iBC Fantasy Football Semifinals

And then there were four…

The iBC Fantasy Football League playoffs have unfolded rather predictably so far, with both of the favorites advancing in last weekend’s divisional round.  Although #4 Goldie’s Gangztaz left it late against the 5th seed Jayhawks (who almost pulled off an unlikely Sunday night comeback thanks to DeSean Jackson).

So starting with tonight’s Colts – Jaguars matchup, we’re down to the Top 4, with #1 juggernaut Judge Smails facing off against the aforementioned #4 Gangztaz and #2 Dr. ‘Cane against the upstart #3 StarscreamPowerPlay.

The Judge, nigh unbeatable in the regular season, will continue to rely on his holy trinity of running backs:  MJD, Ray Rice, and Jamaal Charles.  That’s 2 of the top 3 scoring running backs from the regular season, while Charles has been anything but a slouch since taking over in KC.  Goldie, on the other hand, will be relying on the dynamic duo of A.Johnson and Randy Moss, the #1 & #5 scoring wide receivers so far.  However, Moss’s recent lackluster performances will be a cause for worry…

The 2nd matchup features arguably the league’s 2 most exciting players (to watch):  StarscreamPowerPlay‘s Chris Johnson vs. Dr. Cane‘s Drew Brees – the leading rusher vs. the best quarterback and the top 2 overall point scorers in the league.  With those cancelling each other out, the deciding points may come from some of the other stars in the lineup, such as Brandon Marshall for Dr. Cane (who just set the new NFL record for # of receptions in a game with 21) or Vernon Davis for StarscreamPowerPlay (the league’s highest scoring TE).

Root on your favorite team(s) and get all the live/up-to-the-minute scores at the league’s home page.

May the best team win!

(In more somber news, R.I.P. Chris Henry – 26, often troubled years.)

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As mentioned before, we’re in somewhat of a boring market nowadays.  Regardless of why that exactly may be, I think we can agree that eventually that will come to end.  Sooner or later we’ll get to re-experience how it to feels to have our faces ripped off by sudden moves rather than by a slow drip.

I’m sure we all hold different opinions regarding when exactly this may happen – be that ‘before Christmas’, ‘b/w Christmas & the New Year’, or just in 2010 – but I’d like to posit that it will happen sooner than you might think:

1.  $VIX at Support
The CBOE’s volatility index has been in a downward trend all year – understandable in light of all the “unknowns” that have been taken out of the market since the “crash” and the 666-bottom.  One would expect the $VIX to eventually bottom out (afterall, it cannot go to or too near 0, otherwise we’d truly end up with a flatlined market)…and this process seems to have picked ’20’ as its magic number.  Twice in the last 2 months we’ve come within a few hundredths of breaking it.  In both cases, failure led to a pullback (with October’s being the more significant):

So, as you can see, we’re just about to butt into that “support” line once again.  An expected bounce off this line should bring back some volatility in the form of a change from the established direction/trend (aka. pullback).

2.  $CPCI Boredom
Today’s index put:call ratio ($CPCI) reading (1.21) was yet another dud, the eighth in a row, which makes this the longest entry-less streak since late May/early June.  Such boredom usually correlates with a boring market…whereas the opposite (multiple entries in a short span) correlates with inflection points (which is what we were experiencing at the beginning of this month).  But just as when something is oversold/bought, a reversal is expected sooner or later.  And seeing as how the $CPCI is on its longest entry-less streak in 6 month, I’d expect this reversal to come rather quicklike and snap this thing out of its ennui.

On a side-/related-note, the shortest-term $CPCI sma (20-day) dipped below the middle-term sma (125-day) for the first time since April’09, which could give some cause for concerns for all the bulls out there  The additional divergence seen after today’s action should reinforce these concerns…

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Despite all of that, I won’t be picking at just puts on Thursday; trying to keep it balanced:

• puts:  CMG (@88.50), ESRX (@83.), HON (@40.25), IBB (@78.5),
• calls:  AAPL (@198.), CDE (@20.25),  FCX (adding @80.30), GDX (@48.75), KBH (@13.86),

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The DPeezy portfolio is having an excellent week so far…both net & booked value have been on the rise, with the latter well off its month-to-date low of -5%…certainly a welcome change!  The market however continues to remain rather listless and boring (a Banal Month, as King Thaler termed it), which has significantly contributed to my portfolio’s travails this December.

Take for example the short BWLD position, which (finally) stopped out today for a big loss…but it actually stopped out at a LOWER price point than what served as the original entry for the trade!  (In fact, I have since made a slight adjustment to my trading rules to try filter out this kind of “weak” entry.)

The position was opened on the 19th of November, via Dec’09 40. puts (of course, I was inviting trouble right there with such near-term options) at a basis of $1.60/contract, bought as BWLD dipped under $40.95, which was the recent low.  From that point on, the stock proceeded to die and hover in essentially a straight line.  18 trading days later and at 20 cents LOWER, the options were jettisoned for a quarter/contract.

Yeah, I’ve harped on this before…but damn, time decay is a bitch!

Also, the underlying will now proceed to drop 5 points in the next 2 days (Friday = expiration) just to rub this shit in some more.  45.86% of the time, it happens every time.

In any case…the booked loss from BWLD was somewhat alleviated by booked profits in SLB, USO, WMT.  No new positions were added, so my bias remains slightly bearish:

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I’ve got your hockey sticks for ya, right here!

From a well designed infographic published last week by the finest/free financial aggregator out there (Mint.com), here are 3 very impressive hockey sticks:

Now, obviously most people have been saving their money throughout most of the year, so they were ready to blow their ‘wads’ as the holiday shopping season got underway.  However, the fact that the 3 sectors have all exceeded their 2008 peaks is an excellent sign of economic recovery.

(Granted, Mint.com’s user base may not constitute a wholly representative sample of the general cash-spending US population…but these outliers would’ve had to spend significantly less to alter the overall shape of the graphs.)

And check out that impressive year-on-year spending increase that Best Buy had garnered!  I know that today’s earnings reaction was not exactly representative of that…but BBY remains nearly 300% off its lows from last November and should be just as strong going forward.  No doubt that the lack of competition from other chains such as Circuit City helped (Wal-Mart, Target, et al. aren’t able to compete at a similar level).  Options players tend to mostly agree, especially at the Mar’10 strikes, where calls out-traded puts roughly 2:1.

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Personally, another good day on the heels of an excellent Monday led by the timely calls FLR.  See, it’s worth paying attention sometimes as amidst all the flotsam, I _can_ come up with a treasure chest or two.  Also closed out HPQ long calls while losing a couple other bearish positions to stops.

Got filled on a few new positions, mostly calls.  Did however double down on the WMT puts, so the account remains skewed to the bearish side:

And while futures are looking decent at the moment, I have only put trades lined up for Wednesday:

• CF (@87.75), EEM (@41.), GES (@43.), PCLN (@217.), PNRA (add/double down @63.36), QQQQ (add/double down @43.95)), SPLS (@24.)

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You must excuse this bit of silence and slight delay in getting some proper posts up as your interim King, but I’ve been mired in an office move, both in my virtual and my real world.  And while the virtual move (from the PG to the KoPG) has been handled ever efficiently and effectively by iBC’s Computer Wizard(s), I can’t say the same about my real-world office move.

That arduous process has now been going on for several days and has included such egregious steps as the employees having to pack up their own office (computing equipment included), tag & bag it all, stack ’em nice & neat for the illegals to throw them into their truck and drive them a mile down the road…then, at the new site, unpack it all, hook it all up, and then deal with a half-finished network environment, improper lighting, and various other confusing directions.  The frustration was palpable.

But at least we have free coffee, although NOT of the K-Cup variety (instead, we have a few industrial strength espresso centers, which make mighty fine potent potables with fresh ground Peet’s beans).

In any case…it’s nice to back in the friendly confines of the KoPG, even though much cleaning is needed after V.King’s assassination.  You know, cleaning bits of “brain” matter off the walls, and scrubbing the floors/furniture clean of questionable residues (while ushering V.King’s army of skanks back out onto the streets…begone, bitches!).  As the original proprietor of this tab, the amount of filth around saddens me to no end.

Those of you who have been around for a while should know what sorts of boring stuff to expect from me – daily updates of things that pertain to me (shocking, I know, for a blog).  Nowadays, this mostly includes snapshots of my portfolio and trade ideas, but it may also include general/interesting action from the general options landscape out there.

While for the past few months I’ve kept it very simple with directional trades, I’m no stranger to more complex options strategies.  In fact, I did a whole series on them last time I was sitting on this here throne.  I will look to get back to doing more of that in the new year, once volume & volatility picks back up.  That being said, many of those strategies are long volatility plays (straddles, ratio spreads) so now may be the best time to open a few of those.  Food for thought, certainly.

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Anyway…let’s kick things off with a highly scintillating, ever exciting, uber-stimulating…portfolio update!!!  Wooo!!!!

It was actually a pretty fucking great day…fit for a King, dare I say.  Several of the bullish bets made last Thursday came to fruition and were hastily booked to ease the overall pain of the month-to-date bottom line (now off of it’s lows of -5%, back to “just” -3.5%).

All 4 sold positions were replaced, although with an even split of long puts & long calls – bearish on MOS & POT; bullish on BWLD & FLS (also included is the 1 closed position from Friday):

Tuesday’s picks include only calls:

• CDE (@20.25), FCX (@79.50), FLR (@41.17), ILMN (@28.50), KR (@20.28), MUR (@54.60), USO (@36.14)
• Although I am tempted to add to WMT puts under $53.75…

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