Daily Market Newsletter

July 11, 2018

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July Expiration

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Market Commentary

Well, just when we thought that tariffs and “trade wars” had been fully priced into the market, yet another bomb came into the tape last night and started the day in the red. The damage so far has been pretty well-contained, and we did see a little too much heat to the upside over the past couple of days, so it’s just as well that stocks consolidate underneath the recent June highs. If the Dow ends up printing a “lower high” and rolls below 24k, however, all bets are off. Even the Russell 2k could not escape the damage today. About the only thing that went up today was the USD, which impacted precious metals and is going to be a trigger for me dumping the rest of my NUGT position, which I’ll discuss in tonight’s video.

Tomorrow starts the “real” earnings season with DAL among others, and then we really get some big names on Friday morning with C, JPM, PNC, and WFC. Large cap tech earnings are in the last week of July with GOOGL 7/23, FB 7/25, AMZN 7/26, and AAPL 7/31.

The scan for the “Cheap Stocks with Weeklys”  is available here.

The RSI(2) FE scan is available here.

The current MAIN “high liquidity” watchlist that I’m scanning against in thinkorswim is available here.

The latest crypto video (Cryptocurrency Market Visualized) is available here

Please sign up for our free daily crypto report here.

If you need a video link with an embedded player you can use this link.

Offensive Actions

Offensive Actions for the next trading day:

  • No new positions 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.
  • Closing orders have been entered for all new spreads.
  • A test of the 200 day SPX moving average would cause an exit from the Hindenburg strategy; see below.
  • I’m going to dump the rest of the NUGT position; see “stocks” section below.

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

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Technical Analysis Section

Market Internals:  Volume was alightly above average today and breadth ended the day fairly negative with -243 advancers minus decliners

SPX Market Timer : The Intermediate line rose into the Upper Reversal Zone, now showing a bullish bias. No leading signals at this time but this chart is close to a bearish cluster.

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 downtrend and short-term uptrend.

VIX: The VIX rose to 13.63 after peaking at 50.3 four months ago, back inside the bollinger bands. The RVX rose to 15.86 and is inside the bollinger bands.

Fibonacci Retracements: The price has retraced 38.2% of the election rally; so far this has been a garden-variety correction.

Support/Resistance: For the SPX, support is at 2600 … with overhead resistance at 2878. The RUT has support at RUT 1530 with no overhead resistance. 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 above exhaustion, with a reading of 50, almost fully-charged. The Weekly chart is just below fully charged with an energy reading of 52. The Daily chart is showing a level of 50 which is just below fully-charged again due to the non-linear action of the price. Markets are doing PRECISELY what they must in order to restore energy that has been incredibly depleted. Extreme Range Expansion leads to extreme range contraction (big swings). 

Other Technicals: The SPX Stochastics indicator rose to 49, mid-scale. The RUT Stochastics indicator rose to 47, mid-scale. The SPX MACD histogram rose above the signal line, showing a return of upside momentum. The SPX is back inside the Bollinger Bands with Bollinger Band support at 2694 and resistance at the upper band at 2807 and price is below the upper band. The RUT is back inside the Bollinger Bands  with its boundaries at 1637 to 1717 and price is below the upper band. We recently saw the market reaching into a full “runaway” condition, where “fear of missing out” means abandoning any former patience and “wait for the dip” strategy. This usually occurs near the top of the intermediate move. Markets are about to release from the sideways/volatile correction. 

SPX chart

Position Management – NonDirectional Trades

I have no positions in play at this time:

Our next offensive cycle will commence when either 1) the price continues to rally and hits daily exhaustion, or 2) we see the price sell off from this level and we hit an exhaustion level on the downside move, allowing us to enter put spreads. I don’t see an entry on this strategy for at least a couple of weeks at the soonest; there is more potential for MOVEMENT than there is for consolidation.

I have no positions at the current time.

No setup at this point; we need to be very selective. I would not sell LP Condors if we go back into corrective mode. If the S&P stays in “quiet & trending” mode then we’ll look for the next daily exhaustion reading.

I have no remaining positions. Calendar spreads are good for markets with some volatility but they are long vega so we can’t enter them during IV spikes or periods of elevated volatility. If the price resolves back to quiet/trending then we can place these again.

 

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 am targeting stocks using short puts/covered calls that offer a much lower absolute risk point, where in event of crash we can almost define our total risk by the price of the underlying. While this is not how I intend to manage risk in these positions, I view this as fundamentally more solid than trying to actively manage risk on assets that are going for $$$hundreds which have also gone parabolic. I have the following positions in play:

  • 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 currently have 17AUG $16.50 SLV calls (6/8) for $24 credit. .
  • NUGT stock – I was assigned on NUGT at the $31.5 price level.I currently own the 13JUL $30.5 calls for $.32 on 6/12. While we continue to collect premium against this stock, I will bail out on the next rally higher due to the drag on this leveraged ETF. I will dump the rest of my NUGT long position tomorrow; the price is fading again. Please note that I will have to buy back the short calls to do so as long as we hold the 13JUL calls.
  • BAC – I sold the 17AUG $27 puts (6/18) for $.34 credit. I will look to close these for $.05. If the price continues lower without me being able to secure an early exit, I will accept assignment.

 

No entries at this time.

Position Management – Directional Trades

Thoughts on current swing strategies:

  • 8/21 EMA Crossover –  No current positions;  the next crossover is showing right now. I will wait on a pullback to the 8ema before entering.
  • RSI(2) CounterTrend –   Looking for the next setup.
  • Daily S&P Advancersif 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.
  • Swing – I entered a GLD 20JUL 128/129 call spread for $.40 (4/12) and will hold this for the eventual breakout.

The crypto market has seen a little pop to the upside since last weekend; I believe that this is only to relieve oversold pressure and bears will reload once again soon. There has been no capitulation yet. .

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.”

Viewing the SPY from the Friday closing price at 275.42, there is a +/-3.436 EM into this Friday.  This is smaller than last week’s  4.236 EM, which shows a marked difference as the trend lately had been towards an increasing EM.

The EM targets for this Friday’s close is 278.86 to the upside, and 271.98 to the downside.

The upper EM for the SPY was hit Tuesday this week. This might be a rough level to break above this week due to the early June overhead resistance, but I still don’t want to fade it with a nearly-charged daily and weekly chart.

We set up another long condor for the back week, or the 20JUL cycle. I show that the EM targets for 20JUL are at the 270.12 and 280.72 levels. Once again we got somewhat of a lousy entry after this weekend’s newsletter call, as the S&P gapped up several points on Monday morning.

I have the following positions in play per this weekend’s advisory:

  • 20JUL SPY 272/273*281/282 Long Iron Condor – filled (7/9) for $.15 on the puts and $.15 on the calls. I will look for a 200% return on the “winning” side to pay for the trade.

I have no current positions. I will consider setting up another ratio fly as price approaches resistance:

Entry criteria are:

  • Using calls
  • 17 to 50 calendar days
  • center strike .25 to .40 delta
  • ratio is 1/3/2 quantity, from the bottom, calls are long/short/long

We will exit the spread at a 60-70% level of credit received. The max risk on the trade is defined on the graph if the price goes much higher. There are no early exits, only exiting the week of expiry to avoid assignment. Also avoid dividend periods. I am currently trialing some trades and will discuss them in the newsletter; after a few cycles, I will start adding these trades to circulation. TOS scan code: http://tos.mx/hvWmMl

I have the following positions:

  • XLB 10AUG 58.5/60.5 call vertical (7/11) entered for $.91 debit. I will look for a 50% return from this trade.

 

No other trades at this time. The market has to pick a catalyst and figure out where to go.

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. Frankly, 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

  • I entered the 17AUG SPY 245 puts (5/14) for a $1.41 debit. I will hold these through the next test of the 200 dma.