Daily Market Newsletter

The long-awaited AAPL product release date has come and gone and…….meh. Nothing new that we didn’t already know. Instead of lines around the block next week like many previous releases of the iPhone, you’ll have to wait until November to receive your new whiz-bang iPhone because – get this – they are having supplier problems from Samsung of all companies. Do you think that Steve Jobs would have settled for that? It’s the same old formula – when companies build a temple to themselves, the mission gets lost .

With all of this search for Alpha coming harder and harder, academics are insisting that “it’s different this time” and even in some cases that risk is going away. What a ridiculous statement.

The latest crypto video (Wallets Part 3) is available here

If the above video does not play, try this version.

Offensive Actions

Offensive Actions for the next trading day:

Weekly EM levels have been set; see “weekly EM” section below. Watch for the upper level fade play.
No other trades; I might set up a calendar spread on the SPX later this week.

Defensive Actions

Defensive actions for the next trading day:

Any vertical, butterfly, or diagonal debit spreads that we set up are risk-managed from day one, and no defense is really required.

Strategy Summary Graphs

Each graph below represents a summary of the current performance of a strategy category. For an explanation of what the graphs mean, watch this video.

Non-Directional Strategies

Semi-Directional Strategies

Directional Strategies

Technical Analysis Section

Market Internals: Volume was average today. Breadth was mediocre and diverging with +151 advancers minus decliners.

SPX Market Timer : The Intermediate line rose to just below the Upper Reversal Zone, now showing a bullish bias. No leading signals at this time but this chart will probably be showing a form of bearish cluster by tomorrow, which is a leading signal for a pause.

DOW Theory: The SPX is in a long term uptrend, an intermediate uptrend, and a short-term sideways trend. The RUT is in a long-term uptrend, an intermediate uptrend, and a short-term uptrend. The Dow is in an intermediate uptrend and short-term uptrend.

VIX: The VIX fell to 10.58, back inside the bollinger bands. This is after a twenty-year low on the VIX. The RVX rose to 13.28 and fell BELOW the lower bollinger band to near all-time lows.

Fibonacci Retracements: If we see the pullback continue then I’ll start to determine fib levels that might act as potential support.

Support/Resistance: For the SPX, support is at 2410 … with overhead resistance at 2484. The RUT has support at RUT 1350 with overhead resistance at about 1452. All three major index charts that we follow are now showing a Golden Cross with the 50 day moving average crossing above the 200 day average.

Fractal Energies: The major timeframe (Monthly) is now down into exhaustion again with a reading of 34. The Weekly chart is now recharging quickly with an energy reading of 65, due to the recent chop. The Daily chart is showing a level of 42 which is now bleeding energy with this strong micro-trend. We are seeing the movement that we expected, however with an exhausted monthly chart, I don’t think any breakout will be able to reach its potential.

Other Technicals: The SPX Stochastics indicator rose to 73, below overbought. The RUT Stochastics indicator rose to 82, overbought. The SPX MACD histogram rose above the signal line, showing a return of upside momentum. The SPX is back above the Bollinger Bands with Bollinger Band support at 2419 and resistance at the upper band at 2494 and is above the upper band. The RUT is back inside the Bollinger Bands with its boundaries at 1349 to 1425 and price is at the upper band.

We are seeing the market reacting to any fear catalyst right now, and we’ll be watching to see if the price is able to make new highs or not. The overall trend is still higher and short-term energy is building quickly on this non-linear chop.

Position Management – NonDirectional Trades

I have no positions in play; I will wait on the first significant pullback to allow me to secure put spreads below support. We can finally sell positions for SEP below SPY 230 but my sense is that still isn’t worth the risk just yet. A 10% correction would put the price at SPY 224 and we’d want to be well below that level with short puts.

Offense: I still do not want to set up OTM credit spreads in this low-vol environment until we see real movement to the downside. If and when we get this movement we’ll need to identify levels that we want our credit spreads to be “below.” This is the same type of price action that was so perilous to HP condors back in 2013, so let’s not fight it.

If I see price drop to the SPX 2300 level, this might be our first opportunity to sell premium against that level.

I have no positions in play. At this point I’m expecting movement again because short-term charts are strongly charged, so it makes no sense to pursue an order with this strategy until we see (at the very least) a daily exhaustion signal.

I have no current positions.

The SPX appears to be getting ready for a consolidation based on the daily energy; in today’s video I discussed the dividend problem but I can step around this by using the much-larger SPX product. I’ll start to work out a trade to set this up soon.

The calendar spread tracking sheet is available for your download here. Yes, if you follow the math in the sheet, all of the numbers account for commissions in and out of the trade. Please note: If you trade these positions please keep the size small, to the point where you “do not care” about the success or failure of this position.

I have the following positions in play:

SDS Stock – I still own 100 shares of this stock from 2011 and will continue to write calls against this position with every correction/pullback.
VXX Stock – I own 12 shares of this stock and will hold until Armageddon occurs.
SLV Stock – I have 1000 shares of the SLV that was assigned at the $15 level. I sold the 15SEP $16.5 calls (7/24) for $.17 credit, and closed those down today for a $.39 debit, rolling them forward to the NOV cycle with $18 calls that I sold for $.22
X – I was assigned at the $25 price level. I then rolled the position forward to SEP17 $25 calls for $.68 credit. We are still in a good position with this stock since the underlying stock is ITM and I just received the dividend, so I’m ready to cut this one loose and repurpose capital elsewhere. There is still $.03 of extrinsic value to the options so I’d like to remain patient this week to see if I can get called out, or possibly just close the whole position later this week when the extrinsic value drops to a couple of pennies. Make no mistake, I’d like to scrap this position and go to cash with it.
AMD – I sold the 15SEP $12 puts (7/31) for $.40 credit. I would sell the position if it closed below $10/share. My preference is still to remain a put seller and continue to lower cost basis, but I will accept assignment on this stock if the options are ITM by the end of this week. On the other hand, if I can buy back the options for a few pennies and roll them forward to a lower/forward strike, I will do so this week.

Not looking to add anything at these levels at this time. I’d like to keep my powder dry and wait on a more severe correction.

Position Management – Directional Trades

Thoughts on current swing strategies:

8/21 EMA Crossover – Looking for the next 8/21 ema entry.
RSI(2) CounterTrend – I will continue looking for additional setups as long as markets are trending higher
Daily S&P Advancers – if I see the number of daily S&P500 advancers drop into single digits near the close of any trading day, I will go long shares of the SSO.

This is a new section that I’m starting in the summer of 2017; all Cryptocurrency trades are by definition going to be “directional” trades due to the fact that there are no premium-selling strategies available.

Please refer to the left sidebar section if you’d like to get caught up on “FAQ” -style intro videos.

Investors should currently be looking to find technical entries to warehouse BTC/ETH/LTC assets for eventual trades on Alt-coins. You should also be looking to devices like “trezor” or other cold-storage devices to keep your assets off of the network, or other secure wallet such as Navcoin. Relying on the security of your broker is no longer good enough; no one can log into your ETrade account and “steal” your stock assets, but the whole nature of Cryptocurrencies and their portability means that someone can grab your assets and transfer them elsewhere.

I will continue to discuss the tradingview platform in daily videos as I think that it is currently the best way to chart the “big three.”

Here is the most recent video which is “Wallets Part III.”

Viewing the SPY from the current Friday closing price at 246.58, there is a +/- 3.4 EM into this Friday. This is larger than last week’s EM, and well above previous week’s EM values of about 2 points during most of the summer.

The EM targets for this Friday’s close is 249.98 to the upside, and 243.18 to the downside.

Either target is in play for this week. The upper target at nearly SPX 2500 is certainly a “fade.” I tried to enter this trade today but the vertical put spread was massively skewed due to the just-OTM puts being less expensive than the ATM puts at SPY 250. I’ll see if I get a chance to enter tomorrow or into the end of the week.

I have no positions at this time. Nothing else to enter at this time.

I have the following positions:

SPY 15SEP 249/250 Call Spread (8/28) was entered for an $.11 debit, and as I said earlier I wanted to sell this position into strength. I closed the position today (9/11) for a $.30 credit. That gave me a profit of $15/contract, or a 136% return on invested capital.
AMAT 13OCT 45.5/46.5 Call Spread (9/12) was entered for a $.50 debit. I’ll look for a 50% return on this trade, or 40% if we see it over the next few days.

No other trades right now.

The “Hindenburg Strategy” is meant to capture “value” from successive corrections that lead up to the final “death spiral” with a Bear Market. The basic principle is to buy 3-month out long puts on the SPY, and to finance those puts by the sale of credit spreads.

Quite honestly, selling the “financing” trades has been a huge challenge in this low-vol environment. I will only sell put spreads on decent pullbacks that allow me to secure put spreads 10% OTM

With a new all-time low VIX, the opportunity to buy inexpensive short deltas was too great, so I added some OCT puts recently.

We currently have the following positions in play with this strategy:

SPY OCT17 222 long puts (7/24) – I entered this position for an $.85 debit. This position was up 50% and the temptation to remove it for a profit is strong, however the point of these trades is to hedge the downside for existing longs, AND try for those home runs on corrections that come out of nowhere.