Thursday and Friday Market Movement

This past week was a busy week for the end of August. Amazon is still moving to new highs along with Apple despite Netflix cutting off the Apple Store's cut of Netflix subscriptions. There are still more tariff talks as we ironed out a deal with Mexico, Canada is pushing for a deal next. Tesla has continued to move down as Elon Musk has left the headlines and other auto manufacturers are entering the electric auto space. 

Alphabet (GOOGL) had a nice move up this past week. It peaked out around 1269 which was a surprise that it went up on Thursday given that it started the day down. It fell back to 1260, came back up to 1266 and was in free fall mode until 2pm on Friday. I bought 3 1260 Puts on when it was at 1265 and sold it too soon at 1258. If I sold them on Friday at the low of 1225, I would have multiplied my money by 7. 

So that sounds good and you might say let's do that the next time it goes up. Typically Alphabet has a great week ending with a fall in the last day and a half. The next week it starts down with a bottom found on Monday. The bottom is retested on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. By 2pm on Wednesday the bottom is in and you could feel comfortable buying Calls for the end of the week. If the move is huge on Thursday without a pull back, Friday could be a similar sell off day. If Friday is an up day, buy Call options for the next week. If it is not an up day, buy Call options near the bottom at the end of the day.

Given how much Apple has run and their new iPhone announcement, I would expect to see it pull back some before moving higher. I am looking for it to come down to 222 before buying Call Options a week or two out.

Thursday Market Went Up

• The stock market opened higher, came back some and continued higher in the afternoon. The market was lead by technology and banking stocks. Alphabet (GOOGL) was the bigger winner as it followed with the other FANG stocks, but never went negative like Amazon and Netflix.
• Alphabet opened up approximately 8 points and all of the FANG stocks were near the top on their stochastic indicators. Once again you could have bought Call options in the first few minutes on the pull back near where it opened, then sold when it peaked around 10am.
• The bigger buy was when it came back near where it opened around 10:40am and the indicators including Amazon and Netflix where down indicated they were going up. I made good money using this strategy buying Call Options on GOOGL with a strike price of 1130 and selling near the top from 6.55 and out at 13.19. I should have put my limit order for 14, but wanted to make sure I kept my profit.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Dow Drops Again to Start the Week

- Retaliatory tariffs from China started everything down on Monday. Boeing was a big drag as was Intel.
- Intel might have been down, but most tech stock ran way up. Amazon and Facebook hit new highs. Alphabet was up big the whole day after the announcement that they are investing $550 billion in JD.com. Alphabet has a lot of catching up to do with the over bought Amazon.
- Best Buy was the leader when it comes to retail today. Macy's and others ended the day near even which brings me to think that Best Buy has runs like a hybrid retail FANG stock.
- JP Morgan started lower and had a good run back to the 108 mark. I expect it to get up to 110 this week.
- Other than that it was a boring day as most stocks were trying to play make up to Friday's close.

Monday Ups and Downs in the Market

• With so much news happening this week, the market is going to react. With optimism for President Trump meeting with North Korea's President Kim drove the markets up some on Monday.
• Tesla opened up, took a mid day breather and went higher. Tesla will continue to go up for the rest of this month despite any negative news that doesn't have to do with production. CEO Elon Musk says they will produce 5000 vehicles in the last week of June. This production figure was promised multiple times for the past year and a half. If they don't meet it this time, Tesla will plummet in July.
• Alphabet (GOOGL) jumped up after 10am to hit 1048, but gave half of its gains back after 2pm. I have noticed that Alphabet would go up for a week and down for a week in the first half of the year. Recently in the past couple of weeks those changes have happened more rapidly in less than a week. Last week Alphabet completed a 5 day run mid day on Tuesday and went down for the remainder of Tuesday through Friday morning around 10:45am. Since Friday morning it has gone up.
• Boeing has tread water moving between 369 and 374. When it dips, there is an opportunity to buy Call Options and be out within a couple of hours with nice gains.
• Home Depot continued to go up on Monday. It was a focus of CNBC's Option Action on Friday with expectation of breaking out to a new high by the end of July. At it's current pace that will happen by the end of the week, but I would expect a pull back before then. Right now it has broken 200 and doesn't appear that it will trade below 200 again.
• AT&T's purchase of Time Warner will be ruled by the court around 4pm this afternoon. We won't get a market reaction until Wednesday. This is a big deal for Disney, Comcast and Fox as the Fox sale competition increases.

Thursday Market Craze

• Another day another way to clear President Trump from allegations. Many things have begun to spur the market higher. 
• Google had it's annual I/O developers conference at the beginning of the week where they announce new technology they will be producing. After such event, I have noticed that Alphabet (GOOGL) makes a strong run as it did yesterday. I thought it was a great time to buy a call when it was 1068. If you had, you could have quadrupled your money.
• Wednesday appears to be a turn around day like Tuesday. Boeing was up early, down to 338 and after sputtering there for about an hour it took off. 
• Unfortunately I sold out of my positions around 1pm. If I held another hour I would have more than doubled my profits. There was no turn back before 3pm on Wednesday.
• Roku was beaten down just under 31 a share since there last earnings report where they gave poor guidance. They started running up on Monday and on Wednesday was up 4 by close. They moved up another dollar after reporting their earnings Wednesday afternoon. I expect Roku to hit 50 a share in the next month.
• Sunrun (RUN) is my solar provider and they have moved up part of the energy run over the past few months. They continued higher after their earnings report Wednesday afternoon.
• The biggest news that the market didn't like was Walmart (WMT) buying a 75% in Flipkart which is larger than Amazon in India which is the 2nd largest population in the world to China. This is the biggest and best news from all of the earnings reports. CNBC's Jim Crammer loves Apple and Apple is spending $100 billion dollars on Share buy backs which does not equal dollars to shareholders. The tax reform should be made to make companies better through acquisitions and mergers rather than share buy backs. I expect Walmart to double in value by December.

Netflix Up, Banks Down

• Netflix retracted to 323 in the first few minutes of trading today before blowing through its all time high and hitting 339 by the afternoon. GOOGL took off like a rocket with very little retraction until the last 10 minutes of trading. From the action today in the tech sector we should expect a couple more days like this before a small pull back next week maybe. 
• I noticed NVDA was down before ending the day up over 6. Tesla opened down 5 before going down to 282 from there it bounced and ended around 289. This was a reaction to them shutting down production on the Model 3 for a week.
• Apple traded strong throughout the day coming close to 180 with very little pull back. 
• Goldman Sachs has a great earnings report before the market opened and it was trading up 3 before the market opened. It along with the financial stocks had a quick pop in the first 20 minutes followed by a decline near the lows for the week. The movement was not substantial enough to warrant finding a pattern for option trades. 
• Home Depot was up past 176 with the rest of the market and then came down to 174 where I noted to a colleague that the stochastic is showing that it is far over sold. We bought Calls with 175 strike price around $1 and sold them for $1.60 which was slightly early as it did reach $1.65. It did go back down as expected and finished the day around 175.
• IBM traded up during the day with earnings to be reported after market close  As noted before that when something is up before earnings, it is more likely to disappoint with the earnings news. This was the case here as it dipped right after close.
• Something I should have posted at the beginning of the week is the earnings calendar.
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More Bank Earnings, Netflix and Stuff

• Bank of America reported earning before market open and they were good. Bank stocks popped at open. JPM went down from 111.47 to approximately 110, came back up to 111.23 before going down to close just above 110. Months ago JPM had a great quarter and the price action was similar. I found that when the stock would hit a high for the day, buy a PUT and sell it once it drops a dollar. This worked for a couple of weeks before it broke out of the cycle and continued higher after a short drop. I found this worked with Home Depot as soon as it would hit a new high.
• The DOW Jones was up from beginning to close. Home Depot had nice movement to the upside peaking around 175.50 before losing a dollar by close.
• Google popped at open to hit 1044 before coming down to 1034. It came up a little before retesting the low for the day and with everything in the market took off and peaked at 1pm. It’s high was just over 1050 and closed at 1046.
• Netflix earning were reported after the market close. It was down more of the day from 308 to as low as 304. Last Friday on CNBC’s Option Action they were showing buying a PUT spread anticipating Netflix will go down as low as 275 with a 50% chance after earning were reported (I didn’t like because it was just as likely to go up).. After close it went down to 300 and shot up to 326 with excellent earnings report with strong customer growth in the US and international. CNBC’s Fast Money show expects to see Netflix hit it’s all time high which was established in March before coming back down.