LOL!'s Market Timing Newsletter

[Fermion]

I sit for long periods with pure cash in my brokerage account. For example, today I sold out of Gilead in the morning when it was $97.xx and only bought back a few thousand $$ at $95.xx right before the market closed. $95,000 will likely sit in the account in cash for a few weeks as we are busy and I won't be trading.

I kind of want to do the cash secured put thing on some weeklies but really have to wonder if $300 or so I would make net of commissions would be worth tying up the $95k if I do get a chance to trade.

First world problems.

 

[NW-Bound]

Going on margin if you need more to put on the table?

Speaking of the $300 to make on $95K using "weeklies", you were talking about very soon-to-expired options. I prefer options 1 to 2 months out. They also pay a few hundred bucks, on a smaller cash amount to back them up, but over a longer period. And then, I tend to layer them (like people layering their CDs) using smaller bets, so that I will not exhaust my ammo in just one volley. My winnings are smaller that way, but I want some steady income, and I always have cash rotating back in.

I have more cash stashed in I-bonds and 401k stable value fund. Last recession, I did not touch them, and only used the cash I raised by cutting stock AA before the bottom. Of course I have been kicking myself for not going "all in".

 

[LOL!]

Just to keep myself honest, I have to report that I bought some VTI (total US stock market index) a moment ago with the money that I raised by selling VEA the other day. I guess the main reason is that US stocks basically are even today while foreign stocks are up.

If VTI goes up a little bit next week, then I intend to sell some IVV (S&P500) to get my US equities percentage back to where I like it.

Things were looking good in the first hour of trading, then stabilized at a lower level until the last hour when things dropped.

I asked myself, would I have been better off not selling VEA which closed slightly up and not buying VTI which closed slightly down? The answer turns out to be No with the reason that VEA closed more lower than I sold it at than VTI closed lower than I bought it at. I'm ahead a few bucks over doing nothing. And my portfolio went up today even though my benchmark was flat today.

That probably means big losses tomorrow.

 

[Fedup]

Goodness these ETFs are like yoyo, yesterday I bought some vti and vbr, just so that I have them in my account, before I forget these names. It went down immediately. Today they went up and I sold them for 1% gain. But I only bought a small amount. I picked up crumbs again. Immediately after I sold it went down from the high.


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[LOL!]

Some nice action today with a continual up move into the last hour of trading.

Clearly, I should've kept the VEA and not the VTI, but no matter. I submitted a limit order to sell some IVV (S&P500) at about 0.5% higher than it is trading now. I may modify the order before the close, but I will be working outside for awhile and may not get back to check on it.

Update after market close: Limit order did not execute.

 

[Fedup]

Nice move on vwo, I sold some, I wouldn't have thought about it until reading ER.


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[Fedup]

Sold EEM, I bought the wrong ETF and soon after purchasing I realized it was wrong. This is not free trade for vanguard so I loaded up on VWO after purchasing it. Glad to make 1%.


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[LOL!]

I think EM follows oil prices somewhat, so with oil & gas in the news (who bought CHK last week? ) we can expect some relatively large moves.

Short-term momentum seems to be up now through this earnings season, but I need to keep selling which is so hard to do when things keep going up and more importantly when things look like they are going to keep going up.

I guess my strategy is to set a limit price to sell that is probably out of reach for the day, so that if it is executed I think to myself "That's ridiculous, so I will take it."

I need to sell US equities, foreign developed equities, and emerging market equities to get back to my desired asset allocations in them. While 2016 didn't start out great, it has turned out just fine so far.

 

[LOL!]

The market did a great job today and essentially rose all the way to the end.

So I did set some limit prices to sell. Some orders were executed and others were not. The ones which were not, I changed my orders to market orders here in the last 15 minutes and they were executed.

I sold some IVV (US large cap), VBR (US small cap value), VEA (developed foreign), and DGS (emerging small). All were held in IRAs, so no tax consequences and no commissions.

The theme of selling was mostly reduce equity exposure and clean-up small lots purchased manually by dividend reinvesting. In these accounts were quite a few lots of 1, 4, 13 shares ...., so even though these were sold in IRAs, I still specified the shares to sell in order to make my set of lots simple. For example, instead of 13 separate lots of DGS in one account, there are now about 4.

Gains for 2016 have now exceeded 6-figures. Let's hope they keep piling on!

 

[LOL!]

I continue to sell equities, but I am getting close to the end of the sales.

I sold more VEA (large-cap developed) this morning.

 

[Fedup]

The headline is Doha Brouhaha. Oil tumbling down 5%. It's going to be a wild ride Monday. Hang on to your seat.


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[LOL!]

The headline is Doha Brouhaha. Oil tumbling down 5%. It's going to be a wild ride Monday. Hang on to your seat.

Well look at that!

 

[Fedup]

Well look at that!

So far it doesn't seem to affect stocks except Nikkei. No wild ride yet.


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[NW-Bound]

I bought a couple of ETFs, then immediately wrote covered calls on them with May expiry and strike prices around the current values. If they get exercised, I will make less than $1K on this play.

It's not a lot of money for a lark, but the annualized return would be excellent for committing the money for just 30 days.

 

[LOL!]

I think EM follows oil prices somewhat, so with oil & gas in the news (who bought CHK last week? ) we can expect some relatively large moves.

Short-term momentum seems to be up now through this earnings season, but I need to keep selling which is so hard to do when things keep going up and more importantly when things look like they are going to keep going up.

I guess my strategy is to set a limit price to sell that is probably out of reach for the day, so that if it is executed I think to myself "That's ridiculous, so I will take it."

Clearly, I started selling too soon and missed out on some gains in the past couple of days with international equities doing better than US equities.

Nevertheless, I have submitted another limit order to sell some small-cap emerging markets: EWX. It is troubling though quotes on some web sites for EWX are wrong, but this is a low-volume ETF so maybe that is to be expected.

 

[LOL!]

My EWX limit order did not execute yesterday. I had set the limit price just a tad too high.

Today EWX has traded lower than what I could have sold it for yesterday. It might even look like there is decent volume today, but that's a fake-out. The last trade I see was a block trade at 11:38:57 for 80,100 shares or about 86% of the total volume so far today.

I am still trying to sell some EWX. It looks like a trade happens about every 30 minutes or so.

Update about 20 min before the market close: EWX recovered nicely throughout the day as oil prices seem to have risen, too. I've sold about half the EWX I want to sell. I used the money to buy bond fund AGG. I still have a limit order in for the rest of the shares of EWX and it might get filled here in the next 20 minutes … you never know.

I like that the REIT fund VNQ dropped today, too. So I bought some shares with the money from selling VEA the other day.

 

[Fedup]

I moved some of my money into bonds as well, but Wellesley is my bond choice fund. I finally got paper from Vanguard to trade options. I've been too busy to get to it. Now I will have more trading options in my IRA.


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[Fedup]

This morning, I rack my brain to understand the term helicopter money by Draghi, what exactly does it mean? Any idea?


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[REWahoo]

This morning, I rack my brain to understand the term helicopter money by Draghi, what exactly does it mean? Any idea?

Google is an amazing tool...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money

 

[NW-Bound]

Recently, Bernanke was called "Helicopter Ben" when he mentioned the quote by Friedman from 1969. Fedup apparently missed this period.

 

[Fedup]

No I was here on earth, just not always conscious. I need to read that link and try to understand more. This sounds like it's on top of QE.


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[LOL!]

The money I didn't lose by selling equities the past few days, I lost anyways by buying VNQ too soon.

There's only one solution to the problem: Double up on VNQ. So I will sell some bond ETF shares and buy more VNQ later today.

Update: Orders executed.

 

[Fedup]

Ibb went up, everything else is down. This is mild though and expected.
Edit to add tomorrow will be ugly, GOOGL stock is down $40 after hours.
Hang in there for a wild ride.

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[LOL!]

Edit to add tomorrow will be ugly, GOOGL stock is down $40 after hours.
Hang in there for a wild ride.

I have to say that if anybody ELSE had posted this, then I would be worried. But based on your recent track record, I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

 

[Fedup]

I have to say that if anybody ELSE had posted this, then I would be worried. But based on your recent track record, I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Haha, I'm practicing my career as a fortune teller.


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