Daily Market Newsletter

August 17, 2017

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Market Commentary

On Wednesday I had written: “….These are truly the summer doldrums but they will not last. Be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it…….Again, watch carefully for the “lower high” setting up.” That is precisely what we received on Thursday. In fact, this has occurred the past two Thursdays.

But not so oddly, as I pointed out last weekend during our EM trade setup that the SPY expected move was double was it has been on previous weeks. Thursday’s catalyst was the awful terrorist attack in Spain but the Market will seek any catalyst to go “risk off” these days and that has been what the RUT has been telling us for a couple of weeks.

My new section on cryptocurrencies will be added by the end of August in this newsletter.

I am finally home and working from the office….I’ll have more to say in this weekend’s report.

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

Offensive Actions

Offensive Actions for the next trading day:

Weekly EM levels have been set; see “weekly EM” section below.
Keeping my powder dry for what could be an opportunistic pullback; no trades for this coming week.
I’ll be back in the saddle by this Saturday and I hope to take a new look at potential offensive positions for next 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 fairly high on Thursday. Breadth was terrible with -451 advancers minus decliners.

SPX Market Timer : The Intermediate line continued declining below the Upper Reversal Zone, now showing a bearish bias. No leading signals at this time.

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

VIX: The VIX rose to 15.55, back outside the bollinger bands. This is after a twenty-year low on the VIX. The RVX rose to 18.76.

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 35. The Weekly chart is now recharging quickly with an energy reading of 48, due to the recent chop. The Daily chart is showing a level of 48 which is now showing some erosion of energy after this quick move lower.

Other Technicals: The SPX Stochastics indicator fell to 46, mid-scale. The RUT Stochastics indicator flattened at 17, oversold. The SPX MACD histogram fell below the signal line, showing a loss of upside momentum. The SPX is back outside the Bollinger Bands with Bollinger Band support at 2440 and resistance at the upper band at 2496 and is below the lower band. The RUT is back outside the Bollinger Bands with its boundaries at 1359 to 1461 and price is below the lower 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.

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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 (it’s here) so it makes no sense to pursue an order with this strategy.

I have no current positions; no current setups showing.

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.
X – I was assigned at the $25 price level. I added new AUG17 $25 calls for $1.12 credit (7/17) and closed those down (8/15) for $.06. I then rolled the position forward to SEP17 $25 calls for $.68 credit. This continues to lower my cost basis and gives me a little bit more downside protection if the trap door opens.
HPE – I sold the 18AUG $16 puts (6/12) for $.30 credit. These look like they will expire OTM this week as long as we don’t see an overall crash.
AMD – I sold the 15SEP $12 puts (7/31) for $.40 credit. I would sell the position if it closed below $10/share.

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 – Looking for the next setup.
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.

Earnings for 2Q2017 have already started.

This is a new section that I’m going to start laying out trades for weekly “expected moves.” The S&P500 has done a nice job of moving pretty much to one end of the overall expected move every week. We can either speculate on that direction ahead of time using OTM spreads, or we can “fade” the price when it hits one of the EM levels.

Viewing the SPY from the current Friday closing price at 244.12, there is a +/- 4.165 EM into this Friday. That is about double that of previous week’s EM.

The EM targets for this Friday’s close is 248.29 to the upside, and 239.96 to the downside.

Last week’s lower EM level was eviscerated on Thursday; this is the first time that we’ve seen the lower EM level NOT being defended this year. The bias might be shifting to more aggressively fading upper EM level tests.

If I see the lower EM level being tested on Friday, I will fade that test with an ATM 18AUG SPY call option. That’s a 30 SPX point move lower from Thursday’s close.

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

I have no positions at this time. I do not have any setups that look really great at this time, and markets likely to consolidate in the short run. Have a look at BIDU; this is a perfect example of a whale trade setup that we traded a couple of times in the spring but were not on board for the big one.

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.

I will likely clear all put options if the price drops 5% from the recent highs at SPX 2400. Not sure that I can expect much more than that given the current climate. The OCT puts have gained a lot in value since entry…

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

SPY AUG17 214 long puts (5/2) – I entered this position for a $1.22 debit.
SPY OCT17 222 long puts (7/24) – I entered this position for an $.85 debit.