LOL!'s Market Timing Newsletter

[LOL!]

Opening Cross Definition | Investopedia

It is the price that the exchange calculates for all orders submitted before the market opens. They try to be look fair. See the definition and use google for more info.

Normally, one would not want to submit a market order when the market is closed, but I have found some exceptions for the things I want to do. At the moment VEU is trading down a little less than 1% from where I sold, so I am happy about today's sales.

As for details, VEU closed at 43.18 yesterday when I bought VTIAX, so selling VEU at 43.93 is a gain of (43.93-43.18)/43.18 of 1.73%.

So it is almost like the reverse of tax-loss harvesting: Instead of booking a loss by exchanging similar funds, I booked a gain and all the while (except overnight) I kept my asset allocation the same.

The BND I bought is trading up from the price I paid, too.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! Back to waiting patiently for easy opportunities while losing money.

Yes, in a down market like this, all I can do is to try to make some bitty money with some short term trades, which is nothing compared to the loss. I just sold an ultrashort (2x) bear biotech fund.

I bought it at the wrong time (too early), and have waited patiently to make 10%. Just a few hundred shares, so the gain is minuscule compared to the other losses. I only want to prove to myself that no sector is immune in a bear market.

[NW-Bound]

For a short-term play, a couple of days ago I bought a leveraged ETF indexed to the S&P, which moves at 3X the speed of the latter. I did not time it well, and it is just now in the positive. I will let it stay for a while.

Now that I have finished the shade structure for my wife's beloved tree, she will accompany me to head up to our high-country home to get a reprieve from the heat. Again, no Internet access up there, so I trust posters here to safeguard the market, to step in to buy as necessary so it will not drop.

I will be back next week. Have a nice Labor Day, my friends, whether you time the market or just counting time in the market.

[Running_Man]

Since this is a market timing thread I predict with market at 1969 on S&P500 it is down here rest of day and market closes down over 30 S&P point (under 1919)

[NW-Bound]

Ugh! I thought I was done with trading, but took a quick look at the market and decided that sitting out of the market for several days with something as volatile as this leveraged bet would be too risky.

So, I just sold some for a few hundred bucks of gain, and wrote a call on the rest. If the market dropped again, the call premium will offset the loss.

OK, I am off for real this time. Need to go out to pack the car.

[utrecht]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fermion Not going to beat you up because I have lost money today too (just bought Gilead again at $102 and it is already $101) but the weekly SPY puts you sold are now in the money. It is a crazy market though and maybe SPY will be back above $191 by Friday (heck, or even in the last minutes today)

Like I said, its a long weak. My weekly SPY 192.5 puts will expire worthless tomorrow leaving me with the entire $1150 premium unless SPY drops more than 1.5% tomorrow. It has to drop more than 2.1% for me to lose any money.

[Mulligan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by utrecht Like I said, its a long weak. My weekly SPY 192.5 puts will expire worthless tomorrow leaving me with the entire $1150 premium unless SPY drops more than 1.5% tomorrow. It has to drop more than 2.1% for me to lose any money.

I have enjoyed this thread, and my post has nothing to do with your investing strategy; but between this and the NFL thread it got me thinking about my Dad. He thinks gambling on sports is a moral wrong and doesn't approve that I partake. Yet he has no problem with this type of investing. I have never quite figured out how he has separated the two neatly into "right" and "wrong".


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Fermion]

Quote:

Originally Posted by utrecht Like I said, its a long weak. My weekly SPY 192.5 puts will expire worthless tomorrow leaving me with the entire $1150 premium unless SPY drops more than 1.5% tomorrow. It has to drop more than 2.1% for me to lose any money.

I have been messing around with Gilead this week, playing with the $90 Jan 2016 calls to magnify the swings. I bought 10 at $15.40, sold them at $16.50, watched it climb to $17.10, then fall back to $15.40 where I bought again, then sold at $16.10, watched it fall back to $15.30, bought again there, should have sold 30 minutes before the market closed at $16 but instead held and watched them fall back to $15.30. This is picking up pennies (well, hundred dollar bills) in front of a steam roller though if we get a real crash.

[utrecht]

They're both basically just a person attempting to make money, while risking money, by predicting the outcome of a situation. Why some people think it's fine as it relates to stocks and options but heinous and illegal in a lot of places when it relates to sports is beyond me.

That brings me to poker. I can play poker legally in a casino in something like 35 states but I cant play poker on the internet while living in those same states. You cant make this stuff up.

[utrecht]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fermion I have been messing around with Gilead this week, playing with the $90 Jan 2016 calls to magnify the swings. I bought 10 at $15.40, sold them at $16.50, watched it climb to $17.10, then fall back to $15.40 where I bought again, then sold at $16.10, watched it fall back to $15.30, bought again there, should have sold 30 minutes before the market closed at $16 but instead held and watched them fall back to $15.30. This is picking up pennies (well, hundred dollar bills) in front of a steam roller though if we get a real crash.

I've done that before with a stock that was bouncing up and down regularly but I would rather do it by buying and selling puts instead of calls. With puts, if there is some huge sudden crash while you have the trade open, you'll make a killing.

[Fermion]

Quote:

Originally Posted by utrecht I've done that before with a stock that was bouncing up and down regularly but I would rather do it by buying and selling puts instead of calls. With puts, if there is some huge sudden crash while you have the trade open, you'll make a killing.

I only do it with stocks where I think the general trend will go one way or the other. With Gilead, I am pretty sure the general trend will be to rise from here toward next earnings. Not 100% sure of course, anything could happen, but the likely outcome for a company spending 15B on buybacks with a PE of 11 and FWD PE of 9 is it will go up in the long run. I made a few bucks buying puts on Netflix, and probably should have stuck with that, but the problem is I like Netflix. I felt bad buying puts and then sitting down to watch the next killer original content series they had.

[RAE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Running_Man Since this is a market timing thread I predict with market at 1969 on S&P500 it is down here rest of day and market closes down over 30 S&P point (under 1919)

Well, you got the direction right, but it ended a little higher than you thought it would (1951). Just out of curiosity, Running_Man, why did you feel that the market would drop this afternoon? Any thoughts for where this market goes from here? It seems to me that the risk/reward ratio for this market right now is pretty darn high. I would not be surprised to see the S&P 500 lower than it is right now in a couple months.

[Running_Man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RAE Well, you got the direction right, but it ended a little higher than you thought it would (1951). Just out of curiosity, Running_Man, why did you feel that the market would drop this afternoon? Any thoughts for where this market goes from here? It seems to me that the risk/reward ratio for this market right now is pretty darn high. I would not be surprised to see the S&P 500 lower than it is right now in a couple months.

There are so many money managers sure the "correction" is over and patting themselves on the back for having endured that I am assuming this is a larger correction, more in line with the start of what the CAPE is forecasting as in the other thread. If that was so, then the rally was off the drop of Monday and needed to start falling again before it passed Monday's high of 1980, once the market dropped a little bit from the daily high of 1975, I thought that was probably it, tomorrow should be interesting.

[utrecht]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RAE Well, you got the direction right, but it ended a little higher than you thought it would (1951). Just out of curiosity, Running_Man, why did you feel that the market would drop this afternoon? Any thoughts for where this market goes from here? It seems to me that the risk/reward ratio for this market right now is pretty darn high. I would not be surprised to see the S&P 500 lower than it is right now in a couple months.

The prediction that the market would fizzle out was correct but the amount was WAY off. Off by 1.5% over a time period of a few hours is pretty big. Of course you made a bold prediction so I'll give you some margin of error.

[Fermion]

utrecht, looks like we both lose today. I think Gilead will be down under $100 and your puts may get assigned to you on SPY. Not sure what payroll numbers would have made an up market..maybe none. Should have shorted Netflix :-)

[utrecht]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fermion utrecht, looks like we both lose today. I think Gilead will be down under $100 and your puts may get assigned to you on SPY. Not sure what payroll numbers would have made an up market..maybe none. Should have shorted Netflix :-)

My puts wont get assigned. If SPY is below 192.5 near the close (its at 193.30 as I type this so I feel pretty good), I will buy them back. Even if I buy them back it wont be at a loss unless we sink under 191.35. Thats another 1% decline from here.

[Fermion]

This feels like one of those days where the market is going to either surge back green or fall off a cliff. The 3 day weekend probably means fall off a cliff. I may try to exit my position during a mid morning pop if we get one.

[Fermion]

Cool, sold half my position for break even, which is better than I thought I would get away with. Now to wait and see which way the worm turns.


edit: Worm is turning south, DOW down 300, almost ready to buy back the half of the position for $500 cheaper. The day could still end green but highly unlikely now.

[utrecht]

The market just seems to want to slowly trickle away into the abyss. My weekly 192.5 puts are teetering on break even right now with SPY at 191.70. Im still holding because there is still about $400 of time value left in the puts. We will see what the last hour and a half holds.

I just sold 10 more SPY 188 puts for $1.56 that expire next Friday.

[Fermion]

That is a pretty good price considering there are only 4 trading days next week. SPY should be able to hold above $188...I really don't see where money is going to go, even if bonds go up a fraction. I am holding out for $14.70 on those Gilead calls, but that would require a pretty big selloff very late in the day...about DOW -400 should cause Gilead to sell off enough to get me to $14.70.