Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the July 1 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!
Q: You obviously do well with deep-in-the-money call and put spreads, but I struggle to get your prices.
A: Raise the strike prices or raise the price that you’re bidding for them closer to my limit. It’s really hard to keep current prices in this market with such extreme volatility (VIX), especially when you’re having melt-ups going on in Tesla (TSLA) and so on. Our trade alerts are just a starting point to get you going in the right direction in the right stock. The people who make the most money with the trade alert service are those who use my market timing to buy futures, either at the money risk reversals on stocks (long the call and short the put), or outright futures in gold (GLD), currencies (FXE), and bonds (TLT).
Q: How high can Tesla go?
A: My immediate target is $1200 (which has already been hit), and the rumors I'm hearing is that they will be good if you factor in the two months that the Fremont factory was closed. And after that, it’s $2,500 and then there's Ron Baron’s target of $5,000, who’s been in the stock himself since it was at $100 a share. Ron was a little late in finding my research on the company. I first got in at $16.50 after I toured the Fremont factory.
Q: Is it possible there will be a national mandate to wear masks, which could boost stocks?
A: Not under this president. Do not expect help from this administration on this pandemic. They've figured out they can’t beat it so they are just walking away and leaving the states to figure out what they can. You’ll have to wait for another president to get a national mask mandate if we’re still alive by that time. I am getting a lot of emails from Europe complaining that the United States is extending the pandemic by having so many people refusing to wear masks here or admit that the disease even exists. They are horrified.
Q: What do you think about the biotech ETF (IBB)?
A: I’d be buying it with both hands. Even without the pandemic, a new bull market started last September in biotech because the fundamentals long term were fantastic. But you had to be a scientist to see it back then. They really had the highest earnings growth with the lowest price earnings multiples in the entire stock market. The pandemic just gave it a supercharger. That’s why I started the Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter (click here).
Q: Which ETF should I use for biotech?
A: The iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology ETF (IBB). It's a basket of the top 20 global biotech firms but will underperform single biotech stock picks by half, as any basket does.
Q: What about the long-term portfolio?
A: I will get to it. It seems like our long-term portfolio is changing every week, so it’s difficult to really look at anything in the long term. These days, long term is a week with all the volatility we’re getting. I imagine I’d be getting rid of any energy stocks on this rally though. I see oil going back to zero.
Q: You say stay long NASDAQ (QQQ) and short S&P 500 (SPY) for the rest of the year, but you project new highs for the S&P 500?
A: Yes, both can go up, but NASDAQ will go up faster, and that’s what hedge funds are doing. That gives you a market neutral position, sucks a lot of the risk out of that position, and it’s even crash-proof as we saw in the winter when the markets were melting down. And like hedge funds, you can leverage that up 5 or 10 times. So yes, that trade will work all day long, even if both indexes go to new highs. I imagine NASDAQ will outperform on the upside relative to SPY by a factor of two or three to one.
Q: Is there a good substitute to use versus your deep-in-the-money alerts if you have a smaller account?
A: You can just buy the stocks. Or, you can just buy the stocks on margin, which is 2 to 1—50% margin requirement there. There are many ways to skin a cat. The call spreads actually give you the most bang per buck because you get a lot of leverage with a small dollar amount upfront and limited risk.
Q: I heard that hedge funds have huge shorts. Is this setting up another short squeeze? Will they eventually be right?
A: Yes, that may have been what happened on Monday and Tuesday, a squeeze on the shorts driving prices much higher. They will eventually be right a little bit, but you’re certainly not going to get the major declines we saw in February/March because of all the QE and government support. The pandemic is no longer a surprise.
Q: Will COVID-19 fears keep volatility elevated until there is a vaccine?
A: Absolutely, yes. That’s great news for our options strategy, which is why we’re 100% invested almost all the time these days because higher volatility doubles the premiums you get for options. My current strategy is that once a position hits 90% of its maximum profit, I dump it and put on another position to take in an extra $1,500-$2,000. I did that with Tesla and gold (GLD) last week. This is the golden age of the in-the-money put and call spread strategy and we are better at executing it than anyone else.
Q: What do you have to say about the jobs report?
A: The entire US economic data system is breaking down because we’re seeing such immense swings month to month. Reporting lags are getting amplified one hundredfold. The June Nonfarm Payroll Report showed an increase of 4.8 million jobs and an unemployment rate of only 11.1% (I never thought I’d ever say “only 11.1%”). However, the state jobless claims are indicating an unemployment rate of at least 22%. Go walk down the Main Street of any town and you’ll see that the state figures are right. All the forecasting is relatively pointless. How can we get a fall in unemployment when nothing is open?
Q: Are you recording this webinar?
A: Yes, we usually post the recorded webinar on the site 2 hours after we finish so our many international subscribers don’t have to stay up until the middle of the night to watch it. That’s how long it takes to convert the webinar into a video format we can post online.
Q: When setting up LEAPS (Long Term Equity Participation Securities), do you buy straight calls at-the-money or in-the-money?
A: You buy deep, out-of-the-money spreads. Let's say you bought a (TSLA) $1,500/$1,550 deep-in-the-money call spread, and it expires at the maximum profit point with the stock over $1,550. You’ll make about a 500% return on that because it’s so far out of the money; the leverage is enormous. Will Tesla close over $1,550 in two years? Probably.
Q: How do I get into Tesla?
A: Close your eyes and buy at market, and hope we get $1,200 tomorrow on great Q2 sales numbers. Or, wait for another one of these huge selloffs—Tesla does have a history of selling off 50% at any given time, and then you go into a LEAPS there and get a 500% return. Most investors prefer the latter if they know about LEAPS. Remember, our last “BUY” into Tesla was a year ago when the stock was at $180. By the way, a lot of the shorts in Tesla stock were financed by big oil money and when oil crashed, they lost the ability to post more margin. So, they were forced to cover their shorts at gigantic losses, creating this super spike in the share price. Elon Musk, who owns 20% of the company, is laughing all the way to the bank.
Q: How do we pick the best strike prices for long-term LEAPS?
A: Go 30% out-of-the-money. There you get your 500% return. If you really want to be aggressive and you think the stock has 50% of upside, then go 50% out-of-the-money. There your return will be about a 1,000% profit over 2 years.
Q: How long are these trades for? I haven’t received any trade alerts.
A: Please contact customer support and we’ll find out if they are being filtered out by your spam folder. Global Trading Dispatch is sending out trade alerts virtually every day for all asset classes, so you should have received several of them by now. The Mad Hedge Technology Letter sends out fewer because they are confined to a narrow part of the market.
Q: What is your favorite stock in the gold space?
A: Newmont Mining (NEM). They have the strongest balance sheet of the major gold companies because they engage in fewer takeovers than the other big gold companies.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
