All things STOCKS

[Thunder Good-Oil]

NVDA is off to a 2% plus start. It was weird seeing so much negativity towards it with paid ads and market commentary lately.

Bitcoin as well. It’s either heading to a $million/each or crashing to $10k based on what I’m being force fed.

 

[Go aeiou]

NVDA is off to a 2% plus start. It was weird seeing so much negativity towards it with paid ads and market commentary lately.

Bitcoin as well. It’s either heading to a $million/each or crashing to $10k based on what I’m being force fed.

Do you own any Bitcoins?
How invested?

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Do you own any Bitcoins?

Not directly. Closest was owning MicroStrategy and almost sold some BITX put options. I consider HOOD to be a picks and shovels crypto stock.

I doubt that I’d open up a crypto wallet. Maybe buy through an exchange with a long track record of traditional investment options.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

60% of my early gains today have vanished. I hope it isn’t one of those days that start out great and end in the red. Those are annoying. But there are always a few dozen sessions doing that every year.

 

[Firebirdparts]

Somebody got really unhappy at noon for some reason.

 

[Jack Burton]

Who are some of your favorite follows in the market? I’ve listened to Bill Gunderson for years and been able to make money on his picks. I don’t pay for his live trading detail but just listen to his daily radio show.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Guy Adami and Dan Nathan “On the Tape” and “MRKT Call”. Danny Moses, too.

 

[Majors]

NVDA now running

 

[Vol737]

NVDA now running

Been running with NVDA and ANET given their relationship. Have not been disappointed.

 

[norrislakevol]

Glad to see FUBO finally starting to take off. I've been sitting on 1500 shares that I bought on the cheap a couple of years ago. They just inked a deal with Disney.

 

[walkenvol]

Guy Adami and Dan Nathan “On the Tape” and “MRKT Call”. Danny Moses, too.

I’ve noticed you’ve been dabbling in calls / puts for a while and I’ve decided to venture there myself. Seems like the returns are smaller than I was expecting especially on non tech stocks. If you’re selling a covered call on a stock you don’t really want to sell, what’s the percentage return you shoot for? Is there a particular company that you’re trading in right now and if so why did you select it? TIA

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I’ve noticed you’ve been dabbling in calls / puts for a while and I’ve decided to venture there myself. Seems like the returns are smaller than I was expecting especially on non tech stocks. If you’re selling a covered call on a stock you don’t really want to sell, what’s the percentage return you shoot for? Is there a particular company that you’re trading in right now and if so why did you select it? TIA

I tend to float around with options and focus on just a couple of stocks. They might fall off of my radar after a couple of weeks.

Covered calls haven’t been working for me. I don’t like the prices. I’ve really only placed a few limit orders on selling some covered calls instead of placing sell limit orders on the underlying shares that I own. Almost all have expired instead of executing. I’m planning to use covered calls more if we get a good run up into overbought territory.

I think that a strategy of selling covered calls might work best with boring, high(er) dividend, steadily growing old school industries and companies. Maybe just add 1% or 2% a quarter using a 3, 4, 5% dividend payer in well established consumer or manufacturing type of equities.

Selling cash reserved puts has worked very well for me, but simply buying the shares might have provided similar returns anyway. I haven’t analyzed the compared results. But selling puts that expire worthless in just a couple of weeks preserves a lot of cash/investment capital.

Buying puts to hedge before the late 2024 pullback would have been wise. Especially to protect the large gains in NVDA and PLTR.

I haven’t bought a call for a long time. They usually expire worthless unless everything is working in the markets and the economy. Maybe not a good strategy at this stage of the wavering or pausing bull market.

So selling the cash reserved puts is looking like a good idea to me again after the late 2024 pull back. I just placed limit orders for Verizon and Palantir. I keep the expirations to 2-3 weeks.

It’s hard to shoot for a certain percentage. Maybe around 2%-10%. Much less than 2% and it’s going to have to be selling cash reserved puts on a stock that I really want to own or shares that I really don’t want anymore if selling the covered calls.

I did the paperwork with my brokers only 2.5 years ago for options approval so I’m still quite inexperienced and have narrowed my focus. Selling cash reserved puts mostly. I stay away from multi-option strategies.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

So my (small) VZ PUT buy just executed.

VZ 1/24/2025 $38.50 PUT (sold for $0.85)

I immediately entered a limit to buy (and close) the contracts with a good till cancelled limit order (GTC) at ($0.10). So if the shares fall and the contract price increases, I’ll own VZ shares at a lower cost basis ($37.65) than where it was when I opened the option position (and the current share price of just above $39). If VZ runs up and the options contract falls in price, I’d make $75/contract ($0.85-$0.10 = $0.75 x 100 shares/contract). Sometimes I’ll set the buy to close limit price much higher with a good for day only limit order. But I kind of want to buy the VZ shares, so I’m using the $0.10 (x 100 or $10/contract) for now. I might raise the $0.10 to around $0.25 in the next session or two if the contract price gets closer quickly. That way (if the contract is closed) investment capital is no longer reserved and I can repeat with different options contracts.

$3,850/contract (100 shares each of VZ) is unavailable as investment capital until 1/24 or the options are bought back and the contract is closed.

VZ is currently $39.12/share.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I have a bigger scenario working with PLTR contracts right now. Selling tge options contracts pay a lot more, but owning those shares is pretty risky right now (at least in the short term).

Longer term, I think that Palantir will perform well in the DOGE environment. But PLTR is highly speculative no matter what. I think that there is quantum computing exposure with PLTR in addition to the defense industry angle. It’s still a really high p/e, but it generates a ton of revenue per each employee.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

PLTR contracts just sold.

1/17/2025 $68.0 PUTS

PLTR current quote: $70.02 (-$5.90/-7.77%)

BTC, GTC limit order to buy back the contracts at $0.25 (currently: $2.00)

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I kind of like VZ here after being dead money for several years. 6.84% dividend. 17.35x p/e (8.61x forward p/e). BUT earnings are $2.42 while the dividend is $2.71. Shares will crash if that projected earnings growth fails to materialize.

Lots of competition, but cable TV is a bad industry that’s getting worse. It only works with internet being part of their strategy. Wireless doesn’t need to maintain the cabling while wireless becomes more and more reliable. Verizon isn’t a pure play wireless though.

 

[Vol737]

I think we need to get past inauguration day and see some positive policy/EOs/legislation to get markets excited again.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I think we need to get past inauguration day and see some positive policy/EOs/legislation to get markets excited again.

Tariffs and the trillions in debt are the big stories. But companies need to be profitable in order to grow payrolls, tax receipts, and the economy. Equities are set up to crash if company profits contract in this environment.

I don’t know why Biden is working so hard at sabotaging things before he exits. Blocking offshore drilling seems like nothing more than interference. Big Oil provides a lot of high paying jobs and selling off the southern border barrier fencing was idiocy. These are things that shouldn’t be forgotten in the mid-term elections.

 

[Vol737]

Tariffs and the trillions in debt are the big stories. But companies need to be profitable in order to grow payrolls, tax receipts, and the economy. Equities are set up to crash if company profits contract in this environment.

I don’t know why Biden is working so hard at sabotaging things before he exits. Blocking offshore drilling seems like nothing more than interference. Big Oil provides a lot of high paying jobs and selling off the southern border barrier fencing was idiocy. These are things that shouldn’t be forgotten in the mid-term elections.

Setting it up to say it's Trump's fault in the mid-terms. The sheep will regurgitate that sentiment. Uphill battle for the incoming administration on those fronts you mentioned. I've argued the case for higher interest rates for longer, but I hope the Fed doesn't mess around and delay another rate cut or two if things start to get shaky. This market already feels like it's giving off signals.

 

[Go aeiou]

Tariffs and the trillions in debt are the big stories. But companies need to be profitable in order to grow payrolls, tax receipts, and the economy. Equities are set up to crash if company profits contract in this environment.

I don’t know why Biden is working so hard at sabotaging things before he exits. Blocking offshore drilling seems like nothing more than interference. Big Oil provides a lot of high paying jobs and selling off the southern border barrier fencing was idiocy. These are things that shouldn’t be forgotten in the mid-term elections.

Effect of tariff on Canadien oil?
Most politicians talk about reducing the debt. None do including trump.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Effect of tariff on Canadien oil?
Most politicians talk about reducing the debt. None do including trump.

I would think tariffs on Canada would create a missed opportunity to partner even more in energy. Europe creates NG demand as long as Russia is playing off the rails.

What we really need first is more refining capacity - especially using the sweeter crude as the input.

The debt doesn’t have to be reduced. The deficit does. The growth of the debt needs to be throttled down. Grow the GDP faster and the national debt becomes less of a concern.

Trump should have sold a lot more treasuries when rates were near zero. But the problem with that was that somebody, D or R, wouldn’t have been able to not spend it. At least the Rs would have probably returned more capital to the job creators through lower taxes. The richest pay well over their fair share.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

The 1/17 $68 PLTR PUTS are now $2.88 on the $67.65 underlying. That’s almost 5% with a little more than a week to expiration. Unfortunately it’s signaling that Palantir has more to fall in tge very near term. PLTR is already given back 20% in just a couple of weeks.

 

[mrorange211]

I bought a massive amount of UNH and DLR.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I bought a massive amount of UNH and DLR.

I’m wary of UNH. But there is a wave of Medicare participants propping them up. And DOGE might not impact the insurers nearly as hard as Big Pharma and medical suppliers and equipment companies.

DLR seems like they’re in a sweet spot. Especially if US based investment in manufacturing for AI, AV, EV, blockchain, e-commerce, cloud, quantum, etc, etc, etc materializes in a significant move.

 

[mrorange211]

UNH is my hedge against the MG7 tbh. I think they've been hit a bit too hard in the last 50 days, so I went in heavy. DLR is a LT hold for me.