Daily Newsletter
August 15, 2019Non-Directional Strategies
Semi-Directional Strategies
Directional Strategies
Bitcoin/Crypto
View Doc's New Book
August Expiration
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Market Commentary
Round one goes to the Bears, who are due after being pummeled and bloodied after the last ten years. But the price is still in our “box” and is holding tough; we should see lots of volatility into month-end as markets are usually a little thinner as many folks try to squeeze in a last vacation prior to the preparation for the fourth quarter.
The TNX continued to drop like a stone today and the lastest fed funds futures show a 94.2% probability of AT LEAST a half-point rate cut into the December meeting. The September meeting shows a 58% chance of a quarter point cut, and a ZERO percent chance of standing pat. Jerome Powell, to his part, has been extremely recalcitrant about tipping off the market about being agreeable to that cut, one of the reasons for the reaction on 31 July. One word from him and we’d have another hundred point upside day.
I did the long SSO trade and am prepared to hold it as inventory should this reversal take longer than normal.
Short-Term Outlook: We’ve been in a massive consolidation pattern since early 2018, or almost another “horizontal bear market” like we had in 2015-2016. All that energy that’s been coiled up has to go somewhere, the policy and odds favor it to go higher, but we’ll know which price levels to respect to warn us if that energy’s going lower instead.
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Offensive Actions
Offensive Actions for the next trading day:
- No additional trades for 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.
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 above-average today with advancers minus decliners showing a mixed value of +60, closing mid-range of the day.
SPX Market Timer : The Intermediate line has fallen above the Lower Reversal Zone and is now bearish again. No leading signals today but close to a bullish cluster.
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 sideways trend, and a short-term downtrend. The Dow is in an intermediate uptrend and short-term downtrend.
VIX: The VIX fell to 21.16, inside the Bollinger bands. The RVX fell to 24.23, and is inside the Bollinger bands.
Fibonacci Retracements: The SPX is showing a deep pullback to the 6.18% fib retracement of the most recent swing, and the price has now bounced back up to about the 50% retracement of the swing down from last week.
Support/Resistance: For the SPX, support is at 2730 and overhead resistance at 3028. The DOW has support at 24800 and overhead resistance at 28399. The RUT has support at 1460 and resistance at 1618.
Fractal Energies: The major timeframe (Monthly) is charged again with a reading of 52. The Weekly chart has an energy reading of 49, just below fully-charged. The Daily chart is showing 49, recovering from exhaustion. Larger timeframe energies are waiting on a very big move, which will start with the smallest timeframes.
Other Technicals: The SPX Stochastics indicator fell to 30, below mid-scale. The RUT Stochastics fell to 23, almost oversold. The SPX MACD histogram fell below the signal line showing a decrease in momentum. The SPX is above the lower Bollinger Band with support at 2820 and resistance at the upper band at 3068. The RUT is at the lower Bollinger Band with its boundaries at 1458 to 1607. The Bollinger Bands were starting to “squeeze” on both the SPX and RUT, implying a forward move which has started.
Position Management – NonDirectional Trades
I have the following positions in play at this time:
- SPY 9SEP 276/277*301/302 Long Iron Condor (8/12) was entered for $.17 debits on both the put and call side. I will look for a 200% return on either side of the trade .
The 9SEP SPY cycle had about an 11.8 point EM when we spec’ed this out, it’s well within the potential of this chart to hit it.
I have no positions in play:
This is not the right character of market for this strategy at this point.
I have no current positions:
Calendar spreads are good for markets in quiet/trending character. If the market reverts back to quiet/trending, then I’ll look to continue this method; if we see the daily chart go into exhaustion I’ll set up a back week calendar.
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:
- SLV Stock – I have 1000 shares of the SLV that was assigned at the $15 level. I closed the SLV 30AUG $16 calls for $.42 debit, and rolled out to the SEP $17.50 calls (8/13) for $.18 credit. This was a debit roll but the price of the SLV rising hedged it off.
- CSCO – I sold the 16AUG $50 puts (6/10) for a $.64 credit. I was not able to close the trade prior to the distribution so will either look for an exit by tomorrow or will accept assignment of CSCO shares and write calls against them on Monday.
Even though this has been a decent pullback, I’d like to stay conservative in the near term and look for something a little deeper before we go back to the well. Today’s selling was another reminder.
Position Management – Directional Trades
Thoughts on current swing strategies:
- 8/21 EMA Crossover – Looking at the next signal;
- RSI(2) CounterTrend – None at this time.
- Daily S&P Advancers – This signal was green on 8/14. I took a long position in the SSO (8/15) for a cost basis of $118.18. I have no stop on the position and will manage it as inventory should the price drop from here. I will sell the position at $130 should the price bounce.
- Swing – None at this time..
The Bear appears to be over. In the near term I expect to see large consolidation swings, which might provide “value” entries for these coins on a dip.
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.”
From Friday’s close at SPY 291.62, there is a +/-5.875 EM into this coming Friday; this almost exactly the same as last week’s 5.87 EM. The EM targets for this Friday’s close are 297.50 to the upside, and 285.75 to the downside.
The lower EM got punched out today and so far is not a fade higher.
I will start playing directional bear spreads once we see upside exhaustion on more than one timeframe.
The scan that I discussed in the 8/4/2018 video is available to download for thinkorswim here: http://tos.mx/OvdVnz I will also be adding a second Larry Connors scan to this section as well; here is the Connors Crash scan: http://tos.mx/BhHuKL
I have the following positions in play at this time:
- MSFT 30AUG 141/142 Debit Call Spread (7/28) entered for a $.50 debit and will look for 50% return.
No more entries in the short run.
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.
I have the following positions at this time:
- SPY 18OCT 269 puts (7/23) were entered for $1.70 debit. I closed these puts down for a $4.29 credit (8/6) as the /ES futures tested/undercut the 200 ma overnight, and rebounded hard. This gave me a profit of $257/contract, or a 151% return on capital.
If we see a decent bounce back up I might consider reloading. I do think that we might see another wave of selling to come yet.