Here is the video from my BNN Bloomberg interview this week. We talk about the implications of a weaker US Dollar, including what that would do to stocks, emerging markets, metals and others. I've been waiting for it all year. But think about it. We've already seen some of the things we would expect to see in a weaker Dollar environment. Gold strong, for example, and an inability for the Euro to go lower. So for me, I think this Dollar fall is just getting started.
One of the things I harp on here is Best Practices. When I make it a habit to engage in best practices in terms of both strategy selection and position management, I put myself in position to win more often.
Best Practices skews odds in my favor. It keeps me from swimming upstream against volatility currents. It keeps my risk lower. It helps with P/L consistency. And it helps me stick with trades that still have time to play out.
Selling Half is a position management best practice I employ most often when trading straight long calls and long puts. I like to sell half of my position when the value of the position has doubled. It can be very tempting to want to hold your entire position if it quickly runs up and you find yourself sitting on tremendous profits thanks to the leverage inherent in long options. And certainly, there are times when I wished I would've just sat on my hands as I watched a stock continue to fly higher. But for every one of those times I wish I had, there are easily five other times I'm glad I hadn't.
There are a number of great services for options traders out there that offer smart ideas for premium selling, or Iron Condor trading, or earnings trades -- I'm friends with many of the best practitioners. They are fantastic at what they do and I'm happy to name names. Just ask.
Subscribers to All Star Options come to us for option trade ideas which take advantage of directional edges the All Star Charts research team uncovers through exhaustive technical analysis. We are not beholden to any particular type of strategy, options spread, or timeframe. We simply examine each opportunity on a case-by-case basis and make an informed decision on what we feel is a good way to play a particular situation. We might not always end up picking the "best" way to leverage into a opportunity, but we think over time and over many iterations, our good decisions compound favorably.
These are the registration details for the monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts. In this call we will discuss the global market environment and how to profit from it. As always, this will include Stocks, Interest Rates, Commodities and Currencies. The video of the call will be archived in the members section to re-watch any time and the PDF of the charts will be made available as well.
This month’s Conference Call will be held on Monday June 19th at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call:
We've been writing about the lack of trend in India and Equities around the globe for months and despite the breakout to new highs in the Nifty 50 and several Large-Cap stocks, we remain cautious about calling this a "confirmed uptrend" and getting overly aggressive on the long side.
In this post, we'll explain why this remains a two-way tape.
While updating our Members-Only Chartbooks today we came across two major breakouts that need to be pointed out as they play key roles in the Infrastructure and Public Sector Bank Sectors.
On May 1st, we wrote an update called "Canada or Cantada" going through the major sectors/indexes to provide a view on how we wanted to approach Canadian Equities.
As we can see, there are more uptrends than downtrends from a structural perspective. Tactically however, most of these are not at levels where we want to be initiating new positions or have a lot of conviction. After strong moves since December, they need some consolidation to digest those gains and set up for a sustained move higher.
Another thing to note is that the more defensive areas of the market like REITs and Staples have the clearest structural uptrends of the group. They make up a smaller portion of the market, but I think it's still an interesting signal about market participants' risk appetite and outlook for Interest Rates.
Additionally Energy and Materials account for roughly 30% of the index and remain a headwind, so without rotation into those names I think it'll be tough for the TSX Composite to break out to the upside.
The drama queens have been in full force this weekend coming into the opening of trading this Monday morning. Here was my observation after rolling out of bed:
Geez, I shoulda checked $ES_F before I checked my twitter stream this morning.
FinTwit: THE MARKET IS CRASHING. ARMAGEDDON!!!
Futures: Down 6. Barely a rounding error.
Back to bed.
— Sean McLaughlin, NLD 📈 (@chicagosean) June 3, 2019
I rarely seek to be contrarian simply for the sake of being contrarian, but the mini hysteria I'm sensing amongst market participants feels a little hollow. Is everyone too leveraged? You're not trading based off headlines are you? ...are you??
If so, knock it off. Scared money don't make money.
With the S&P 500 re-acquainting itself with it's 200-day moving average, here's how we're going to play it...
Wall Street is a game of relative performance and we each are tasked with our own mandates/constraints in managing our portfolios.
The good news is that even when the market is a hot mess on an absolute basis, there are still plenty of ways to find performance within the context of those constraints.
If you need to have most of your capital allocated most of the time, then your focus is on either avoiding/shorting areas of relative weakness and owning areas of relative strength.
If you have the flexibility to raise cash and go to the beach or have short exposure on your books, that works too.
Two weeks ago I was scheduled to film two segments for Real Vision and the experience brought up a good topic that I've been meaning to write about using my personal experience; Perfectionism.
The night before I was supposed to film the segments I didn't get much sleep, hadn't exercised in a few days, and just wasn't feeling 100%. Needless to say, these were not the conditions I'd prefer for important filming.*
Regardless, I'd agreed to do it and I needed to show up and do the work.
Now that I've had time to reflect, let's see what perfectionism, failure, and fear of "shipping" have got to do with that experience.