Those who have been receiving Trade Alerts from the Mad Options Trader (MOT) for the past month already know that this is the most profitable short term trading service available on the market today.

During the past four weeks, almost every Trade Alert has made money. I am getting reports of trading gains of 10%-25%. Customers are telling me that they made enough to cover the cost for the next several years.

It truly is a service to die for.

Except, you don?t have to die. You merely need to upgrade your existing Mad Hedge Fund Trader subscription to include the Mad Options Trader add on. The cost is $1,500 a year.

And the day has come when you MUST upgrade in order to avoid an interruption of your MOT service. As of midnight tonight, THE FREE TRIAL IS OVER!

With the Mad Options Trader you will get:

1) Weekly Options (WO) - A Monday morning live webinar that offers options strategies to execute immediately which expire within the week.

2) Primary Live Trade Brief (PLTB) ? A Tuesday morning live webinar that offers options strategies to execute expiring within the front month up to six months out.

2) Options Weapons School (OWS)? Eight separate archived training webinars instructing you how to execute the various strategies the MOT executes. They include:

Session1- OptionsHouse Platform Demo

Session 2- Long/Short Calls/Puts

Session 3- Covered Calls

Session 4- Bullish Vertical Spreads

Session 5- Bearish Vertical Spreads

Session 6- Double Verticals

Session 7- Diagonals

Session 8- Iron Condors

4) Trading Options for Beginners ? A three hour video training course offering you the basics you need to know to start trading options online for the first time.? It was written and recorded by the Mad Hedge Fund Trader, John Thomas.

In order to upgrade your service you?ll have to email Nancy in customer service directly at support@madhedgefundtrader.com . She will happily inform you of the sign up and payment information.

Special Note: In order to use the MOT service, you MUST be able to receive text messages, as the delays created by emails are too great.

Since May 20, 2014, the Mad Options Trader has delivered A STUNNING 218.21% PROFIT, net of fees.

This is during a period when the overall market performance was essentially zero.

That is far better than my own numbers, but then ?Whiz? is much more aggressive and nimble than I am, and using more leverage over a shorter time frame.

Chalk my cautiousness up to my advanced age. I am too old to start over again as a junior trader at Morgan Stanley, as if they would have me back.

Still you now have your choice of winners, Mad Options Trader up +214.71% in 27 months, or Mad Hedge Fund Trader up +201.65% in 69 months.

You?re spoiled for choice. It doesn?t get any better than that in the trading world. Best to buy BOTH!

I take great pleasure in pointing out that Whiz and I provide the only trade mentoring services that publish audited performance on a daily basis.

NONE OF THE OTHERS DO BECAUSE THEY ALL LOSE MONEY!

Believe me, if they HAD decent performance to report, it would be in your inbox every morning. Their silence speaks volumes.

But then, you already knew that.

The MOT service will only be available as a $1,500 upgrade to your existing Mad Hedge Fund Trader subscription.

For risk profiles of some of MOT?s recent trades, please look at the charts below.

The Mad Options Trader service focuses primarily on the weekly US equity options expirations, with the goal of making profits at all times.

The trading will place in the S&P 500 (SPY), major industry ETF?s like the Financials Select Sector (XLF), and large capitalized single names, such as Facebook (FB), JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM), and Apple (AAPL).

It is run by my old friend and fellow comrade in arms, Matt Buckley, of Top Gun Options, one of the best performing trade-mentoring outfits in the industry.

Matt?s performance works out to an eye-popping average 7.92% a month, and annualizes out to an incredible 95.11% a year.

Matt, a native of New Jersey, joined the Navy straight out of college, and rose to become an F-18/A fighter pilot. He attended the famed Top Gun school in Coronado, California. During the second Iraq War, Matt flew 44 combat missions.

Matt left the service in 2006, and immediately entered the hedge fund industry. A rapid series of promotions eventually took him to Peak6 Investments, L.P., a prominent Chicago hedge fund.

There, he soaked up the most crucial elements of technical market timing, fundamental name selections, risk control, and options trade execution.

These are the multiple skills that have enabled Matt to post such a blockbuster performance.

Matt, known to his friends by his old pilot handle of ?Whiz?, is an incredibly valuable addition to the Mad Hedge Fund Trader team. I have appointed him Head of Options Trading.

I have known for some time that fortunes were being made in the weekly options expirations, where stories of tenfold returns are not unheard of.

It is a strategy that is perfectly suited to these highly volatile, uncertain times, with most options positions expiring within four days.

Matt allows us to fill that gap in our product offerings.

Good Luck and Good Trading,
John Thomas
Publisher and CEO of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Diary Entry for Monday, August 29, 2016

Dear Diary,

4:30 PM Sunday-the day before - Thought I?d check my Bloomberg to see how the Asian markets were opening. Yikes!? They?re hammering the yen again. About damn time.

It looks like it is going to be a ?RISK ON? day. Better fasten my seat belt, put on my hard hat, and get ready for a busy day. No rest for the wicked. At least for the first 15 minutes of the trading day.

5:00 PM - Call from one of the top New York hedge funds. What?s going on with the market? Prices for bonds and the major stock indexes look like they have been glued to the screen for the past two months.?

Worse, he is losing money.

I told him that the memo is out. Stocks are going to new all time highs, as I have been predicting all year. Every one is afraid to sell for fear of not being able to get back in.

Look what happened after the Brexit surprise in June. Those who dumped stocks back then are still trying to get back in. Every dip have been a ?BUY? for seven years now, and that won?t change for years to come. This is why 77% of active managers are underperforming their benchmarks this year.

By the way, had he read my new book, ?Stock to Buy for the Coming Roaring Twenties?? It outlines why many of the major sectors are moving TODAY.

I said he owed me a nice dinner at Masa at Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle because he?s made so much money off me this year.?

I don?t care if it costs $500 a person. High end Japanese sake is cheaper than the best Bordeaux, because Chinese billionaires have bid up the prices so much. Just get an algorithm to make a reservation, as it is now almost impossible for a human to get one.

?Then he told me the real reason for his call. He knew I grew up near Hollywood, had dated several movie stars, and even appeared in a movie as an extra (Francis Ford Coppola?s Apocalypse Now).? What did I think of The Revenant, which his firm had put up the money to make? Is the film worth seeing?

I said only for the guys. I saw the film on the day it came out to gain insights on what my ancestors went through.

Even on a good day, 1823 was disgusting, as it starts out with mountain men butchering animals. Then 20 men are massacred by Indians in the first five minutes. It goes downhill from there.

The black and white hues of the Rocky Mountains in winter are stunning. It is a must see for film junkies. And Leonardo finally learned how to act.

9:00 PM - Call from a friend at the People?s Bank of China in Beijing.

Who is going to win your presidential election? If Donald Trump wins, its sounds like he will go to war with China immediately. Should we be worried?

I told him to put those concerns out of his mind. Hillary Clinton will win by a landslide. She is already ahead by double digits in several battle ground states. Many traditional red states, like Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, are turning purple.

More importantly, the London bookies are giving her ten to one odds. The markets have sensed this, and are refusing to sell off.

Markets love a pro-globalization candidate, as this has been buttering their bread for the past 70 years. China does too, which has seen the Shanghai Index ($SSEC) take off like a rocket since May. Mexico (EWW) too.

Then he asked, did I, by any chance, recommend the film, The Bridge of Spies, with Tom Hanks? Everyone in the Politbureau was seeing it.

?Absolutely,? I answered. I loved it. It was a very personal film for me as I spent a few years in West Berlin during the 1960?s. They absolutely nailed the atmosphere of the divided city during the period.

The movie covers the negotiations over the return of Francis Gary Powers, the American U-2 pilot shot down over Russia in 1960.

When I was on a NASA job testing Russia?s front line fighter jets in 1999, I was taken to a nearby museum on my day off. There was the wreckage of the unlucky U-2, which the Russians considered a national treasure.

I spotted a black nameplate with ?Lockheed? etched upon it and I asked if I could take it home as a souvenir.

?No, No, No, No,? I was waved off.

As depicted in the film, I was arrested by the Volkspolizei attempting to smuggle German newspapers into the East and held in jail overnight. It was a very grim time.

There is also a nice family oriented back story, so it is safe to take the wife.

Berlin Just Isn?t the Same Anymore

9:30 PM - Hit the rack and try to catch some shuteye before the next call.

2:00 AM - One of my former staff members at Morgan Stanley calls me from a Private Bank in Geneva to tell me that the Euro (FXE) is rallying. Is it time to sell?

After all the hawkish Fed talk on Friday, the US will certainly become the first developed country to raise interest rates in a decade.

As interest rate differentials are far and away the biggest drivers of the foreign exchange markets, that means the dollar will remain strong and the Euro weak for the foreseeable future.

Then he moved on to the real purpose of his call. He was planning to take his wife out this weekend. Should they go to see The Big Short with Steve Carell, based on the book written by my friend, Michael Lewis.

I said only if she didn?t speak English. The film accurately depicts traders and hedge fund managers using f*** every other word in the conversations.

Beyond that, I liked it. It accurately depicts how extreme the leverage in the financial crisis was before the crash.

The early players on the short side took endless abuse from their investors, a problem I know well. Of course, the big Wall Street banks tried to squeeze them out of their positions with fake margin calls. And yes, strippers really did own five houses, all mortgaged to the hilt.

I really like how the flic showed the best hedge fund mangers not trusting any published research. They had to fly down to Florida to find out for themselves that prime credits, supposedly secured by owner occupied homes, were really sublet to biker gangs.

I slammed the phone back on the hook and went back to sleep.

?

 

6:00 AM - My website administrator called me in a panic. My online store is down. A hack at
tack prompted PayPal to suspend my account. Since I am one of their largest customers, I call my account rep and get it reopened.

The North Koreans should know better than to try to take down my site. One call to Beijing and I could have them all shot. Go hack Sony instead. I hear it?s a lot easier.

7:00 AM - Another call from my website administrator. The website is down. My new service, the ?Mad Options Trader,? brought a traffic spike that is causing the servers to melt. I am burning up the Internet.

Is it something I said?

10:00 AM - I get a call from a leading money manager in London?s Mayfair district. Europe is closing. With gold down $55 this month, is it time to buy?

I said ?Not yet.? Look at the long term charts, and it is clear that the barbarous metal is attempting to put in a short term bottom.

World gold production fell for the first time in Q4, 2015 and will continue for the next four years by as much as 20%. After falling for five years, the commodity is ?sold out.?

Russia is buying more to dodge the sanctions imposed by the US government. So is the Chinese central bank, which is attempting to diversify away from dollar assets.

The next big bull market for the yellow metal won?t begin until the 2020?s, when inflation returns for real. Then it should run to $3,000-$5,000. Not until then will gold bugs be able to afford new suits.

In the meantime, the Fed will continue to torture gold bulls until their September 20-21 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting where they will do absolutely nothing. Then it is off to the races again.

And go have a pint of bitter for me at the Pig & Whistle next door, will you. Tell the owner, Nigel, to put it on my running tab. He owes me from my last Manchester United win.

He then raved about last summer?s Armageddon film, Mad Max: Fury Road, a sequel to the old Mel Gibson franchise. Did I see it?

I did, and have been regretting it ever since. It is two hours of non-stop pointless violence. I almost walked out.

I hate to think that this is the direction in which Hollywood is moving. But foreigners love these things. Explosions are easier to understand than the English language.

1:15 PM - My friend, JR, a senior executive at an oil major, calls from Houston. What the hell was going on with the price of oil (USO)? Only two years ago, it was at $107, then he blinked, and it was $26.

I said don?t worry. Oil is coming back, driven by Chinese demand. It isn?t going to zero, or even the $20 handle. But we may never see $100 again either.

Investors are avoiding the sector like the plague until they find out who will be driven into bankruptcy by the sudden price collapse, and who will be left standing.

The junk bond market (HYG) is suggesting that more than half of all energy issuers are going to default.

Eventually, the strong end up swallowing the weak (think Exxon (XOM)). However, major institutions have already started picking up shares in the companies with the best balance sheets, buying quality at a once in a generation discount.

Activists, like Carl Icahn, and the value players, such as Warren Buffet, are already involved.

In the meantime, buy some solar plays, like First Solar (FSLR). Sales are soaring, and costs are collapsing, setting up a ten bagger for the whole industry.

A five-year extension of the 30% alternative investment tax credit means government support stretches for as far as the eye can see.

He said thanks, and next time I was in town he would buy me a 24-ounce chicken fried steak at Billy Bob?s that spilled over both sides of the plate (2,500 calories). I can?t wait. I?ll let my doctor have the heart attack.

He then told me why he really called. He knew I was a science buff. His buddies down on the ranch had just seen The Martian and liked it. Should he bother?

I loved the film, and thought it was incredibly realistic. Somebody had done some serious research. It?s a truly inspirational film, even for those with no interest in space exploration. It also takes one through the problem solving process that every scientist employs.

My 12-year-old daughter was so motivated that she is building a serious rocket for this year?s 6^th grade science fair.

Only last weekend, I almost blew myself up test firing one of her rocket engines, which uses powdered sugar and Potassium nitrate for fuel. It is amazing what kind of high explosive ingredients you can buy on Amazon these days.

Oh, and the film is really funny.

 

2:00 PM - Still haven?t started on the letter yet. I have been answering dozens of email requests for information about the Trade Alert Service. This always happens whenever I have a hot performance streak on. The watchers want to become players. With my 69 month return approaching 205%, new subscribers are pouring in.

4:45 PM - Well, I got the letter done, but I?m too late. The web editor has gone to the DMV to register his new Prius, and the backup has gone to the yoga studio.

5:00 PM - I put on a 60-pound pack and my heavy climbing boots and head out the back door on a ten-mile hike up Berkeley?s Grizzly Peak. Gotta stay boot camp ready!

You never know when Uncle Sam is going to come calling again. Who cares if I?m 64? I can still hit a quarter on a tree at 50 yards with my Winchester Model 98 30-30.

I listen to an audio book on my iPhone 6, the seven volume Truman, by David McCullough about our 33rd president.

It is an amazing story.

Considered by most to be an average man at best, he dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, negotiated with Stalin at Potsdam, created the CIA and the Defense Department, desegregated the Army, ordered the Berlin airlift, went forward with the Hydrogen bomb project, stared down a megalomaniac Senator McCarthy (Donald Trump?) and fought the Korean war to a draw.

By the time I hit the trail, a layer of thick fog already blankets the city below me.

9:00 PM - Back to my screens. The Euro has broken $1.10 again. Where was I last week? Asleep? Still, I am going to avoid the Euro for now. It has had such a sharp move down over the past two year, that the risk of a sudden, rip your face off,short covering rally is ever present.

I'd rather keep some dry powder and buy it a few cents lower. At this point, The World is short the Euro. Maybe they read my letter?

10:00 PM - Time to call it a night and break out a bottle of Duckhorn merlot. Jeese Louise, it seems people only wanted to talk about movies today. Has the market really become that hard to trade?

The phone rings. Does anybody want my job?

Gunslinger for Hire

August has been our biggest positive month in a year for subscribers to the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader, gaining more than 7%. During September, 2015, I brought in a ballistic 11.99% for investors.

My 69 month performance hit 205% at the Friday close, a new all time high.

More on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, the new Fed policy has suddenly become crystal clear.

At the Jackson Hole confab Chairwoman Janet Yellen said that ?The case for a rate hike has strengthened,? but then laid out a list of qualifications and conditions as long as her very short arm.

Stocks rocketed.

An hour latter, vice chairman Stanley Fischer then opined that there might not only be one rate hike this year, BUT TWO.

Stocks tanked.

So here is the new Fed policy in a nutshell: Evolve from changing their mind from every day to EVERY HOUR!

Think of it as the Twitter version of a central bank.

If those who built the Internet 30 years ago had only known, they would have deliberately short-circuited their IBM mainframes.

The net net of all of this is that the intraday range for the (SPY) came in at 2.6 points, the first time it has exceeded 1% in 1 ? months.

I bobbed and weaved as is demanded by the markets these days. I used the $15 point rally in the (SPX) to buy the Volatility Index (VIX) through the (VXX). The (VIX) then soared by some 20% in the next 60 minutes.

It was one of the most rapid profits I have booked in my entire half century long career.

I then used the $15 dip that followed to take profits on my existing short position in the (SPY).

All in all it was a pretty good day, except that I learned the Oakland Raiders, whose stadium I can see from my office, might move to Las Vegas. It?s something about the neighborhood.

Most individual traders have a horrendous experience trading the (VIX). Time decay eats them alive.

However, by going with a call spread structure you nearly neutralize this problem. Suddenly, time decay and contango become your friends.

What my former Berkeley economics professor has done is set the stage for another three weeks of tedious, boring, sideways market action into the Fed?s September 20-21 Open Market Committee Meeting to see if she actually does it.

Worst case, the (VIX) continues to bounce around this level. Best case, it gently rises into the meeting. Either one is a ?win? for this (VXX) position.

With Janet?s Jackson Hole speech, the preeminent market-moving event of the month is now behind us.

The next one will be the August Nonfarm Payroll released on Friday, September 1, and the big Fed interest rate decision on September 20-21.

It all sets up a nice yawn going into the September 2-5 Labor Day weekend. There should be no major breakouts, or breakdowns.

On Monday, August 29 at 10:30 AM EST, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey should see some gains.

Tuesday, August 30 will be a big day. That?s when we receive an update on the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Extreme home shortages is the key, high growth markets should keep the numbers rising.

On Wednesday, August 31 at 10:00 AM we see Pending Home Sales, which are moving from strength to strength. We also get no less than three Fed speakers that day, further adding to our monetary confusion.

On Thursday, September 1 at 8:30 AM EST the Weekly Jobless Claims should confirm that employment remains at four decade highs. We will also get the PMI Manufacturing Index at 9:45.

Friday, September 2 should be a snore, with nothing major happening ahead of a three day weekend heralding the end of summer.

We wind up with the Baker Hughes Rig Count on Friday at 1:00 PM EST. Worryingly, the trend has been up for the past two months, driving oil prices lower.

More on that tomorrow.

Learning How to Dance the Contango