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.
Texas Instruments $TXN appears to have authored no surprises in their quarterly earnings call on Tuesday afternoon, announcing well telegraphed results (following a recent CEO shakeup) that had basically no effect on share prices in the after-hours session.
That's good news, because now traders can get to work on completing its now 27 week base and not have to worry too much about any headline risk to get in the way in the near future. With all-time highs within range, we've got a plan to participate.
In the latest monthly conference call for All Star Charts subscribers, JC lays out a compelling case for being long leaders in the transportation space -- notably trucking and railroads.
We're not one to step in front of trends, especially those riding on rails, and with a well received earnings report released last week pushing $CSX to new highs, we see nothing but green lights ahead to our price target. And when momentum is coupled with collapsing volatility, it sets up pretty compelling opportunities to participate in some highly leveraged upside.
