This is the monthly conference call for Members of All Star Options. In this call we will discuss the current market environment and focus on price and volatility behavior. Throughout the session, J.C. Parets will add commentary on the technical outlook moving forward, and Sean McLaughlin will discuss the options strategies available to profit from the market activity.
This month’s Conference Call will be held on Thursday August 30th at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call:
It is that time in the options cycle where October options are in the sweet spot (between 45-55 day until expiration) to be looking for income trades wherever volatility pricing offers an edge.
And for our first choice for an October income trade, we're almost quite literally going back to the well, repeating an income trade that we put on in September to satisfactory effect.
I can't afford real estate in Palo Alto (yet), but I can comfortably afford to take a ride with Palo Alto's namesake security software firm Palo Alto Networks $PANW.
Today, $PANW stock popped its head above recent resistance and printed a new all-time high, flagging some bullish intentions ahead of their next earnings release in early September. And this aligns nicely with our bullish outlook in the name.
Recently, an All Star Options subscriber wrote to me asking about some hard "rules" that I follow in entering and managing trades. The assumption was that I have some rules that I absolutely stick to which apply to every trade. As a guy who loves following rules when it comes to certain types of trading, I'm sorry to report that options trading isn't so cut-and-dried. There is nuance to position selection and management. It's much more art than science.
So while there are no one-size fits all answers to any questions about strategy selection, strike selection, and position management -- I've developed a few guidelines for myself that I rely on regularly as I ply my craft in the options market.
Next up in the Bull Market Rotation Wheel of Fortune: Airlines.
The S&P 500 printed a new all-time high on Tuesday (Aug 21), so naturally we should expect a broadening spectrum of sectors and stocks participating to the upside. The airlines have been a bit of a laggard in the transportation sector, but appear as a whole to have put in an important base with many names starting to breakout to the upside.
We've got a play to take flight in one of the leaders.
Logistics and package delivery services provider $UPS got caught in the volatility-triggered downdraft of late January and early February of this year. It has spent the remaining part of the year forming a base and is now showing signs of filling the yawning earnings gap from February 1. We've got a play to take advantage of this gap fill and a likely return to new all-time highs.
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.
In options trading, risk management starts with defined risk and ends with position sizing. "Stop Losses" -- if used at all -- center around price action of the underlying and give zero weight to the value of the option(s) itself.
As an options trader, nothing makes me cringe more than hearing about traders "protecting" their open options positions with Stop Loss orders.
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.
Eight months of sideways consolidation and an upcoming earnings event next week are setting the table for the potential of significant upside in shares of Nvidia $NVDA.
The semiconductor space is a leading indicator for the technology sector which has been outperforming in both an absolute sense as well as relative to the rest of the stock market. We view $NVDA as a leader among semiconductor stocks and it is only natural that this name should resume it's trek higher with the market, which we're still incredibly bullish on.
We're going to make a bet that next week's earnings is the catalyst to get $NVDA moving again.