I got a lot of feedback on my last letter where I suggested active traders need to stop trading Covered Call spreads for tactical trades and instead do a simple Naked Puts trade.
Thank you to everyone who engaged.
Anyway, here’s one question [edited to the important parts] I got from a reader where I thought my answer might be instructive to more of you:
Hi Sean,
I read your information on naked puts. When I intend to buy a stock, I would like to sell a put. I just don't know how to go about it. I just don't know where the strike price would be. I understand that I would have to buy the stock at that price (whether it is better or worse than hoped).
If you could give me an example that would help.
Cheers!
This is a great question, but one without a clear-cut answer. Here was my response:
I'm about to show you what a healthy chart off the bear market lows looks like. One of the beautiful things about this chart is it's not heavily reliant on any one company.
This is a sector ETF for a corner of the stock market we believe should continue to do well for the foreseeable future. There will be winners and losers within the sector, and we don't know which ones will ultimately be the leaders, so why not just trade 'em all?
Additionally, trading the sector ETF significantly lessens any earnings-related or product announcement or FDA-approval-driven gap risk.
Maybe you have some long-term holdings showing significant gains that you don’t want to pay taxes on. But you want to squeeze some additional income out of these positions because either you’re greedy (fine) or you want to practice responsible risk management (a better reason).
That’s fine. Go ahead and continue selling covered calls from your yacht. You do you.
This post is aimed at the rest of you knuckleheads who seem to think entering covered call trades as tactical short-term plays is a productive use of your time and capital.
In a recent note, I shared performance stats for our All Star Options Paid-to-Play portfolio, and in the time since, I’ve fielded numerous emails/DMs that all ask basically the same question:
How did you earn money in such a challenging market environment and do so with far lower volatility than the indexes?
Rather than responding individually, I thought it would be better for everyone if I just shared my thoughts here. After all, we can all benefit from good ideas, yeah?
I’ll try not to get us lost in the weeds with the mundane tactical maneuvers employed each trading day. Instead, I’ll stick to the high-level concepts which guide my thinking.
With the NFL Playoffs getting underway this weekend (Go Bills!), it's time we put the offense on the field!
I was kicking around a bullish idea in a consumer staples name during our Analyst meeting today. The chart looks great. The setup is good. We can position for a nice potential reward versus the risk we'd incur to put the trade on. Everyone agreed that its probably a good trade.
But... is it aggressive enough?
Answer: No, it's not.
The thinking that emerged from our chat was that risk is back on in the stock market; therefore, we need to get into the most reasonably aggressive names we can. And one of the areas where risk is most definitely "on" is in the homebuilders sector.
If all we did was watch the evening news or listen to the inflation and interest rate scaremongers, we'd reasonably conclude that a long-term and painful bear market for real estate and housing in particular is a slam dunk. No contest.
If a severe real estate bear market was in the cards, would we be seeing homebuilders ripping of their recent lows the way we have over the past couple of months?
In the Spring of 2022, JC came to me and said: “What do you think about managing an options income portfolio for me? I’m looking for some more strategy diversification in my portfolios. It doesn’t need to be anything sexy, just steady.”
Ok, I’m probably paraphrasing a bit, but that was the gist of his ask.
So I got to work on putting a plan together for him. When we looked at it together, it became obvious that we should offer this portfolio to the All Star Charts community who might also be interested in some further diversification. Even if people don’t take our trades, it could be a productive learning experience for everyone.
So we got to work and we launched the All Star Options Paid-to-Play (P2P) service in May 2022.
Each trading day, we either enter a new delta-neutral options credit spread in a liquid ETF (from a list of the most liquid Index and Sectors ETFs), or we play defense on an open position with an adjustment to put us in a better position to win. And we leave resting GTC (good-till-canceled) limit orders to close our credit spreads at profit targets which get filled periodically at the whim of the markets.
No doubt Gold Bugs have been enjoying the price action in gold instruments recently. It has been a profitable few months to be long just about anything shiny -- even silver!
The latest Young Aristocrats report is out, highlighting companies with steady and increasing dividends that are also displaying strong relative strength -- a powerful combination. These are some of my favorite stocks to get long when the conditions warrant.
Today's trade is in a sporting goods retailer that just broke out and looks like it's ready to start sprinting.
Ok, that question answers itself. Of course you have. We all have.
For our purposes today, I’m more specifically focused on the periods when we resist something that deep down we know would be good for us. Or the right thing to do. Or the intelligent thing to do. Or the helpful thing to do.
When nothing but goodness can result from taking a specific action, why do we resist it? Why do we willingly sabotage ourselves like that?
Author Steven Pressfield in his bestselling book “The War of Art” terms this “The Resistance”. Capital T, Capital R.
This morning, our analyst team was bouncing ideas around when I posed the group this question:
"It's the beginning of a new year. Do we want to continue buying strength (as we have been)? Or do we want to buy some well-selected dips on stocks in sectors we like?"
In other words, what's our appetite?
The prevailing sentiment that won out was that we have been buying strength -- and that has worked well in some areas, particularly homebuilders, Chinese stocks, and metals stocks. But the reward-to-risk opportunities right now may be more favorable in the "buy-the-dip" camp.
So with this in mind, let's take a look at a stock in the semiconductors sector that has our attention.
Consumer Staples continue to be one of the leading sectors as we head into year-end. And if you know anything about the gang here at All Star Charts, we love to be long stocks and sectors that are showing strong relative strength.
So for our last new trade for 2022, we're going to take a big swig of an energy drink maker.
