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Is this close to the bottom or is there more pain coming? I pulled a bunch out of the market earlier this year and am trying to play the dangerous game of timing the market

There’s no shortage of experts on CNBC today. One was pointing out that the market bottoms typically happen when the Fed begins to cut interest rates (12-24 months from now). But she suggested that this could be the exception to that history. Another argued that the median S&P stock is already at 15x PEs.

Another is saying that some sectors are already below their middle of June lows.

Pisani was saying we’re oversold on many technical indicators.01FD1DE0-3BE0-4B54-8D5F-876B4BC81197.png

As always, averaging in is never a bad strategy. Try selling out of the money put options and collect some option premiums on stocks you don’t mind owning.
 
I got 90 euros for $100 dollars 3 days ago - thought it would be much better than that?
you can typically get the best exchange rate at "bank" atms in Europe. Buy things with a credit card in the local currency.
Make sure your credit card does not have any fees for foreign transactions. A search will show you the best ones.
The exchange was about 1:1 three days ago.
 
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I have 5x short put option positions. 3 expire today, 2 others next Friday.

I will be assigned AMZN and FDX. Surprisingly, the one that I expected when selling it stayed out of the money and shouldn’t be assigned. MSTR. It wasn’t real volatile as the week wound down. But I down expect them volatility premium to go away.

So MSTR gives me another opportunity to sell more puts next week.

If there’s a slight upside bounce I could avoid being assigned BX and MMM. BX is barely ITM. MMM is about $5 ITM. I’d rather own BX shares instead of MMM, but with a stronger dollar I’m more likely to get assigned the MMM (I would assume that MMM has a lot of non-US based revenue). BX has a lot of hotel property and could do well emerging from COVID. They might find some troubled companies to acquire (but their cost to borrow has obviously gone up).

I might sell more MSTR puts with the capital being freed up with the expiring MSTR 220923 Ps. I’ll watch BTC over the weekend before deciding. Under $18k w/b bad. Pushing back over $20k is very possible. Somebody just predicted $60k within 4 years and then on to $500k. Jamie Dimon thinks BTC is Ponzi.
 
Picked up some SCHD today...driving that cost basis down. That, JNJ, and ABBV form my core at this point. Next month, if things are still/keep going down, I'll probably add some VOO.
 
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I have 5x short put option positions. 3 expire today, 2 others next Friday.

I will be assigned AMZN and FDX. Surprisingly, the one that I expected when selling it stayed out of the money and shouldn’t be assigned. MSTR. It wasn’t real volatile as the week wound down. But I down expect them volatility premium to go away.

So MSTR gives me another opportunity to sell more puts next week.

If there’s a slight upside bounce I could avoid being assigned BX and MMM. BX is barely ITM. MMM is about $5 ITM. I’d rather own BX shares instead of MMM, but with a stronger dollar I’m more likely to get assigned the MMM (I would assume that MMM has a lot of non-US based revenue). BX has a lot of hotel property and could do well emerging from COVID. They might find some troubled companies to acquire (but their cost to borrow has obviously gone up).

I might sell more MSTR puts with the capital being freed up with the expiring MSTR 220923 Ps. I’ll watch BTC over the weekend before deciding. Under $18k w/b bad. Pushing back over $20k is very possible. Somebody just predicted $60k within 4 years and then on to $500k. Jamie Dimon thinks BTC is Ponzi.

I added a little BX last week, but I feel that it is fully valued now. I'll be adding small amount if it continues to fall which i expect to happen.Hope I'm wrong(again).
 
I added a little BX last week, but I feel that it is fully valued now. I'll be adding small amount if it continues to fall which i expect to happen.Hope I'm wrong(again).

I wish their dividend would stay at the current rate. I’ll assume that it is volatile - higher as they do well flipping companies and probably is lower as business slows. I posted earlier that I have APO and CG. I forgot that I also have a little KKR. BX has been good. Close to a triple. Publicly traded PE firms that I don’t have are Ares and Oaktree. It seems like a good way to invest in something riskier than typical stocks but with Wall Street guys that are pretty good at what they do. All could become LT holds. Might ditch APO, CG, and/or KKR if they don’t produce. I’ll probably keep BX forever. I might write BX puts more frequently and would therefore accumulate more as I’m assigned. I haven’t found good stocks to write covered calls with - maybe BX will be good for that. I’ve only been actively trading options for about two months now.
 
Why not? Because the market has been sinking?

Pretty much. I want to write the call contracts with strikes well above the current share prices (unless I prefer to get rid of the shares). And I also don’t want to write them if my cost is above the strikes. So my options are to risk letting shares go at a loss, sell for premiums that aren’t really worth it IMO, or selling the calls way out into the future - which I don’t want to do either. So I will wait for a bit of a bounce first. MSTR however has been having really high volatility premiums so I might sell those covered calls this week.
 
It's a good idea when the market is flat, or going up. Not so much this.
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True. If you are just looking for profits by trading options. My approach has a lot to do with putting uninvested cash to work. I used to always buy shares by setting limit prices on buy orders a percentage or two below the current price. Now I am instead selling cash reserved puts with strikes a couple percent below the current share price. If the share price goes up, instead of raising my limit price to buy shares, I just pocket the option premium. It’s not a great approach if I really want to own the shares and expect them to rise in value. If the share price doesn’t change much then I’ll sell more puts on the stock after either buying the contract back at a much lower price that I sold it -or- I will wait for the option to expire worthless. I try to sell for around 1% or better with expirations in the current or following week.

I’m not worried about some of the assigned shares even if they have fallen hard. I don’t mind holding AMZN, MMM, FDX, ISRG, INTC, BX, AMAT, AAPL, or ORCL. Some of those pay attractive dividends while I wait. I’m not as comfortable holding MSTR or NFLX. Or NVDA. But those last 3 have already pulled way back. MSTR is the riskiest, but as I’ve said before I have very little crypto exposure so I am using MSTR as a Bitcoin proxy.

I could sell some covered calls. But since I anticipate at least some recovery from the recent price drops in the next few weeks, I’ll wait a while before selling CC contracts.

December and late November could be bad for share owners. There should be considerable pressure on stock prices with year end tax loss harvesting. Of course that expectation is included in how the algorithmic trading bots are programmed - so the opposite result is very possible. There’s a lot of illogical stock pricing going on. That’s probably now normal. Peter Lynch used to be able to check out company parking lots to gather data. Now the amount of information is overwhelming.
 
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GBP/USD...did something just break?

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I don't know. But I'm starting to think that the Fed may pivot (not necessarily an interest rate cut, but QE/QT), not because of the US economy, but because of a meltdown in the bond/foreign exchange markets. Isn't that what first prompted the Fed when COVID hit? The bond market blew up?

 
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