The S&P 500 rallied over 20% for the first 8 months of the year, the largest such rally for the first two thirds of the year since 1997. The historical median return for the S&P 500 from September to Year End is +5.2% … time will tell if the S&P continues on this year’s upward … Continued
Gold Bug? Gold is down 8% over the past year; many gold stocks are down even more. For the Gold Miner ETFs, take a look at GDX and GDXJ. For the actual commodity, look at Silver (SLV) and Gold (GLD). Can Energy Catch Up? The energy sector (XLE) is in negative territory over the last … Continued
Popular Futures Contracts: Intra-day, Median High-to-Low Ranges Per Month Check out Oil— huge moves in the month of August (see the Small Exchange’s /SMO contract for a 100 barrel alternative). Equities are relatively quiet in the summer months. Chinese Stocks and ETFs New Chinese regulations recently sent Chinese equities plummeting. Check out the following Chinese … Continued
Home Depot (HD) and Walmart (WMT) earnings were this morning. Lowe’s (LOW) and Target (TGT) is tomorrow. Download the full list here. Defense Stocks Three companies that are often synonymous with the U.S. military and military spending—Lockheed Martin (LMT), Raytheon Technologies (RTX) and Northrop Grumman (NOC). While U.S. stocks are making all time highs, these … Continued
Here’s a handy guide to convert your favorite futures to ETFs! The free weekly Cherry Picks newsletter from tastytrade is stuffed with market research studies, data-driven trade ideas, and unique insights from the geekiest of geeks. Conquer the market with confidence … get Cherry Picks today! Cherry Picks is written in collaboration with Michael Rechenthin, … Continued
The data below reflects Aug. 3 prices. Check out the VIX prices per month. At the bottom, we show the 5-, 10- and 30-year VIX averages. We are including this to provide you with some context. Historically, what we are seeing is pretty common—this is a slower time for both government and business with many … Continued
Options enable active investors to quantify and manage risk. But sometimes they may wantto try for a big score with low-probability, high-return strategies. Investors want to see their portfolios grow in value—it’s why they generally steer a course toward higher-probability trading strategies. But they would do well to think in terms of repeatable “investable strategies” … Continued
In the Tactics section of this issue, an article entitled Three Ways to Play Long Odds offers three strategies for placing speculative trades. Here, readers will find an “anti-speculative” strategy that’s less risky than buying stock. It’s called the naked put in a liquid exchange-traded fund (ETF) such as SPY, QQQ, IWM, DIA or XLU. … Continued
Diversification is spreading money across multiple assets as opposed to just 1 or 2 (i.e. “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”). So how do you pick those assets? Correlation matrices are a good place to start. Pick symbols that have correlations closer to 0. So if you are long the S&P 500, perhaps … Continued
We wanted to see where the most theoretical opportunity for short-premium based strategies on the historical percentage of time that the stocks went “outside of the 1, 2 or 3 standard deviation 1-day movements.” We show the formulas below: 1 SD Move = Stock Price x IV x Sqrt(1/365) 2 SD Move = Stock Price … Continued
