Daily Market Newsletter

Do we have another “taper tamtrum” in store for us? In today’s video, I’ll discuss the most recent “scary” moves that the market’s made over the past few years, and look to see if there are any warning signs that we can look for before the Big Red Candle hits. I will also go over the management of the SPX calendar spread that was set up today.

The Crypto Markets have been rallying for the last couple of days; I’ll also talk about what we’ll have to see before a true “bottom” is in.

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.
No other trades tomorrow.

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.
Management of the SPX calendar spread will be discussed tonight.

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 below average today. Breadth was mildly mixed with +64 advancers minus decliners.

SPX Market Timer : The Intermediate line rose into the Upper Reversal Zone, now showing a bullish bias. After Friday’s rare Full Bearish Cluster, we’re seeing a Strong Bearish cluster today for the fourth cluster in a row, 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 uptrend. 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 10.15, back inside the bollinger bands. This is after a twenty-year low on the VIX. The RVX rose to 12.14 and is back inside the lower bollinger band.

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

Support/Resistance: For the SPX, support is at 2430 … with overhead resistance at 2500. 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 35. The Weekly chart is now losing energy with an energy reading of 59, due to the recent trend. The Daily chart is showing a level of 32 which is now bleeding energy with this strong micro-trend and is technically exhausted from the upside run. 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 85, overbought. The RUT Stochastics indicator rose to 86, overbought. The SPX MACD histogram fell slightly above the signal line, showing a loss of upside momentum. The SPX is back inside the Bollinger Bands with Bollinger Band support at 2421 and resistance at the upper band at 2512 and is at the upper band. The RUT is back inside the Bollinger Bands with its boundaries at 1354 to 1445 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. It makes no sense to pursue an order with this strategy until we see (at the very least) a daily exhaustion signal.

I have the following positions:

SPX 6OCT/3NOV 2500 Put Calendar (9/18) was entered for a $13.05 debit. My action points are $2487 and 2515 as explained in Monday’s video. My GTC exit credit is $14.40.

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 NOV $18 calls for $.22
F NOV17 $11 Puts (9/18) were entered for a $.19 credit.

I would like one more shot at XLF at $22/share. Might be a while before I get that opportunity.

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 249.19, there is a +/- 2.119 EM into this Friday. Note that last week’s upper EM target was hit and due to it being at SPX 2500 as well, provided a rock wall of resistance. We have no such confluence this week.

The EM targets for this Friday’s close is 251.31 to the upside, and 247.07 to the downside.

Last week’s EM play was frustrating because we had the play perfectly set up, but the options skew between the ATM puts and the OTM puts blew up the spread and made it too expensive….we were paying too much for the long put and not enough for the short put which made the spread too expensive. I am not expecting any fireworks this week, even with a Fed meeting.

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

I have no positions at this time.

AMAT 13OCT 45.5/46.5 Call Spread (9/12) was entered for a $.50 debit, and I closed this trade on 9/15 for a $.71 credit as the price hit resistance and the daily energy was very close to exhaustion.

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% at one point and the temptation to remove it for a profit was 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.