What the Fed?

Our current monetary policy is not a topic that effects just investors. The Feds decisions effect EVERYONE and is something everyone should be familiar with.

The whole Quantitative Easing (QE) concept can be a hard pill to swallow especially if you’ve never heard of it before. The market is really sensitive to the Federal Reserve (The Fed) because their decisions are effecting investors forward guidance (views of the future)

QE  in 30 seconds:

• Fed buys bonds and mortgage backed securities. The asset purchases cause lower interest rates, which encourages spending in the economy. Spending incentivize banks to lend, which increases financing activities for consumers and businesses.
• The Fed was buying 85 billion dollars worth of assets each month and planned to continue until they felt the economy was somewhat stable. (lower unemployment, healthy market performance and growth)
• QE= Fed training wheels for the American economy

Basically everyone is wondering when they are going to take off the training wheels, just like riding a bike if you are not ready to ride the two wheeler you could be in for a very rude awakening.

Instead of cutting the bond buying off cold turkey, The Fed is taking a screw out of one of the training wheels. Each month they are planning to reduce the amount of bond purchases by 10 billion per month, ending the monetary policy in 2014.  The move to decrease bond buying indicates that the economy is  getting closer to meet their standards.

The recent declines in U.S indices is due to the spillover from the selloff in Emerging Markets.

• A selloff in emerging markets was caused by the central banks decision to tighten their monetary policy. Tightening means the Central Banks plan to increase interest rates, which would usually create an incentive for investors. The aggressive rate of tightening is concerning because it may hinder their economic growth, which is causing a selloff.
• Detailed article about the EM Selloff: Emerging Markets Selloff Spreads from WSj

The market was pretty tepid going into the meeting. The Fed announced they will continue reducing the asset purchases. The downward momentum added to the index decline from EM. Despite yesterday's rally, I am maintaining a bearish view.

Here are some articles if you want some additional information about the Fed meeting:
Fed stays the course by tapering another $10 billion from MarketWatch
US stock indexes steeply lower after Fed does as expected from CNBC

Thanks,

Brit

SCTY 72.5 April Calls

Hello!

I decided to separate explanatory and position posts. This will make the information a little less overwhelming. Hopefully, the educational posts will build a foundation for the position posts.



The Story:

I was looking for a trade idea to start the year. Picking a position is a little overwhelming sometimes, there is a lot of data/ information to try and break down. I like to read SeekingAlpha and MarketWatch when I am looking for ideas.

I stumbled on this article: The Solar Outlook for 2014.

I chose SolarCity over the other companies listed because it was not as prominent as FirstSolar and there was more potential for a breakout move.

After picking SCTY, I used FINVIZ to look at the chart, focusing on technical indicators

• SCTY was trading at $59.10, which was very close to the resistance level. Once a stock breaks the resistance level it will gain momentum causing a price jump

The Position: 

I wish I had the chart to show exactly what I was looking at but I don't :(

Anyways, the trendline indicated that if the resistance was broken the stock could rally to $70.

I picked an April expiration, a further expiration can cheapen the price of the option. After the expiration, I picked a strike price that was not too expensive but had a decent delta. 

• Strike price: What you expect the price to be in the future
• Delta: How much the options price is expected to change with the change in the actual stock
• For example the delta was .50, therefore for every 1 point move in SCTY stock the option changed by .50

After all the research I decided on buying two 72.5 April Calls the next morning (Monday).

On Monday Goldman Sachs upgraded SCTY and the stock hit all time high's. Even though the price was way higher than when I initially decided on the trade, the trendline still had momentum to go even higher.

I bought 2 72.5 April calls at $6.85. 

The Profit:

SCTY continued to trade higher. On Jan. 16th my options were priced at $11.75! Almost double my purchase price!!!! I sold my calls and the trade realized a $960 profit.

Although I was bullish on SCTY, the rally seemed a bit overdone and I did not want to lose out on collecting profits. The next day it was trading at close to $80 but today it is at $69.

Here is the chart of the duration of my trade

Thanks for reading!!!

I realize there was not a lot of explanations in this post, hopefully as I write more of the explanation posts the material will be easier to grasp. 

follow me on Twitter: @TheBritReport

Thanks,

Brit

Market March Madness: 1/27/14

I am going to spend more time giving quick market updates, explanations and opinions. I will continue to post my positions but I want to give a little bit more information instead of giving information without laying the foundation.

Lets get into it.

There are 2 important topics going into this week: I'll explain 1 today and the other tomorrow

1. Earnings
2. The Fed Meeting ( I'm saving the explanation for Tuesday)

 

Earnings: The Market's March Madness

In light of Warren Buffet offering 1 BILLION dollars for the most accurate March Madness Bracket, I decided to use the tourney to loosely describe earnings. 

Regular Season: 

Earnings, which are released every quarter, draw a lot of attention because they indicate how profitable a company was during the previous quarter. Investor's pay close attention to earnings because they help paint a picture of  companies' current performance and the outlook for  the future. 

Think of it like this: Investors have been using various pieces of news throughout the quarter to gauge how the company is performing.  During the regular season you watch your teams the games and keep track of their record. The season record gives an idea of what can be expected going into the tournament. 

Filling out the Bracket:

Before earnings are released investors will start to take positions (buying or selling shares/options). Their positions reflect their opinion on earnings data.

• Bullish : Buy into the stock before the earnings release in anticipation of a rally (large increase) and sell once it has hit the price you expected (collecting profits)
• Bearish: Sell the stock in anticipation that the price will go down 
• This is only profitable if your short selling, if the stock is in your portfolio, a sell would be to protect downside losses

Taking a position is similar to filling out your bracket. When filling out a bracket you consider  the teams record (previous earnings/info), the coach (CEO), industry (conference) and products/services (star players). Gathering all that info you are forecasting essentially who is going to lose and win. 

The Championship:

Okay fast forward through all the individual games and let's focus on the championship. For earnings, it is the same as their release.

 

The information people usually receive first is if the company beat or missed their earnings. Beating estimates (winning) and missing estimates (losing). The impact of the actual earnings will be reflected in how much the stock gains or loses. 

• Beating estimates will usually cause the stock price to increase because it indicates that the companies had more revenue than anticipated.
• Missing estimates will usually cause the stock price to decrease

Unlike winning and losing, the amount in which the stock moves in either direction is priced in by the reason the earnings were missed or beaten. Here are some examples of price reactions to earnings:

• Company beats earnings because they fired a bunch of people, that is not considered a sustaining source of revenue growth, so the price decreases
• Company missed earnings because they were hit with a one time legal settlement but has strong fundamentals, price decrease is not as big
• JP Morgan (JPM) is considered a stable bank with the necessary tools to continue growth and maintain strength. A couple weeks ago, JPM missed estimates. JPM's miss was largely attributed to the number of legal settlements it faced during the quarter. This event is not something an investor would see as a fundamental issue, therefore the stock barely dropped.  

• Company beats earnings because they saw a huge increase in advertising, which increased their profitability. This positive outlook will cause the price to go up. 
• Microsoft's ad revenues increased by 34% which caused their stock price to increase 
• Company misses earnings because they are terrible and have no sales and a very bleak outlook. Price goes down.

These are just a few various way earnings can be digested.

So to keep with the March Madness theme, say you expect earnings to beat estimates and you buy in early. The earnings are released and you were correct and the price soars. Just like picking the winning team in March Madness. Woohooo! 

 It isn't as black and white  as March Madness but hopefully I brought some clarity.

Today all eyes are on Apple, which should be reporting earnings shortly.

 

Best,

 

Brit

GLOSSARY

Bearish: Expect prices to decrease, also known as being "short" 

Bullish: Expect prices to increase, also known as being "long"

Profit Margins: The proportion of sales that are kept for revenue, 20% profit margin means for every dollar in sales $.20 are kept for profits. (investopedia)

Quarter: Three month time period, at the end of each quarter companies pay dividends and report earnings (investopedia)

Revenue: The amount of money a company receives from sales, investments etc. (Investopedia)