(BAC) Archives - Page 18 of 19 - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

A Special Note on Exercised Bank of America Options

This morning, Bank of America paid out a five cent quarterly dividend, which works out to an annualized yield of 1.18% and the shares will open this morning trading ex.

For those of you who have wisely followed my Trade Alert to buy the Bank of America (BAC) December, 2014 $15-$16 vertical bull call spread, good for you. As of last night, you were showing a profit of 0.88% on the position.

However, there is a chance that the short side of the trade, the December, 2014 $16 calls were exercised against you before the opening this morning. If that is the case, you would have been informed by your broker by email and immediate action is required on your part to avoid unnecessary risk.

The options traded on US exchanges and referred to in my Trade Alerts are American style, meaning that they can be exercised at any time by the owner. This is in contrast to European style options, which can only be exercised on the expiration day.
The vertical option spreads that I have been recommending for the past year are composed of a deep in-the-money long strike price plus a short portion at a nearer money strike price.

When stocks have high dividends, there is a chance that the near money option you are short, the December, 2014 $16 calls, gets exercised against you by the owner.

This requires you to deliver the stock equivalent of the option you are short, plus any quarterly dividends that are due. Don?t worry, because your long position perfectly hedges you against any principal risk in this situation.

However, you will be liable for the five-cent dividend, which works out to $5 for every call option you are short. If you executed the full 110 contracts recommended in my Trade Alert that works out to $550 (100 shares per option X $.05 dividend X 110 contracts).
You then need to email or call your broker back immediately informing him that you want to exercise your remaining long option position to meet your assigned short position.

This should completely close out your position and leave you with about half your remaining profit. This is not an automatic process and requires action on your part!

It also means that you get your margin back, plus your profit, the next day, and don?t have to run the position another two weeks into expiration. That means you are free to use the money to put on new trades.
Assignments are made on a random basis by an exchange computer, and can happen any day. You may get exercised, or you may not. Exercise means the owner of the option that you are short completely loses the entire premium on his call.

Dividends have to be pretty high to make such a move economic, usually at least over 3% on an annual rate. But these days, markets are so efficient that traders, or their machines, will exercise options for a single penny profit.

In fact, there are now some dedicated hedge funds and independent individual options traders that specialize in buying up calls the day before and ex dividend day to capture a tiny 29 basis point gross overnight profit. That is before execution expenses.

It hardly seems worth it to me, but I guess what they lack in size, they make up in volume. Hey, you do what you can do to earn a living.
Surprise assignments create a risk for option spread owners in a couple of ways. If you don?t check your email every day, you might not be aware that you have been assigned.

Alternatively, such emails sometimes get lost, or hung up in local servers or spam filters, which occasionally happens to readers of my own letter.

Then, you are left with the long side deep out-of-the-money call without on offsetting short position. You are now unhedged. This means you will have a substantially higher margin requirement, and is the equivalent of going outright long the stock in large size.

Suddenly, you are playing a totally different game, and not one I recommended. If the stock rises, then you could be in for a windfall profit. But if it falls, you could take a big hit. Guess which way the stock usually goes.

Better to completely avoid this situation at all cost and not take the chance. You are probably not set up to do this type of trading.
If you don?t have the cash in your account to cover this, you could get a margin call. If you ignore this call as well, your broker will close out your position at market without your permission.

It could produce some disconcerting communications from your broker. They generally hate issuing margin calls, and could well close your account if it is too small to bother with, as they create regulatory issues.
In order to get belt and braces coverage on this issue, it is best to call your broker and find out exactly what are their assignment policies and procedures. Believe it or not, some are still in the Stone Age, and have yet to automate the assignment process or give notice by email.

An ounce of prevention could be worth a pound of cure here. You can?t believe how irresponsible some of these people can be. The phone calls are free.
Consider all this a cost of doing business, or a frictional execution cost. In-the-money options are still a great strategy. But you should be aware of all the ins and outs to get the most benefit.

Good Luck and Good Trading
John Thomas

The Yearend Melt Up Has Started!

Diary, Newsletter, Research

Any doubts that my bullish call on global risk markets would play out as promised were blown away on Friday.

That was when the central banks of China and Europe delivered a surprise, one two punch of monetary stimulus for their own troubled economies. The quantitative easing baton has successful been passed from America?s Federal Reserve to central bankers abroad.

The net net for you and I is that stocks and the dollar will continue to appreciate.

Specifically, China came out of the blue with a 0.4% interest rate cut, thus stimulating the world?s largest emerging market.

Then the European Central Bank?s president, Mario Draghi, said he would take whatever steps necessary to return the continent to a 2% inflation rate, up from today?s 0.40%. Unbelievably, Spanish ten-year bond yield fell below 2% in a heartbeat and German ten year funds pierced 0.80%.

For good measure, the Japanese central bank then chimed in, boosting the country?s money supply growth by 33% as promised earlier. Saying is one thing, but doing it is much better, especially when it carries a radical tinge.

The measures make my 2,100 target for the S&P 500 by the end of December a pretty safe bet. Look for a tedious, prolonged sideways grind, followed by rapid headline driven pop. Easy entry points will be few.

It really is one of those ?Close your eyes and buy? type of markets. I doubt we get pullback of less than 3% in the major indexes this year. Volatility will remain muted. All the black swans of landed.

It gets better.

This kind of market action could continue for another three years. After the ?Great Recession?, we are now witnessing the ?Great Recovery?. That means returning to a 3% or better GDP growth rate and 10% annual corporate earnings increases.

Add in 2% a year in dividend yields, and you get a (SPY) that rises by 10% a year. Look at the 100-year average gain for stocks and it comes in remarkably close to this number. Factor in an earnings multiple increase from the current 16, and they will rise faster.

This is all Goldilocks on steroids. Interest rates, the cost of labor, energy, and commodity price inputs stay low, earnings rise, and everybody else in the world sends their money here because it is the best bet going.

I all works for me, and I hope, you too!

It All Works for Me!

The Correction is Over

Diary, Newsletter, Research

5%. A lousy 5%.

That?s all we managed to clock in the latest correction in the greatest bull market of all time.

It?s not the 6% hickey we had to endure in February, nor as modest as the 4% setback in August. Call it a middling type correction, a kind of correction light. The buyers do still have itchy trigger fingers.

All it took to bring it to an end was a September nonfarm payroll that blew the socks off the forecasts of most analysts, coming in at a positively steroidal 248,000. It?s like they?re finally hiring again.

That is, unless you just graduated from college with a degree in English, Sociology, or Political Science, and are lugging $100,000 in student loans. Coders everywhere are writing their own tickets.

The headline unemployment rate plunged from 6.1% to 5.9%, an eight year low, and the broader U-6 figure is closing in on 10%.

Even more impressive were the back month upward revisions, which were enormous. July was boosted from 212,000 to 243,000, and August was goosed from 142,000 to 180,000.

The hiring was across the board, with professional & business services, retail, health services, and even construction leading the way.

What all of this means is that the freshly updated 4.4% Q2 GDP growth rate isn?t some cockamamie government concoction, but is, in fact real.

More amazing is that we are seeing these blistering numbers against a background of non-existent inflation, even deflation, if the August -0.1% Consumer Price Index is to be believed.

That gives my friend, Federal Reserve governor Janet Yellen, a blank check to keep interest rates lower for longer than anyone believes possible.

Without the inflation bogeyman, you might as well keep rates at zero forever. Personally, I am in the 2016 camp before we start to see interest rate rises.

All this means it is back to the races for the stock market, with an (SPX) bull?s-eye of 2050-2100 now in the cards. However, we?re not going there in a straight line.

I expect more of a sideways wedge formation developing first over the coming month where we see successive higher lows and lower highs. When we reach the apex of the triangle it will be bingo!, and a blast off to new all time highs.

Of course, you can?t go to the races without a program. So make your choices carefully, as the kind of corrections of the type we have just seen often herald sudden sector rotations.

I think financials are the place to be, especially if my prediction that interest rates are bottoming proves correct. That?s why I knocked out a Trade Alert to buy Bank of America (BAC) last week (click here for the editor?s cut). Conveniently, it jumped 5% the next day. I have a pleasant habit of doing that with (BAC).

I am not dishing out a positive view on risk assets because I live in LaLa Land (I only grew up there), am a perma bull, or like drowning myself in the punch bowel (at least not since college). For me, it?s all about the numbers.

Here?s a list of figures to show, not that shares are cheap or how expensive shares are, but how moderately priced they are:

1) With a price earnings multiple of 17X, we are smack in the middle of a 10-25X historic range.

2) The dividend yield for stocks is at 1.9%, compared to only 1.1% at the 2007 top.

3) Cash reserves per S&P 500 share are a rich $443, compared to only $353 seven years ago.

4) Corporate debt to assets is a mere 23% versus 32% 2007.

I could go on and on, but you see my point. This bull market has years to go before it even flirts with becoming truly expensive, unless you own Tesla (TSLA), according to Mr. Elon Musk.

I think the way to trade this market is to reserve the daily newspapers only for lining the bottom of a birdcage, and to hit the mute button on your TV.

That way you won?t hear about the Ebola Virus, ISIL, the Midterm Elections, the war in the Ukraine, and all the other bogus reasons to sell stocks we are bombarded with daily.

Did I mention that the $20 per barrel plunge in the price of oil we have just seen amounts to one of the largest tax cuts in history for the economy?

See, I always write more interesting economic pieces while watching Men in Black. I think the 6,800-foot altitude here at Lake Tahoe helps too.

So Inspiring!

Mad Hedge Fund Trader Tops 30% Gain in 2014

Diary, Free Research, Newsletter

It looks we are going to have to start watching the appalling Zombie shows on TV and in the movies. That is so we can gain tips on how to survive the coming Apocalypse that will unfold when the Ebola virus escapes Texas and spreads nationally.

I?m not worried. I?m actually pretty good with a bow and arrow.

Thank you United Airlines!

I happy to report that the total return for my followers so far in 2014 has topped 35%, compared to a pitiful 1% gain for the Dow Average during the same period.

In September, my paid Trade Alert followers have posted a blockbuster 5.01% in gains. This is on the heels of a red-hot August, when readers took in a blistering 5.86% profit.

The nearly four year return is now at an amazing 157.8%, compared to a far more modest increase for the Dow Average during the same period of only 37%.

That brings my averaged annualized return up to 39.7%. Not bad in this zero interest rate world. It appears better to reach for capital gains than the paltry yields out there.

This has been the profit since my groundbreaking trade mentoring service was first launched in 2010. Thousands of followers now earn a full time living solely from my Trade Alerts, a development of which I am immensely proud.

It has been pedal to the metal on the short side for me since the Alibaba IPO debuted on September 19. I have seen this time and again over four decades of trading.

Wall Street gets so greedy, and takes out so much money for itself, there is nothing left for the rest of us poor traders and investors. They literally kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Share prices have nowhere left to go but downward.

Add to that Apple?s iPhone 6 launch on September 8 and the market had nothing left to look for. The end result has been the worst trading conditions in two years. However, my double short positions in the S&P 500 (SPY) and the Russell 2000 (IWM) provided the lifeboat I needed.

The one long stock position I did have, in Tesla (TSLA), is profitable, thanks to a constant drip, drip of leaks about the imminent release of the Model X SUV. The Internet is also burgeoning with rumors concerning details about the $40,000 next generation Tesla 3, which will enable the company to take over the world, at least the automotive part.

Finally, after spending two months touring dreary economic prospects on the Continent, I doubled up my short positions in the Euro (FXE), (EUO).

Those positions came home big time when the European Central Bank adopted my view and implanted an aggressive program of quantitative easing and interest rate cuts. Hint: we are now only one week into five more years of Euro QE!

The only position I have currently bedeviling me is a premature short in the Treasury bond market in the form of the ProShares Ultra Short 20+ Treasury ETF (TBT). Still, I only have a 40 basis point hickey there.

Against seven remaining profitable positions, I?ll take that all day long. And I plan to double up on the (TBT) when the timing is ripe.

Quite a few followers were able to move fast enough to cash in on the move. To read the plaudits yourself, please go to my testimonials page by clicking here. They are all real, and new ones come in almost every day.

Watch this space, because the crack team at Mad Hedge Fund Trader has more new products and services cooking in the oven. You?ll hear about them as soon as they are out of beta testing.

The coming year promises to deliver a harvest of new trading opportunities. The big driver will be a global synchronized recovery that promises to drive markets into the stratosphere by the end of 2014.

Global Trading Dispatch, my highly innovative and successful trade-mentoring program, earned a net return for readers of 40.17% in 2011, 14.87% in 2012, and 67.45% in 2013.

Our flagship product,?Mad Hedge Fund Trader PRO, costs $4,500 a year. ?It includes?Global Trading Dispatch?(my trade alert service and daily newsletter). You get a real-time trading portfolio, an enormous research database, and live biweekly strategy webinars. You also get Jim Parker?s?Mad Day Trader?service and?The Opening Bell with Jim Parker.

To subscribe, please go to my website at?www.madhedgefundtrader.com, click on ?Memberships? located on the second tier of tabs.

Waiting for a High Level Contact

Holder Retirement Could Send Bank of America Flying

Diary, Newsletter, Research

Watching the market melt down today, I have been hurriedly compiling a shopping list of stocks to buy, and writing the Trade Alerts in advance for readers to execute.

If I am right about interest rates remaining flat or rising for the rest of the year, then financials have to be at the absolute top of such a list.

Bank of America (BAC) certainly was the chief whipping boy of the financial crisis. Since 2008, it has paid out more than $50 billion in fines and lawsuit settlements for every transgression under the sun.

After getting a bail out from the US Treasury, it was forced to cut its dividend payment to a token one cent. Do any Google search on the company and you are inundated with a flood of bad news.

All that is now ancient history. The entire banking industry is now moving into the sweet spot in the economic cycle. This is because rising interest rates mean that they will be able to charge more for loans, while their cost of funds (deposits and equity) remains low. These rising spreads fall straight to the bottom line.

Now with the bank?s Torturer-in-Chief, US Attorney General Eric Holder, announcing his retirement, the way is clear for better days ahead.

With the 30-year bull market in bonds now at an end, substantially higher rates in the near future are now included in virtually every economic forecast out there. Since the beginning of 2014 the ten-year Treasury yield has collapsed from 3.05% to as low as 2.32% at he end of August, pummeling bank shares.

What happens next? They go from 2.32% back up to 3.05%, possibly by yearend, then a lot more. Bank shares will ride on the back of this bull.

The jungle telegraph is now ringing with the prospect of a dividend hike by the company, currently at a lowly four cents. We may get the good news as soon as the next reporting period on October 14. The implications of such a move are broad.

If it pulls this off, it is only because of renewed confidence by the markets in the improved financial condition of the company. After several capital raises and the liquidation of the wreckage of the 2008 crash, US banks are now the healthiest in history, with balance sheets of bedrock stability.

Ahem, they are also too big to fail, again.

To get the dividend yield on the shares up to industry standard of 2.5%, the company really needs to raise its dividend to 42 cents. It certainly has the cash flow to do this. In 2013, (BAC) reported net income of $11.4 billion, more than four times to amount needed to cover such a payout.

Needless to say, this is all great news for the share price. The prospective return of increasing amounts of capital to shareholders should suck in new and wider classes of shareholders. It won?t be just about hedge fund punters anymore. Respectable, large and long term holding institutions will be in there as well.

Take a look at the charts below, and it is clear that such a move is underway. (BAC) broke out from the end of a classic triangle formation, which traditionally resolves itself to the upside. New post crash highs beckon.

You can find more dry powder in the chart for the Financials Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF), which clearly rejected a complete breakdown at long-term trend support in early February.

Finally, take a gander at the chart for the S&P 500. New life from the financials will be the adrenaline shot this market needs to break it out of its current low volume sideways consolidation, taking it to new highs as well.

Finally, for those who are concerned that the bull market was killed off by last week?s massive Alibaba IPO (BABA), take a look at he chart below provided by my friends at Business Insider. Certainly, the collapse of the iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) has put the fear of God into traders.

The chart tracks long-lived bull markets in terms of their price earnings multiples. It shows that we have only reached half the length of the great 1987-2000 bull market. The implication is that this bull could live another five or more years.

This bull is not dead, it is just resting.

So far, the S&P 500 has declined by a feeble 2.8% off the $202 top. If we break the 50-day moving average here, we could make it down to the 200-day moving average at $1,880, a more substantial 7% pullback. Take that as a gift, and load the boat for the year-end rally.

I?ll send out the Trade Alert to buy (BAC) when I think the timing is ripe.

(XLF) Weekly

(XLF) Daily

Time to Visit the ATM Again

The Bull is Not Dead, It is Resting

The Case for Buying Financials

Newsletter, Research

Regular readers of this letter are probably weary of me harping away about the financials as a great place to put your money for the rest of 2014.

Never mind that these names have all jumped 10% in the past month. But this is not an ?I told you so? story. This is more of a ?But wait, there?s more,? story.

The basis for my call is quite simple. I believe that bond prices are peaking, and yields bottoming. As mining the yield curve is a major source of bank profits, borrowing short term and lending long term, a rise in interest rates falls straight to the bottom line. Thus, buying banks is an indirect way of selling short the bond market.

However, there are many more reasons to overweight this long neglected sector. In a market that has gone virtually straight up for the past three years, many large institutions are going to be forced to roll money out of leaders, like my favored technology, energy and health care, into laggards, such as the financials.

Expect this trend to accelerate as we head into yearend institutional book closing, which start as early as October 30.

Look at other important drivers of bank profits, and you?ll find them at multi decade lows.

Trading and investment banking volumes are off 30%-40% from mean historic levels. We options traders already know this all too well, as turnover has cratered and spreads widened due to investor lack of interest.

This is especially true of put options, which are now being given away virtually for free. Volatility that seems to permanently live at the $12 handle is another such indicator of this disinterest.

This will not last. If my ?Golden Age? scenario plays out in the 2020?s (click here for ?Get Ready for the Coming Golden Age?), trading and investment banking volumes will not only double to return to the norms, they will skyrocket tenfold from today?s tedious, moribund levels.

Indeed, I have recently discovered an entire subculture of financial oriented private equity firms currently amassing portfolios that are betting on precisely such an outcome. Think of big, smart, long-term money. The big bets on the coming decade are being made now.

There is another ripple in the case for banks. After passage of the Financial Stability Act of 2010, otherwise known as ?Dodd Frank?, banks became target numero uno of the federal government. The public?s demand for accountability for the 2008-09 crash knew no bounds.

As a result, the fines and settlements with the big banks, most of which were rescued from bankruptcy by the government, now well exceed $100 billion. Four years into the enforcement onslaught, the Feds are running out of scandals to prosecute. There is nothing left for the banks to plead guilty to.

This means that a major portion of the banks? costs are about to disappear, not only new massive fines, but hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and diverted management time as well. More money drops to the bottom line.

Dramatically rising income? Substantially falling costs? Sounds like ?Ka-ching? to me, and a ?BUY? for the bank stocks.

The bottom line is that bank stock could double from here in coming years. It is not hard to pick names. Bank of America (BAC) took the big hit on fines and settlements, and therefore should enjoy the largest bounce.

So should Citigroup (C), which came the closest to vaporizing. And for good measure, I?ll throw in American Express (AXP) as a play on the burgeoning credit card spending by the growing class of well to do.

Barney Frank Had a Few Things to Say

The Market Leadership Change Has Begun

Newsletter

Owners of technology (XLK) and health care stocks (XLV) have certainly had a great year.

Except for the round of profit taking that did a quick hit and run in January, these two groups have been moving from strength to strength, punching through to multiyear highs.

That is, until last week.

Starting with the Ukraine induced plunge a week ago, these two leadership groups have started moving in a rather arthritic fashion, substantially underperforming the S&P 500 (SPY). It is all unfamiliar territory for these golden boys.

You also see this in the broader indexes, with NASDAQ starting to trail the main market for the first time in ages. This is why Mad Day Trader Jim Parker shot out Alerts to buy protective puts in the (QQQ) with a one week view.

Is the bull market over? Should you sell everything and immediately go into cash? Is it time to go hide under your bed?

I don?t think so.

All we are seeing is a long awaited leadership change in the market. Tech and health care will throttle back from their torrid pace. It doesn?t mean that these sectors are now to be given up for dead. You should wallpaper your spare bathroom with high tech share certificates (as I once did with my Japanese equity warrants after their crash). They just need a rest. This is why I skipped Apple (AAPL) in my latest round of ?RISK ON? Trade Alerts.

In the meantime, financial stocks (XLF) have moved to the fore to grab the baton after a two-month rest of their own. This is why I sent you Trade Alerts last week to buy Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs (GS), and General Motors (GM).

A shift like this makes all the sense in the world. Bonds (TLT) were great performers in 2014 until a week ago, when they double topped on the charts at $109. That was the logic behind sending you my Trade Alert to sell short bonds.

When bonds fall, interest rates rise, some 20 basis points on the ten year Treasury bond in a mere five days. Who does well when rates rise? Banks, which can now charge more for their loans while the cost of funds, the deposit rates you earn, are still close to zero. That widens bank profit margins, increasing profits. The technical term for this, which you will hear about on TV, is the ?steepening of the yield curve.? Bottom line: buy bank stocks.

They could rise a lot. If Treasury yields back all the way up to 3.05% and the (TLT) revisits its $101 low, the bank shares could go on a real tear. Jim Parker?s medium term target for (BAC) is $23, up a robust 30% from here.

I already have written up a Trade Alert to pick up another bank, JP Morgan (JPM). But I will sit on it until I can catch a dip in the share price, even a piddling one.

And what about the autos? The message shouted out as loud and clear by the red-hot February nonfarm payroll print of 175,000 is that the economy is stronger than anyone thinks. This is an out there view, which I have been arguing vociferously since the summer.

The ferocious winter will no doubt cost retailers some clothing sales. No one is looking to buy a new winter coat in March. Year on year, Chicago has gone from six inches to an astounding seven feet of snow, and I?m told that everyone there is in an unspeakably foul mood, throwing empty bear cans at the TV set when the weather man appears.

This is not so for the auto industry. If buyers couldn?t find their local dealers under the snow, they will return during fairer climes with a check to take advantage of record low interest rates. At the end of the day, buying a car on dealer credit, or a lease, is a nice way to indirectly short the bond market, which we all know, is now in a new 30-year bear market.

Despite the endless blizzards that kept much of the east buried this year, the auto sales figures have held up surprisingly well. The industry is now running at a 15.7 million unit per year annualized rate, up from the 9 million unit trough seen in 2009.

It all sets up a nice upside surprise in carmaker profits after the spring thaw. You want to go out and purchase the entire sector, including General Motors (GM), Ford (F), and all of the subsidiary parts suppliers.

But Which One is On Sale?

Dividend Hike Could Send Bank of America Flying

Newsletter

Bank of America (BAC) certainly was the chief whipping boy of the financial crisis. Since 2008, it has paid out more than $50 billion in fines and lawsuit settlements for every transgression under the sun.

After getting a bail out from the US Treasury, it was forced to cut its dividend payment to a token one cent. Do any Google search on the company and you are inundated with a flood of bad news.

All that is now ancient history. The entire banking industry is now moving into the sweet spot in the economic cycle. This is because rising interest rates mean that they will be able to charge more for leans, while their cost of funds (deposits and equity) remains low. This rising spread falls straight to the bottom line.

With the 30 year bull market in bonds now at an end, substantially higher rates in the near future are now included in virtually every economic forecast out there. Since the beginning of 2014 the ten-year Treasury yield has rocketed from 3.05% to as high as 2.58%, pummeling bank shares.

What happens next? They go from 2.58% back up to 3.05%, then a lot more. Bank shares will ride on the back of this bull.

The jungle telegraph is now ringing with the prospect of a dividend hike by the company, from a penny to five cents. The implications of such a move are broad.

For a start, the company would have to get the permission of the Federal Reserve to do so. If it pulls this off, it is only because of renewed confidence by the government in the improved financial condition of the country. After several capital raises and the liquidation of the wreckage of the 2008 crash, US banks are now the healthiest in history, with balance sheets of bedrock stability.

If (BAC) can get this first dividend hike through, more will follow. To get the dividend yield on the shares up to industry standard of 2.5%, the company really needs to raise its dividend to 40 cents. If certainly has the cash flow to do this. In 2013, (BAC) reported net income of $11.4 billion, more than four times to amount needed to cover such a payout.

Needless to say, this is all great news for the share price. The prospective return of increasing amounts of capital to shareholders should suck in new and wider classes of shareholders. It won?t be just about hedge fund punters anymore.

Take a look at the charts below, and it is clear that such a move is setting up. (BAC) is reaching the end of a classic triangle formation, which traditionally resolves itself to the upside. You can find more dry powder in the chart for the Financials Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF), which clearly rejected a complete breakdown at long term trend support in early February.

Finally, take a gander at the chart for the S&P 500. New life from the financials will be the adrenaline shot this market needs to break it out of its current low volume sideways consolidation, taking it to new highs.

This is why I popped out the trade alert to buy the (BAC) March $15-$16 call spread on Monday. Thanks to the denial of service attack on our email provider, AWeber Communications, it has taken me until now to get this update out.

It is all another reason to sign up for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader?s text alert service, which readers around the world received within an incredible ten seconds of the original issue of the Trade Alert. I saw it work its magic when I was in Australia, and it is a sight to behold.

Where?s This Market Bottom?

Newsletter

After yesterday?s 217 point swoon, the S&P 500 (SPX) has fallen 4.3% from its late May peak. It looks like the ?Sell in May? crowd is having the last laugh after all, of which I was one.

Is this a modest 5% correction in a continuing bull market? Or is it the beginning of a Harry Dent style crash to (SPX) 300 (click here for the interview on Hedge Fund Radio)? Let?s go to the videotape.

This was one of the most overbought stock markets in my career. I have to think back to the top of the dotcom boom in 2000 and the pinnacle of the Tokyo bubble in 1989 to recall similar levels of ebullience. In fact, two weeks ago we were at a real risk of a major melt up if we didn?t encounter some sort of pullback. So the modest selling we have seen so far has been welcome, even by the bulls.

There is still a reasonable chance the final decline will be nothing more than a pit stop on the way to new highs. Institutional weightings in equities are at a lowly 31%, compared to 50% 20 years ago. It seems that everyone in the world is overweight bonds (see yesterday?s piece on ?Welcome to the Sack of Rome?).

In recent weeks, the S&P 500 yield ratio has fallen behind that of the 10 year Treasury bond, at 2.10%, but only just. With a price/earnings multiple of 16, we are bang in the middle of a long time historic range of 10-22. Zero overnight interest rates argue that we should be at the top end of that range. The argument that the ?Buy the Dip? crowd is still lurking under the market is real, just a little further than the recent dips allowed.

So how much lower do we have to go? After the close, I enjoyed an in depth discussion with my old friend, Jim Parker, of Mad Day Trader fame about the possible permutations. The following is an itinerary of what your summer trading might look like, expressed in (SPX) terms:

6.2% - 1,605 was the Wednesday low, the 50 day moving average, and the downside of the most recent upward sloping channel on the chart below. This trifecta of support is many traders? first stop for a bounce.

5.4% - 1,590 is the first major downside Fibonacci level. We could see this as soon as the May nonfarm report payroll is announced on Friday.

6.0% - 1,580 is the old 13-year high. Markets always love to retrace to old breakout levels.

6.5% - 1,570 represents a give back of one third of the November-May 330 point rally.

8.3% - 1,540 is the double bottom off the April low.

11.1% - 1,493 is the 200-day moving average. This is the worst-case scenario. I doubt we?ll get there, unless the fundamentals change, which they always do.

Jim gave me a couple more cogent insights. The average big swing move is 100-110 points. The last 100-point move sprung off of the March nonfarm payroll report, which came out on April 5. Big swings also often start and finish around an options expiration, the next one of those is coming on June 21. So for the short term, 1580-1590 is looking good.

To confuse you even further, contemplate the concept that I refer to as the ?Lead Contract.? There is always a lead contract around, one on which all traders maintain a laser like focus, which leads every other financial product out there. It says ?Jump,? and we ask ?How High?? It is also always changing.

Right now, the Nikkei average (DXJ) is the lead contract. The Japanese yen ETF (FXY) is the close inverse. Every flight from risk during the past two weeks has been preceded by a falling Nikkei and a rising yen.
If you want to get a preview of each day?s US trading, stay up the night before and watch the action in Tokyo, as I often do.

You might even learn a word or two of Japanese, which will come in handy when ordering in the better New York sushi shops.

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Here Comes the Rolling Top

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The S&P 500 is now at 1,564, and most strategist forecasts for the end of 2013 hover around 1,550-1,600, plus or minus some spare change. So the next nine months are going to be incredibly boring. Or they won?t.

Even in a bull market, one expects to see pullbacks of at least one third of the recent gain. Apply that logic towards the 224 points the (SPX) has tacked on since the November low, and that adds up to a 74 point, or a 4.7% correction down to 1,490.

There is massive liquidity in the system, many individuals and institutions are underweight, and interest rates are still at incredibly low levels. It also appears that every foreign financial disaster results in more money getting sent to the US for safety.

Usually, the (SPX) never rises more than 9% above the 200 day moving average without hitting a correction. This year is different. I can?t remember the last time the index spent this much time at that level without a pullback.

We are therefore likely to see a rolling type market top that unfolds over the next several months. That is in contrast to a spike top, which you can spot on a chart without your glasses from 20 feet away. These tops can be devilishly difficult to trade, with the limits defined more by time than price.

If you want to see what such a rolling top looks like, take a peak at the chart for my old friend, Dr. Copper, that great prognosticator of future economic activity. He put in such a rolling top during the first eight months of 2011, and has been trying to recover ever since, to no avail.

This no doubt reflects the slowing economy and the building copper inventories in China, where the red metal is widely used as a monetary instrument. China, in effect, is on a copper standard. It is rare to see the (SPX) going up and copper dropping like, well, a bar of copper.

While the broader indexes are likely to deliver a rolling top, that is not the case with individual sectors and stocks. That means you can use these individual spikes to assist in your timing of the overall market. You need to watch the market leaders like a hawk, such as the financials and the transports. If Bank of America (BAC) and United Continental Group (UAL), suddenly crash and burn, you can bet the rest of the market won?t be far behind. This is one of the reasons why I have these two names in my model-trading portfolio, on which you should maintain your laser focus.

The consumer discretionary and retail sectors are two additional pathfinder sectors that are the most economically sensitive in the market, which also make great canaries in the coalmine. As long as consumers are packing MacDonald?s (MCD), Home Depot (HD), and Target (TGT), or burning up their Comcast (CMCSA) broadband connections buying stuff from Amazon (AMZN), you won?t see appreciable market weakness. Earnings disappointments at these businesses, which could start in three weeks, are another great precursor of market trouble.

Finally, there is another class of stocks that may lead the charge on the downside, and that is small caps. Look at the chart below for the ETF for the Russell 2000 (IWM). Small companies are always hardest hit in any slowdown because they are more highly leveraged and have less access to external financing, like bank loans and equity floatations. I made a bundle last year shorting the (IWM) into the ?Sell in May? market meltdown, and plan to do so again this year.

Of course, timing is everything, and I?ll tell you what worries me the most. The overdependence of this bull market on the largess of the Federal Reserve cannot be underestimated. Any hint that quantitative easing is about to join the dustbin of history will take the market with it.

The conventional wisdom is that our esteemed central bank won?t embark on this path until year-end. What if it surprises us with a June tightening? The bull market would die of an instant heart attack. What would trigger this? A blowout monthly nonfarm payroll number approaching 300,000, which would quickly take the headline unemployment rate close to the Fed?s publicly announced 6.5% target. With the economy perhaps growing at a 3% rate this quarter, such a development might be only a handful of Friday?s away.

So how is the genius, aggressive hedge fund trader going to deal with these opaque markets? Bet that the market is going to stay in a broad range for a few more months. We aren?t going to the moon, nor are we going to crash. We are more likely to die of ice than fire. That?s what the volatility markets (VIX) are telling us.

There are several ways to play this kind of market. If you have a plain vanilla stock portfolio, you should be executing ?buy writes? against your existing holdings to take in extra premium income. With the bull move five months old, call options are trading at historically rich levels. This low risk, high return strategy involves selling short call options against existing stock positions. If your stock gets called away, you just say ?thank you very much? and buy it back on the way down.

For the more aggressive, you can add naked short sales of deep out of the money calls one month out. You don?t get rich with a strategy like this, but you earn a living.

You might also buy some deep out-of-the-money index puts for pennies. They are now trading near the cheapest prices in history. One market hiccup, and these things double very quickly.

Tag Archive for: (BAC)

<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-37238" src="https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Bank-of-America-ATM-e1411681030258.jpg" alt="Bank of America - ATM" width="400" height="228" />Time to Visit the ATM Again

<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-19339" src="https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/John-Thomas-and-Barney-Frank.jpg" alt="John Thomas and Barney Frank" width="400" height="249" />Barney Frank Had a Few Things to Say

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Hmmm. Doesn?t Look Like Ben Bernanke

Time to Visit the ATM Again

Barney Frank Had a Few Things to Say