Ok, I'm on an airplane on my way to San Francisco to present at a conference and to hang with our boy JC, so please forgive the liberties I took with the title of this trade plan. Clearly I'm showing my age...
But seriously, the materials sector is offering us some nice premium to put a fast income trade on into the holidays.
Until stock markets sound the "all clear" signal and we can get back to our regularly scheduled bull market, we have to operate with a different set of rules in order to protect our capital -- both money and mind. Corrective or Bear Markets require a different set of tools. And it's not just knowing that the odds more favor short direction plays versus long direction plays, it's knowing that you have to manage open risk differently. You have to structure trades differently. And you have to operate in shorter time frames.
Down markets can be incredibly profitable for nimble traders. In fact, in my 20-year career, my most profitable years ever were 2000 and 2001 when we were on the backside of the Spring 2000 "dot com" bubble where NASDAQ dropped a dramatic 78%!!
Honestly, I never thought a uranium play was something that would ever come across my desk, but a week ago JC published a piece highlighting the uranium space as displaying bullish turnaround characteristics -- which offers a nice portfolio diversification to many of us who are mostly positioning for the downside in equities right now.
As I've let this idea marinate in my head over the last week while watching declining volatility make long options more attractive, I've really warmed up to the risk/reward profile in this space and have identified a great way to position for exponential gains in the Global Uranium ETF $URA.
It's been quite a bounce in the markets since the end of October. And we expect to see many more such bounces in the days and weeks ahead as market participants battle to find equilibrium in a tape that has definitely been thrown off balance since early October's swoon. The thing is, our bet is that we'll see even more impressive bounces -- but from lower levels.
Our new regime thesis hasn't changed (yet), and as such, we view any bounces as great opportunities to establish new short positions in the weakest names in the market. And one of those weak names that we've been stalking is JP Morgan $JPM.
Depending on who you talk to, today could be "the most important mid-term election of our lifetime." (aren't they all?)
All the hype. All the buildup. All the angst.
Regardless of the outcome, it's possible U.S. stocks can experience outsized and emotional moves. We all remember November 2016 when final voting tallies were coming in and overnight futures were signaling the end of times, all trading limit down. Every market participant was scared and likely had a sleepless night. And what happened when they rang the opening bell?
One of the beauties of options trading is even when we don't have the highest conviction in a trade, we can still participate by lowering or shifting our risks. I come from the school that says spread your bets out across the market -- small -- because the constant pursuit of edges will yield results over the long run as long as no bad individual trades are too big to take us out.
In our most recent monthly All Star Options Conference call, we highlighted a desire to play for a bounce in bonds. In the days since, the market gods are either taunting us, or smiling on us -- offering better entry levels.
It is not often that we fade stocks here at All Star Options. Mostly, we like to identify emerging trends or smart entry points in long established trends and hop along opportunistically for the ride. But given the market environment we're in, we believe it is only a matter of time before everyone gets touched. And we've identified a possible "home run" opportunity to get short a stock that -- gasp! -- printed new all time highs twice this week! It might truly be the last man standing.
In corrective and bear markets, bounces and false rallies are powerful and swift. They should not be feared, but they should be respected. And the patient among us will use these rallies for better entry points on our short ideas.
Tuesday's stock market bounce affords us a great chance to get a better entry in a name that is high on our list to be short -- Boeing $BA
It has been a wild couple of weeks for participants in US equities. Up is down. Black is White. Dogs sleeping with cats. This is what happens when market regimes go through change. The ripples can be seismic.
The one thing we can count on as options traders is that implied volatility -- more specifically, the fear premium being priced into options right now -- will eventually subside. If there is anything that can be counted on to be "mean-reverting" in this crazy world of ours -- it is most definitely implied volatility. This means we definitely want to be on the hunt for opportunities to put elevated options premiums to work for us. We want to be net sellers of options here.
With 53 days until December options expiration, now is the ideal time to start scanning the most liquid ETF options in our universe for income trades.
Disney is another stock that has been on our watch list for a short trade, but has stubbornly held on... until today. We had been waiting for $DIS to close below $113 and on Wednesday our criteria was finally met.
Could the broader markets be due for an oversold bounce here? Sure. But we think Disney's price action (better late than never) was an ugly omen for the start of a pretty bearish movie coming in this name over the next several weeks.
We don't do a lot of "earnings" plays here at All Star Options. We don't scare away from entering smart trades with defined risk ahead of earnings reports, but only if we feel there's a larger play in the cards.
However, when all the stars align, we'll consider specific opportunities.
