Monthly Archives: October 2014

How to Make 60% to 100% in 2014 if a Single Analyst (Out of 13) is Right – an Update

Last week we discussed vertical spreads.  This week, I would like to continue that discussion by repeating some of what we reported in late December of last year.  It involves making a relatively long-term (one year) bet on the direction of the entire market.

And again, a brief plug for my step-daughter’s new fitness invention called the Da Vinci BodyBoard – it gives you a full body workout in only 20 minutes a day right in your home.  She has launched a KickStarter campaign to get financing and offer it to the world – check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/412276080/da-vinci-bodyboard

Terry

How to Make 60% to 100% in 2014 if a Single Analyst (Out of 13) is Right – an Update

This is part of we wrote last December – “Now is the time for analysts everywhere to make their predictions of what will happen to the market in 2014.  Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled Wall Street bulls eye more stock gains in 2014.  Their forecasts – ”The average year-end price target of 13 stock strategists polled by Bloomberg is 1890, a 5.7% gain … (for the S&P 500).  The most bullish call comes from John Stoltzfus, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer (a prediction of +13%).”

The Journal continues to say “The bad news: Two stock strategists are predicting that the S&P 500 will finish next year below its current level. Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel Nicolaus, for example, predicts the index will fall to 1750, which represents a drop of 2% from Tuesday’s close.”

I would like to suggest a strategy that will make 60% to 100% or more (depending on which strike prices you choose to use) if any one of those analysts is right. In other words, if the market goes up by any amount or falls by 2%, you would make those returns with a single options trade that will expire at the end of 2014.

The S&P tracking stock (SPY) is trading around $180.  If it were to fall by 2% in 2014, it would be trading about $176.40.  Let’s use $176 as our downside target to give the pessimistic analyst a little wiggle room.  If we were to sell a Dec-14 176 put and buy a Dec-14 171 put, we could collect $1.87 ($187) per contract.  A maintenance requirement of $500 would be made.  Subtracting the $187 you received, you will have tied up $313 which represents the greatest loss that could come your way (if SPY were to close below $171, a drop of 5% from its present level).  We placed this exact spread in one of the 10 actual portfolios we carry out at Terry’s Tips.

Once you place these trades (called selling a vertical put spread), you sit back and do nothing for an entire year (until these options expire on December 20, 2014). If SPY closes at any price above $176, both puts would expire worthless and you would get to keep $187 per contract, or 60% on your maximum risk.

If you wanted to get a little more aggressive, you could make the assumption that the average estimate of the 13 analysts was on the money, (i.e., the market rises 5.7% in 2014).  That would mean SPY would be at $190 at the end of the year. You could sell a SPY Dec-14 190 put and buy a Dec-14 185 put and collect $2.85 ($285), risking $2.15 ($215) per contract.  If the analysts are right and SPY ends up above $190, you would earn 132% on your investment for the year.

By the way, you can do any of the above spreads in an IRA if you choose the right broker.

Note: I prefer using puts rather than calls for these spreads because if you are right, nothing needs to be done at expiration, both options expire worthless, and no commissions are incurred to exit the positions.  Buying a vertical call spread is mathematically identical to selling a vertical put spread at these same strike prices, but it will involve selling the spread at expiration and paying commissions.”

We are now entering November, and SPY is trading around $201.  It could fall by $25 and the 60%-gainer spread listed above would make the maximum gain, or it could fall by $12 and you could make 132% on your money for the year.  Where else can you make these kinds of returns these days?

On a historical basis, for the 40 years of the S&P 500’s existence, the index has fallen by more than 2% in 7 years.  That means if historical patterns continue for 2014, there is a 17.5% chance that you will lose your entire bet and an 83.5% chance that you will make 60% (using the first SPY spread outlined above).  If you had made that same bet every year for the past 40 years, you would have made 60% in 33 years and lost 100% in 7 years.  For the entire time span, you would have enjoyed an average gain of 32% per year.  Not a bad average gain.

Update on the ongoing SVXY put demonstration portfolio.  (We owned one Mar-15 65 put, and each week, we roll over a short put to the next weekly which is about $1 in the money (i.e., at a strike which is $1 higher than the stock price).  SVXY soared higher this week, and we had to make an adjustment.  We wanted to sell a weekly put at the 70 strike since the stock was trading around $68, but that strike is $3 higher than our long put, and we would create a maintenance requirement of $300 to sell that strike put.

Instead, today I sold the Mar-15 65 put and bought a Mar-15 70 put (buying a vertical spread) for $2.43 ($243).  Then I bought back the Oct4-14 65 put for a few pennies and sold a Nov1-14 70 put, collecting $2.94 $294) for the spread.   The account value is at $1324, or $90 higher than $1234 where we started out.  This averages out to $45 per week, slightly above the 3% ($37) average weekly gain we are shooting for.  (Once again, we would have done much better this week if the stock had moved up by only $2 instead of $5).

I will continue trading this account and let you know from time to time how close I am achieving my goal of 3% a week, although I will not report every trade I make each week.  I will follow the guidelines for rolling over as outlined above, so you should be able to do it on your own if you wished.

 

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins

A Little About Vertical Spreads

Today we will discuss vertical spreads, and how you can use them when you have a strong feeling about which way a stock is headed.

But first, a brief plug for my step-daughter’s new fitness invention called the Da Vinci BodyBoard – it gives you a full body workout in only 20 minutes a day right in your home.  She has launched a KickStarter campaign to get financing and offer it to the world – check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/412276080/da-vinci-bodyboard

Terry

A Little About Vertical Spreads

Vertical spreads are known as directional spreads.  When you place such a spread, you are betting that the stock will move in a particular direction, either up or down.  If you are right, you can make a nice gain.  Even better, you can usually create a vertical spread that also makes money if the stock doesn’t move in the direction you hoped, but stays absolutely flat instead.

If you have a strong feeling that a particular stock will move higher in the near future, you might be inclined to either buy the stock or buy a call on it.  Both of these choices have disadvantages.  Buying the stock ties up a great deal of money, and even if you are right and the stock moves higher, your return on investment is likely to be quite small.

Buying calls gives you great leverage and a much higher return on investment if you are indeed right and the stock moves higher.  But much of the cost of a call is premium (the extra amount you pay out so that you don’t have to put up so much cash compared to buying the stock).  The stock needs to go up a certain amount just to cover the premium, and you don’t start making money until that premium is covered.  If the stock doesn’t go up (and no matter how great you are at picking winners, you will probably be disappointed many times), you could lose some or all of your investment.  Bottom line, buying calls is a losing proposition much of the time – you have to be really lucky to come out a winner.

Buying a vertical spread is a safer alternative than either buying stock or calls.  You give up some of the extraordinary gains for a great likelihood of making a more moderate gain, and if you play your cards right, you can also make a gain if the stock stays flat.

Let’s look at an example.  Last week, my favorite underlying, SVXY, had been beaten down because VIX had shot up over 25.  I felt very strongly that the market fears would eventually subside, VIX would fall back to the 15 level, and SVXY (which moves in the opposite direction of VIX) would move higher.

Late last week, when SVXY was trading right at $60, I bought November 55 calls and sold November 60 calls as a vertical spread.  It cost me $3 ($300 per contract).  When these calls expire in about a month, if the stock is any higher than $60, my spread will be worth exactly $5, and I will make about 60% on my investment.  The interesting thing is that it doesn’t have to move any higher than was at the time for me to make that kind of a gain.

In reality, while I did make this vertical spread, I didn’t use calls.  Instead, I sold a vertical spread using puts, buying November 60 puts and selling November 55 puts. I collected $2, an amount which is the exact same risk that I would have taken if I had bought the vertical spread with calls.  The broker will charge a maintenance fee of $5 ($500) on each spread, but since I collected $200 at the outset, my risk, and the amount I had to put up, is only $300.

The risks and rewards are identical if you buy a vertical with calls or sell a vertical with puts (assuming the strike prices are the same), but there is a neat thing about using puts if you believe the stock is headed higher.  In this case, if the stock ends up at the November expiration at any price higher than $60, both the long and short puts will expire worthless (and I get to keep the $200 I got at the beginning).  There is no exit trade to make, and best of all, no commissions to pay.  For this reason, I almost always use puts when I buy a vertical spread betting on a higher stock price rather than calls (the only exceptions come when the spread can be bought for a lower price using calls, something which occurs on occasion).

Update on the ongoing SVXY put demonstration portfolio.  (We own one Mar-15 65 put, and each week, we roll over a short put to the next weekly which is about $1 in the money (i.e., at a strike which is $1 higher than the stock price).

This week, SVXY moved sharply higher, from about $57 to about $62.  Today I bought back the out-of-the-money Oct4-14 59 put for a few cents and sold an Oct5-14 64 put (about $2 in the money) for a credit of $3.65 ($365) on the diagonal spread.  The account value is at $1290, just a little higher than $1234 where we started out (we would have done much better if the stock had moved up by only $2 instead of $5).

I will continue trading this account and let you know from time to time how close I am achieving my goal of 3% a week, although I will not report every trade I make each week.  I will follow the guidelines for rolling over as outlined above, so you should be able to do it on your own if you wished.  This week I sold the next weekly put at a strike which was $2 in the money because I think the stock is headed higher because VIX is still at an elevated level compared to where it has been for the past year or so.

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins

Knowing When to Bite the Bullet

Sometimes, the market does just the opposite of what you hoped it would, and you are faced with the decision to hang on and hope it will reverse itself, or accept that you guessed wrong, and close out your position and move on to something else.

That will be our subject today.

Terry

Knowing When to Bite the Bullet

Kenny Rogers said it well – “You’ve got to know when to walk away and know when to run.”  We set up demonstration portfolio to trade diagonal spreads on an ETP called SVXY.  We were betting that the stock would go up.  In each of the last two years, SVXY had doubled in value.  Its inverse, VXX, had fallen from a split-adjusted $3000+ to under $30 over the past 5 years, making it just about the biggest dog on the entire stock exchange (selling it short would have made anyone a bundle over that time period).  We felt comfortable being long (i.e., the equivalent of owning stock) in something that would do just the opposite of VXX.

In our demonstration portfolio, we decided to trade puts rather than calls because there was a lot more time premium in the weekly puts that we planned to sell to someone else than there was in the calls.  Each Friday, we would buy back the expiring put and replace it by selling another put with a week of remaining life.  This strategy enabled us to be short put options that had extremely high decay.

The biggest challenge was to decide which strikes to sell new puts at.  We selected a strike that was about $1 in-the-money (i.e., about a dollar higher than the stock price), or if the put we were buying back was well into the money so that the trade could not be made at a credit, we would select the highest strike we could take that could yield us a credit on the spread.  This meant that when the stock tumbled, the best we could do would be to sell a calendar spread at a very small credit.

In a six-week period, the stock managed to fall by over 30%.  Not such good news when we were betting that it would go up.  The biggest problem with a drop of this magnitude was that our short put was so far in the money that we risked an execution.  This would mean that the stock would be put to us (i.e., we would be forced to buy it at the strike price).  With that risk hanging over our head, the time has come to recognize our loss.

Admitting that you were wrong, at least for a certain time period, and closing out your trade, is sometimes the best thing you could do.  Many people hang on to their losing investments and sell the winners (usually for a smaller profit than they could have made by hanging on).  In the long run, this strategy leaves you with a portfolio of losing stocks that you are hoping will go higher (and probably never will).  Better to sell your losers and move on to something more promising.

Today we placed the following trade which closed out our spread:

Buy to Close 1 SVXY Oct4-14 80.5 put (SVXY141024P80.5)
Sell to Close 1 SVXY Jan-15 90 put (SVXY150117P90) for a credit of $9.71  (selling a diagonal)

When the trade was executed at this price, we were left with $1,234 in the account after paying commissions.  Since we started with $1500, we were faced with a loss of $266, or a little less than 18%.  This was over a period in which the stock we were betting on lost over 30%.  This is another example of how options can protect you better than merely buying stock.

We expected to make 150% a year on this portfolio, many times greater than the 18% we lost in the couple of months we operated it.  If the stock had remained flat or moved higher as we expected, we could have expected to gain the 3% a week we were hoping for.

Today, in the special account I set up this portfolio with $1500 (and now is down to $1234), I am trying again, this time at lower strike prices which are more appropriate to the current level of the stock.

This was the trade I executed today when the stock was trading about $57:

Buy To Open 1 SVXY Mar-15 65 put (SVXY150320P65)
Sell To Open 1 SVXY Oct4-14 59 put (SVXY141025P59) for a debit of $12.07 (buying a diagonal)

I will continue trading this account and let you know from time to time how close I am achieving my goal of 3% a week, although I will not report every trade I make each week.  I will follow the guidelines for rolling over as outlined above, so you should be able to do it on your own if you wished.

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins

Handling an Adverse Price Change

Our SVXY demonstration hit a real snag this week, as the volatility index (VIX) soared to over 20 and SVXY got hammered, falling from the mid-$80’s level when we started the portfolio to about $65 while we were betting that it would move higher.

I hope you find this ongoing demonstration of a simple options strategy designed to earn 3% a week to be a simple way to learn a whole lot about trading options.

Terry

Handling an Adverse Price Change

There wasn’t much we could do today.  The short 80.5 SVXY put that we had sold was expiring about $15 in the money, a situation that makes it quite difficult to roll it over to next week as a calendar and still enjoy a credit on the trade.  Instead, we chose to go out two weeks and sell an Oct4-14 80.5.  This is the trade we executed:
Buy to Close 1 SVXY Oct2-14 80.5 put (SVXY141010P80.5)
Sell to Open 1 SVXY Oct4-14 80.5 put (SVXY141024P80.5) for a credit of $.20  (selling a calendar)

Hot tip of the week.  With SVXY trading below $66 and VIX over 20, buying any call on SVXY is probably an excellent speculative purchase (go out a couple of months to give the stock some time to recover, as it surely will).  As usual, only invest money in options that you can truly afford to lose.  I am buying Dec-14 66 calls, paying $8.50 ($850) per contract with an idea to sell shorter-term calls against them at a later time once the stock has recovered some.

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins

How to Avoid an Option Assignment

This message is coming out a day early because the underlying stock we have been trading options on has fallen quite a bit once again, and the put we sold to someone else is in danger of being exercised, so we will trade a day earlier than usual to avoid that possibility.

I hope you find this ongoing demonstration of a simple options strategy designed to earn 3% a week to be a simple way to learn a whole lot about trading options.

Terry

How to Avoid an Option Assignment

Owning options is a little more complicated than owning stock. When an expiration date of options you have sold to someone else approaches, you need to compare the stock price to the strike price of the option you sold.  If that option is in the money (i.e., if it is put, the stock is trading at a lower price than the strike price, and if it is a call, the stock is trading at a higher price than the strike price), in order to avoid an exercise, you will need to buy back that option.  Usually, you make that trade as part of a spread order when you are selling another option which has a longer life span.

If the new option you are selling is at the same strike price as the option you are buying back, it is called a calendar spread (also called a time spread), and if the strike prices are different, it is called a diagonal spread.

Usually, the owner of any expiring put or call is better off selling their option in the market rather than exercising the option.  The reason is that there is almost always some remaining premium over and above the intrinsic value of the option, and you can almost always do better selling the option rather than exercising your option.  Sometimes, however, on the day or so before an option expires, when the time premium becomes very small (especially for in-the-money options), the bid price may not be great enough for the owner to sell the option on the market and still get the intrinsic value that he could get through exercising.

To avoid that from happening to you when you are short the option, all you need to do is buy it back before it expires, and no harm will be done.  You won’t lose much money even if an exercise takes place, but sometimes commissions are a little greater when there is an exercise.  Not much to worry about, however.

SVXY fell to the $74 level this week after trading about $78 last week.  In our actual demonstration portfolio we had sold an Oct1-14 81 put (using our Jan-15 90 put as security).  When you are short an option (either a put or a call) and it becomes several dollars in the money at a time when expiration is approaching, there is a good chance that it might be exercised.  Although having a short option exercised is sort of a pain in the neck, it usually doesn’t have much of a financial impact on the bottom line.  But it is nice to avoid if possible.

We decided to roll over the 81 put that expires tomorrow to next week’s option series.  Our goal is to always collect a little cash when we roll over, and that meant this week we could only roll to the 80.5 strike and do the trade at a net credit.  Here is the trade we made today:

Buy To Close 1 SVXY Oct1-14 81 put (SVXY141003P81)
Sell To Open 1 SVXY Oct2-14 80.5 put (SVXY141010P80.5) for a credit of $.20  (selling a diagonal)

Our account value is now $1620 from our starting value of $1500 six weeks ago, and we have $248 in cash as well as the Jan-15 90 put which is trading about $20 ($2000).  We have not quite made 3% a week so far, but we have betting that SVXY will move higher as it does most of the time, but it has fallen from $86 when we started this portfolio to $74 where it is today.  One of the best things about option trading is that you can still make gains when your outlook on the underlying stock is not correct.  It is harder to make gains when you guess wrong on the underlying’s direction, but it is possible as our experiment so far has demonstrated.

 

Making 36%

Making 36% – A Duffer's Guide to Breaking Par in the Market Every Year in Good Years and Bad

This book may not improve your golf game, but it might change your financial situation so that you will have more time for the greens and fairways (and sometimes the woods).

Learn why Dr. Allen believes that the 10K Strategy is less risky than owning stocks or mutual funds, and why it is especially appropriate for your IRA.

Order Now

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

~ John Collins