. So are we.
These types of markets grind us out and wear us out. It is what it is. We can't choose the market we're given, we can only control how we react to it.
This much we know -- forcing directional bets right now feels like a fool's errand.
But with options premiums elevated across the board, there are opportunities to put on delta-neutral short premium trades where charts suggest some consolidation may be taking place. However, we need to be careful not to sell premium on stocks that have earnings releases coming up soon. So to avoid that all together, we're going to limit our universe to index and sector ETFs.
That is not a typo. I lost money on this trade. Actually, it was a series of trades. But it was executed with one decision and one combination of keystrokes.
It was the summer of 1998, and it was my first year trading.
The Long-Term Capital Management debacle was weighing on markets. There was money being made on the short side. Big money.
Many of the more successful traders in my office had already earned a boatload of cash with aggressive short trades on this particular morning. And at lunchtime, they decided to head out to the golf course to celebrate another day of crushing the markets.
But not me.
Nope, I was still a piker trader at that time, still trying to figure out how to stop losing money. So while the rest of the guys were high-fiving each other on the way out the door to the golf course, I stayed at my desk banging keys, trying to catch up to the big shots.
As we moved through the sleepy lunch hour, markets were showing signs of another leg down and I was building a short position in about 8-10 stocks. Slowly at first. Small amounts of shares. Nibbles, really.
Here's a snippet that sums up a conversation I had with my Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza this morning:
Me: Any trade ideas have you excited this morning?
Steve: Nothing. New lows everywhere today.
Me: I know. It's ugly.
Steve: I can give you a handful of nice charts that are breaking out, but they are all going to fail. Can't buy breakouts in this market.
Yep. That's where we're at. Putting on directional bets in either direction feels like a high risk proposition. Long breakouts are likely to fail, while short breakdowns are likely to get caught offsides in a wicked bear market dead cat bounce.
But this doesn't mean we're out of options to earn some profits. Options premiums remain elevated across the board, and we've got some areas with clean levels of support we can use as guiderails to sell some delta-neutral premium with higher-than-normal chances of success.
Whether looking to speculate, hedge or collect premiums, options players are increasingly flocking to options that have fewer than 7 days to expiration. And with the proliferation of weekly options and three-times weekly expirations in popular index ETFs like $SPY, $QQQ, and $IWM, traders frequently have the opportunity to trade options expiring within 24 hours!
It is no surprise that these types of short-dated options are attractive to some players. They offer the best characteristics of options: defined risk, leverage, and affordability for even the smallest of traders.
Even though stocks have broadly advanced on the first two trading days of October and Q4, today's market action reminds players that stocks are still risky here and the options market continues to price in this fear in the form of higher than normal options premiums.
As such, the odds favor net premium sellers in these conditions -- so that's what we're on the hunt for.
Ideal setups are ones in which a nearby support level has revealed itself so we can lean against it for risk management purposes.
One such setup can be found in Brookfield Asset Management, $BAM:
Put September and Q3 in the books. It was one to remember.
But we're turning the pages to October today and the rally in the markets is helping to reveal where the new strength may emerge for the next bull run, as well as some significant levels of support for beaten-down stocks and sectors.
Today's trade is fading the recent volatility against a key nearly year-long level of support in a sector that got badly beaten last month.
One of JC's favorite trades when volatility is spiking and bearish sentiment seems a little overdone on the downside is to either buy stock in Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B or even better -- sell some naked puts to fade the fear.
During our morning meeting today, JC was feeling that the time was right to pull the trigger on this idea again.
Selling naked puts is the move for us today, but we have to be aware that earnings are on the horizon in early November -- which may be accounting for some of the extra premium in November monthly expiration options.
As you can see from this chart, $BRK.B has undercut a significant level ever so slightly, but if this move is false, the whipsaw back up should be swift:
Premiums remain elevated in the options market as volatility persists and confusion among market participants reigns supreme.
We sold a delta neutral spread on Friday to take advantage of this environment. Today's trade will also be a credit spread, however, this time we will be taking on some bearish directional exposure to counterbalance some of our long exposure.
We recently closed an October Short Strangle in the Energy ETF $XLE at our profit target. The timing was pretty fortuitous, considering the wild ride all stocks have been on since the latest Federal Reserve interest rates announcement.
With volatility ticking backup up quite noticeably, $XLE has climbed back up near the top of my implied volatility list of ETFs, and the November options are priced in such a way that we can sell some pretty far out-of-the-money strikes increasing our odds of success.
Eventually, even thick skulls like mine get the point.
Pretty much all summer long, the team here at All Star Charts has been mentioning Enphase Energy $ENPH as a strong outperformer that is on the verge of a potential epic breakout. During today's internal Analyst meeting, the team agreed that now is finally the time to get involved.
JC and I did a video on a possible trade in $ENPH ahead of today's Fed Reserve Interest Rates announcement. We did just get into it moments ago. Enjoy this video to get a great idea of why we like this trade and how we'll play it:
