SLV Bearish Opening Trade

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Strategy Details

Strategy: Long Put Vertical Spread

Direction: Bearish

Details: Buy to Open 36 Contracts Nov. 18th $18.50/$17 Put Vertical Spreads @ $0.34 Debit.

Total Risk: This trade has a max risk of $1,224 (36 Contracts x $34).

Counter Trend Signal: This is a Bearish trade on a stock that is experiencing a bullish trend. 

1M/6M Trends: Bullish/Mildly Bullish

Technical Score: 8/10

OptionsPlay Score: 123

Entering the Trade

Use the following details to enter the trade on your trading platform. Please note that if there is a multi-leg option strategy, it should be entered as a single trade. 

Please note these prices are based on the previous day’s closing prices. Should the underlying move significantly during the pre-market hours, we will likely adjust the strikes and prices to reflect a more accurate trade entry. This will be reflected in the Portfolio tab within the OptionsPlay platform.

Investment Rationale

With the strength of the US Dollar, gold and silver have broken below their key support levels. After breaking the major $20 support level in early May and collapsing to $16, the pullback in the US Dollar this week has Silver rallying to levels just shy of this key $20 resistance level. Given the macro headwinds of a slowing global economy and persistent dollar strength, the risks skew to the downside. Moreover, this rally puts silver a full 2 standard deviations above its 40 period moving average, generating a short signal. We are targeting a return back towards its Sept lows by purchasing a Nov $19/$17 Put vertical for a $0.55 Debit.

SLV – Daily

SPY Bullish Opening Trade

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Strategy Details

Strategy: Short Put Vertical Spread

Direction: Bullish

Details: Sell to Open 10 Contracts Oct. 14th $362/365 Put Vertical Spreads @ $1.13 Credit.

Total Risk: This trade has a max risk of $1,870 (10 Contracts x $187).

Counter Trend Signal: This is a Bullish trade on a stock that is experiencing a bearish trend. 

1M/6M Trends: Bearish/ Bearish

Technical Score: 5/10

OptionsPlay Score: 87

Entering the Trade

Use the following details to enter the trade on your trading platform. Please note that if there is a multi-leg option strategy, it should be entered as a single trade. 

Please note these prices are based on the previous day’s closing prices. Should the underlying move significantly during the pre-market hours, we will likely adjust the strikes and prices to reflect a more accurate trade entry. This will be reflected in the Portfolio tab within the OptionsPlay platform.

Investment Rationale

Yesterday’s rally didn’t come out of nowhere.  It came from Friday’s new 2022 lows that were done at end of month/end of quarter/and an expiration day. It also came on a daily Sequential -12 signal, upping the odds quite a bit that Monday would be a -13 count (which it was, and the first daily standard Sequential -13 reading since May 12 – almost five months ago).

SPX – Daily

The first question to ask oneself – after seeing a rip higher like we did yesterday – is “Has anything changed the bigger story?” And the answer to that question was found in looking at the charts showing the dollar’s rally further falling beneath the 112.63 target we’ve had, and bond yields continuing their pullback from last week’s 4% high. Those two non-equity markets – that have so much to do with how equities have traded this year – both gave reasons to be buying yesterday. Or at the very least, suggesting one not press the overall bearish bet at that place and time.

The second question is how much duration does a potential rally have? Was this a one day affair, with today going to give it all back like what happened last Wednesday and Thursday? Does it last a few days? A week? A month That, of course, is the bigger and more important question to decipher. To me, that answer can only come by also seeing what rates and the greenback do going forward, for their inverse relationship to the stock market is still quite prevalent and will likely be so through year’s end.

Right now, the dollar has hit an important target and halted – at least for now. The bonds hit an important target and halted – at least for now. The SPX hit its 200-WMA and saw but a one day breach of the June lows and halted its decline – at least for now. So, watch for any of these two non-equity benchmarks to continue their declines or to properly break above them and you’ll likely have the direction the stock market will go. At least for now.

I’ve looked closely into Monday’s SPY price action and have determined that if a pullback is going to hold, the SPY should not get lower than the $364.50 to $362 zone. Use that as a potential bullish area to buy today or tomorrow on an intra-day decline. So, turning this into an actual trade idea, let’s sell the short-dated October 14th SPY $365/$362 put spread when/if we see a pullback into this zone. (On Monday this spread closed at $1.14, but it will be higher when/if we get filled.)

I’d suggest you do this trade with more than one entry price, rather than picking the midpoint (i.e., just in case it doesn’t get to $363.50). So put some on near each of those 4 whole dollar levels to try to get an average entry at $363.50, but having something on should it, let’s say, only pullback to $364 (in which case you’d still have some partial bullish exposure on).

If I’m right that sometime in October we’re going to see the SPX mid-3400s trade, I don’t want to go out to any further expiration date for a bullish play from the current SPX level (which is now some 200 points higher than that target zone).

Closing Trades

• HLT – 87.65% Gain: Sell to Close 4 Contracts October 21, 2022 $135/$125 Put Verticals @ $7.60 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing the remaining 4 of 8 Contracts, we will be receiving $3, 040. We took partial profit for this trade on September 22 at $6.30 Credit by closing half of the positions. Our average cost basis to exit the trade is, therefore, $6.95 Credit and the average gain is 71.61%.
• ARKK – 62.87% Loss: Sell to Close 8 Contracts November 18, 2022 $45/$54 Call Verticals @ $1.01 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing all 8 Contracts, we will be receiving $808. 

Partial Closing Trades

SRE -164.77% Gain: Sell to Close 1 Contract Oct. 21st $165/$145 Put Vertical @ $11.65 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing 1 of the remaining 3 Contracts, we will be receiving $1,165.

AAPL Bearish Opening Trade

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Strategy Details

Strategy: Short Call Vertical Spread

Direction: Bearish

Details: Sell to Open 1 Contract Nov. 11^th $145/$157.5 Call Vertical Spread @ $4.65 Credit.

Total Risk: This trade has a max risk of $785 (1 Contract x $785).

Trend Continuation Signal: This is a Bearish trade on a stock that is experiencing a bearish trend. 

1M/6M Trends: Bearish/ Bearish

Technical Score: 5/10

OptionsPlay Score: 105

Entering the Trade

Use the following details to enter the trade on your trading platform. Please note that if there is a multi-leg option strategy, it should be entered as a single trade. 

Please note that these prices are based on the previous day’s closing prices. Should the underlying move significantly during the pre-market hours, we will likely adjust the strikes and prices to reflect a more accurate trade entry. This will be reflected in the Portfolio tab within the OptionsPlay platform.

Investment Rationale

Stocks gave back Wednesday’s large gain (and more), and gave agata to all bulls who boasted that “the double bottom is in”.  ell… nope. At least not yet. Today is end of month and quarter, so it’d be no surprise to see some major swings in price. Even if we see a rally off of the DeMark -13s in many, many names, I don’t think the bounce gets materially above the 3819 level – the properly broken weekly TDST Line that previously had not been properly broken on the late-Spring decline to the June low. (It should now present resistance.)

As mentioned in yesterday’s post-close webinar Tony and I hosted, we are going to look to sell an upside call spread in Apple, with our belief that it will likely test its 2022 low area (if not further) in the fall. As such, we will look to put on a half-position today (i.e., 1% risk of a theoretical $100K size account vs. the normal 2% we risk on most trades) by selling the Nov. 11th $145/$157.5 call spread, collecting a $4.65 credit, or ~38% of the spread differential (that was $2.5 OTM as of Thursday’s close). That’s how much AAPL vol is juiced up right now.

AAPL – Weekly

Today, we also want to close out our remaining 4 HLT Oct. 21^st $135/$125 put spreads.

I will also take off one more of our long SRE Oct. 21 $165/$145 put spreads, bringing us down to now holding 2 of the original 5 spreads. This one is up 165% as of yesterday’s close.

And don’t forget that we can still look to enter yesterday’s TLT idea if it pulls back to the $102.50/$101.50 level by putting on the Oct. 14th $102/$98 put spread.

So, lots to do today. Have a good weekend.

TLT Bullish Conditional Opening Trade

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Strategy Details

Strategy: Short Put Vertical Spread

Direction: Bullish

Details: Sell to Open 6 Contracts Oct. 14th $102/$98 Put Vertical Spreads @ $0.86 Credit.

Total Risk: This trade has a max risk of $1,884 (6 Contracts x $314).

Counter Trend Signal: This is a Bullish trade on a stock that is experiencing a bearish trend. 

1M/6M Trends: Bearish/ Bearish

Technical Score: 5/10

OptionsPlay Score: 95

Entering the Trade

Use the following details to enter the trade on your trading platform. Please note that if there is a multi-leg option strategy, it should be entered as a single trade. 

Please note that this is a conditional trade. The condition that has to be met, before you enter this bullish trade is if we see a pullback to between $102.50 and $101.50. Therefore, the credit received for this trade will be different than what we are showing here, which is only acting as a guideline. 

Investment Rationale

Stocks lifted off from a full test of the June lows, with the SPX crossing back above 3700 on a day that also got some relief from bond yields substantially pulling back. There is good reason to believe that bond rates have hit an important short-term high, and as such, stocks may still see a lift (as I mentioned we’d likely see this week from last week’s weekly QQQ -13 signal).

I don’t think that the SPX would get much above what is now a properly broken weekly TDST line at 3819, so let the bulls have their fun for a few days, and then we’ll look to lean into the rally again. But in the meantime – seeing yesterday’s solid bond yields’ reversal session – we’re going to look to enter a bullish TLT trade if we see a pullback to between $102.50 and $101.50. So, if we see this price decline to our target zone today or tomorrow, we will then look to sell a short-dated TLT October 14th $102/$98 put spread at the then current mid-price. (For reference – but nothing more than that – this spread closed at 84 cents yesterday.)

THIS IS A CONDITIONAL TRADE.

TLT – Daily

Closing Trades

• BKR – 32.43% Loss: Sell to Close 1 Contract October 21, 2022 $24/$26/$29 Call Spread Risk Reversal @ $3.45 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing 1 Contract, we will be receiving $345.
• UNG – 35.81% Loss: Buy to Close 7 Contracts October 21, 2022 $27/$24 Put Verticals@ $2.01 Debit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing the remaining 7 of 14 Contracts, we will be paying $1,407. We took partial profits for this trade on September 16 at a $1.11 Debit. Therefore, the average loss on this trade is 5.41% and the average cost basis to exit this trade is $1.56 Debit.

Partial Closing Trades

SRE -126.14% Gain: Sell to Close 1 Contract Oct. 21st $165/$145 Put Verticals @ $9.95 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing 1 of the remaining 4 Contracts, we will be receiving $995.

Investment Rationale

Yesterday, stocks were first up, then down, and finished mixed depending upon which index you were focused on. The one we do, the SPX, closed down 7.75 points (0.21%) at 3647 – the lowest close of 2022 and is now just 10 points above the June low.

There is a slew of tech names that are getting daily downside DeMark exhaustion signals, and those who are trading mavericks can look for some of them to play should they want. To me, any rally is still a selling opportunity, so I welcome bounces in order to be able to sell into a move higher (something almost always preferable to selling into weakness). I still think the market is going well lower, and after we get the noise out of the way from those looking to buy the test of the June lows, the steamroll will persist. (Think of the bear market possibly on a quick coffee break.) When the SPX gets to 3300/3100, I will put back on the bulk of money I’ve raised throughout the year back into play.

For today, I want to again take off 1 contract of the 5 remaining we have in the long SRE Oct. 21 $165/$145 put spread. (We took the first one off yesterday.) We are now up $126% on these 5, and I am a fan of locking in profits like that, but gingerly so. But it’s sold down to the level it broke out from in July ($154), so let’s take a little more off the table.

SRE – Daily

We’re also going to exit the long BKR Oct. 1 $24/$26/$29 Financed spread reversal today @ $3.45. We’re down 12% on it (not the incorrectly displayed loss showing in the DP portfolio, where the margin was incorrectly calculated).

Lastly, let’s also exit the short UNG Oct. 21 $27/$24 put spread. The remaining 7 contracts we have on are down 60% as I write this.

Partial Closing Trade

SRE -76.14% Gain: Sell to Close 1 Contract Oct. 21st $165/$145 Put Vertical @ $7.75 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing 1 of the 5 Contracts, we will be receiving $775.

DHR Bearish Opening Trade

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Strategy Details

Strategy: Short Call Vertical Spread

Direction: Bearish

Details: Sell to Open 2 Contracts Oct. 21st $265/$282.5 Call Vertical Spreads @ $6.35 Credit.

Total Risk: This trade has a max risk of $2,230 (2 Contracts x $1,115).

Trend Continuation Signal: This is a Bearish trade on a stock that is experiencing a bearish trend. 

1M/6M Trends: Bearish/ Bearish

Technical Score: 7/10

OptionsPlay Score: 101

Entering the Trade

Use the following details to enter the trade on your trading platform. Please note that if there is a multi-leg option strategy, it should be entered as a single trade. 

Please note these prices are based on the previous day’s closing prices. Should the underlying move significantly during the pre-market hours, we will likely adjust the strikes and prices to reflect a more accurate trade entry. This will be reflected in the Portfolio tab within the OptionsPlay platform.

Investment Rationale

Here’s a new trade idea based almost completely upon one new key element that is different than the past. When we look at a weekly bar chart of Danaher Corp. (DHR), we see it’s been in a trading range this year, and being in the middle of that range right now gives us no particular reason to trade the name.

DHR – Weekly

But look at the same chart with the Cloud model place on it, and we see that last week the cloud’s Lagging Line broke its cloud bottom, suggesting a new leg lower is likely starting.

DHR – Weekly with Cloud Model

As such, let’s look to sell an October 21st $265/$282.5 call spread. t closed last Friday at $8.45 mid, collecting us about 38% of the strike differential. I suspect this will test and potentially breach its 2022 lowest weekly close of $238.60.

SRE Bearish Opening Trade

View SRE Trade

Strategy Details

Strategy: Long Put Vertical Spread

Direction: Bearish

Details: Buy to Open 5 Contracts Oct. 21st $165/$145 Put Vertical Spreads @ $4.40 Debit.

Total Risk: This trade has a max risk of $2,200 (5 Contracts x $440).

Trend Continuation Signal: This is a Bearish trade on a stock that is experiencing a mildly bearish trend. 

1M/6M Trends: Mildly Bearish/ Bullish

Technical Score: 9/10

OptionsPlay Score: 111

Entering the Trade

Use the following details to enter the trade on your trading platform. Please note that if there is a multi-leg option strategy, it should be entered as a single trade. 

Please note these prices are based on the previous day’s closing prices. Should the underlying move significantly during the pre-market hours, we will likely adjust the strikes and prices to reflect a more accurate trade entry. This will be reflected in the Portfolio tab within the OptionsPlay platform.

Investment Rationale

Stocks continue to tumble, as professional money managers – who know the implication of the broken weekly cloud – are heeding its signal. I remain a seller of rallies, and we might even get one next week with yesterday marking both daily Aggressive Sequential and Combo -13 signals, and today likely becoming a Setup -9 count, too. Given rather poor bullish sentiment on top of this, we could see some price pop in the coming days. (However, I believe it will be an ephemeral one.)

SPX – Daily

I’m looking for names to sell, and I found one that has upside exhaustion signals and is a heck of a lot closer to its 2022 high than most you’ll find. It’s Sempra Energy (SRE). As it marked a weekly +13/+9 last week, and looks like it could head decently lower relative to the upside risk of about $15, we’ll look to get long SRE Oct. 21st $165/$145 put spreads for what closed yesterday at $4.40 mid. That’s only 22% of the strike differential with the chance to make as much as $15.60, or about 3.5x our premium paid.

SRE – Weekly

Closing Trade

• XOM – 92.46% Gain: Buy to Close 4 Contracts September 23, 2022 $95/$100 Call Verticals @ $0.15 Debit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing the remaining 4 of the 6 Contracts, we will be paying $60. 

Partial Closing Trade

• HLT – 55.56% Gain: Sell to Close 4 Contracts October 21, 2022 $135/$125 Put Verticals @ $6.30 Credit. DailyPlay Portfolio: By Closing 4 of the 8 Contracts, we will be receiving $2,520. 

Investment Rationale

The Fed spoke, and they found a way to still surprise investors with even a more hawkish stance, ultimately sending the see-saw post-announcement trading session into a closing dive.

SPX 1-day 5-minute

This now puts the SPX a full 100 points beneath our key 3889 level, with only today and Friday for it to recover most of it for us to potentially not get the breakdown signal I had been looking for.  Therefore, I’m going to have to think in terms of “it has broken”.  Therefore, it will keep us leaning more towards buying puts and selling calls than the other way around, at least until I have a sense that there are opportunities to successfully buy.

We still have on 4 of 6 short XOM $95/$100 call spreads that expire on Friday. (We took two off on Tuesday.)  Make sure you exit the balance today and/or tomorrow.

XOM – Daily

We also have on a long HLT Oct. 31 $135/$125 put spread that we are up ~56% in.  We are going to take half of that off today, too.

HLT – Daily

As I’ve been saying for months, use rallies to trim your portfolios of the non-performers and names that you can also sell out of to offset taxable profitable gains you’ve had, too.  I suspect that although many will look for a test of the June lows to be a place to buy, that they will more likely give way and that we won’t really get a more reliable bottom in until the SPX achieves a weekly Setup -9 count some four weeks from now.

SPX – Weekly

Investment Rational

Stocks lost a percent or so yesterday, and that helped push the SPX down to 3855 – almost 1% beneath the key 3889 level we are focusing on for this and the next 3-4 Friday closes. If it weren’t for a Fed meeting today, I’d already be getting more defensive than I already am, but we do need to see what happens today to get a clearer sense of if the market is really going to break from this area or not. (My hunch is it will, and that once the lows are tested we won’t likely see the SPX get above 3820-ish.)

Should the market get a decent decline into today’s close, then we know that we will be looking to use tactical trading rallies to lean into on a fairly consistent basis, and the biggest question we’ll need to deal with is whether we are buying put spreads or selling call spreads. That will make things much easier for us and you going forward because we’ll have an even stronger market direction opinion to use consistently as the basis of our DailyPlay ideas.

If I’m right that UST 10-yr. rates are headed to 3.70% to ~3.82% — which pushes the UST 2-yr. yield to well over 4% (at its current approx. 40+ bp. differential), I can’t see how stocks can get significant traction higher. So, continue to watch rates and the dollar, for higher moves in them will likely continue to pressure equities.

No new DP idea today with the FOMC rate decision coming. 

Investment Rationale

Stocks started to the downside yesterday, only to reverse intraday into a day of gains, with the SPX getting as low as 3947 before closing at 3900. As I mentioned in yesterday’s weekly outlook, the key level we’re focusing on is 3889 on this Friday’s close. Any significant breach of that level breaks the weekly cloud chart into a further bearish picture, and likely opens the door for a bigger decline than those simply looking for a test of the June lows would expect.

With the Fed’s next move coming tomorrow at 2pm ET (the consensus expectation is for a 75 bp. rate hike), the real focus will be on Chair Powell’s press conference words and tone. He’d likely need to make an even stauncher hawkish comment than he did from Jackson Hole last month in order to get investors even more fearful than they already are.

I’m not in the business of outguessing the Fed, but I am in the one of anticipating how investors will react to news along with how they are positioned going into it. As I told my institutional clients Sunday night, my research shows that investors have the lowest “Risk On” positioning they’ve had since the Covid meltdown in Spring 2020. That is more tactically bullish than bearish, but strategically the opposite, so keep that in mind as you play the next month or two of market swings.

We have on a short XOM $95/$100 call spread that expires Friday and is up about 62% on it. With the Fed meeting tomorrow, let’s take partial profits today by taking off 3 of the 6 spreads. Yesterday it’s closing mid price was 76 cents. (We’re short from $1.99).

XOM – Daily