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Portfolios Gain an Average of 10% for the Month:
The market (SPY) edged up 0.8% in November. In spite of mid-month relatively high volatility, things ended up just about where they started. The 6 actual portfolios carried out at Terry’s Tips outperformed the market by a factor of 12, gaining an average of 10.0%.
This 10% was less than October’s 14.2% average gain for the portfolios. The big reason why November lagged behind October was that we had one big losing portfolio this month (more on that later). Here are the results for each portfolio:
* After doubling in value, portfolio had 2-for-1 split in October 2015
** After doubling in value, portfolio had 2-for-1 split in September 2015.
***Portfolio started with $4000 and $5600 withdrawn in December 2014.
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S&P 500 Price Change for November = +0.8%
Average Portfolio Company Price Change for November = +1.8%
Average Portfolio Value Change for November = +10.0%
Further Comments: We have now recorded a 24.2% gain for the first two months of our First Saturday Reports. This is surely a remarkable result, 4 times better than the 5.4% that the market gained over those two months. Our results work out to an annualized rate of 145%, a level that we are surely not going to be able to maintain forever. But is has been fun so far.
All of the underlying stock prices did not gain in November. SBUX fell 1.3%, yet the Java Jive portfolio picked up 13.6%, proving once again that a lower stock price can still yield good gains, just as long as the drop is not too great.
Only one of our underlying stocks had an earnings announcement this month. Facebook (FB) announced and the stock edged higher, causing our Foxy Facebook to be our greatest gainer (up 22.1%) for November. We will have two earnings announcements in December – COST on the 8th and NKE which reports on the 20th or 21st. NKE also will have a 2-for-1 stock split on December 23rd. History shows that stocks which have a split tend to move higher after the split is announced, but then they move lower after the split has taken place. We will keep that in mind when we establish option positions later this month.
New Portfolio JNJ Jamboree Starts Off With a Nice Gain: In its first month of operation, our newest portfolio gained 14.3% while the stock closely mirrored the market’s gain, picking up 0.9% compared to the market’s 0.8% gain. JNJ pays a healthy dividend which reduces volatility a bit, but the portfolio’s early performance demonstrates that the 10K Strategy can make good gains even when the options carry a low Implied Volatility (IV).
What Happened in Vista Valley, our big Loser This Month? NKE experienced extreme volatility, first dropping when Dick’s had a dismal earnings announcement, and then recovering when reports indicated that NKE was doing much better than most of the retailers. In the second week of November, NKE crashed $9.92 (7.5%). This is a truly unusual drop, and immediately forced us to make a decision. Do we lower the strike prices of our options to protect ourselves against a further drop, or do we hang on and wait for a recovery?
We were a little concerned by some analyst reports which argued that while NKE was a great company, its current valuation was extremely high (and probably unsustainable). So we lowered the strike prices from the 130–135 range to the 120-125 range. This ended up being a big mistake, because in the subsequent week, the stock rose $10.79, totally reversing the week-earlier drop. This forced us to sell off the lower-strike spreads and start over again with the higher strikes we had at the beginning of the month. If we had done nothing, the portfolio would have made a large gain for the month. Since we have selected underlyings that we believe are headed higher, in the future we should be slow to adjust to the downside unless there is strong evidence to refute our initial positive take on the company. This experience is another reminder that high volatility is the Darth Vader of the 10K Strategy world.
Here are the actual positions we held in one of the 6 Terry’s Tips portfolios. This portfolio uses the S&P 500 tracking stock (SPY) as the underlying. We have been running this portfolio for only two months. These positions are typical of how we carry out the 10K Strategy for all the portfolios.
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Summary of Spy 10K Classic Portfolio. This $5000 portfolio was set up on October 6, 2015. It uses the 10K Strategy with short calls in several weekly series, some of which expire each week and is counted as one of our stock-based portfolios (even though it is not technically a stock, but an ETP).
Results for the week: With SPY up $1.69 (0.8%) for the 5-week month, the portfolio gained $491 or 8.6%. This is about what we should expect when the market is ultimately flat, but with high volatility inside the month. We dodged a bullet by refraining from adjusting last week when the stock tanked on Thursday because it recovered that entire loss on Friday.
Our positions right now are a little unusual for us because we only have short calls in the next two weekly option series. Usually, we have 3 or 4 short series in place. The reason we ended up where we are right now is that when we buy back expiring calls each Friday, if the market that week has been flat or down, we sell next-week at-the-money calls. If the market has moved higher, we go to further-out series and sell at strikes which are higher than the stock price. Most weeks in November were flat or down, so we did not move out to further-out option series.
Looking forward to next week, the risk profile graph shows that our break-even range extends from about $2 on the downside to $3 on the upside. An absolutely flat market should result in a much greater weekly gain than we experienced last month because we have an unusually high number of near-the-money calls expiring next week.
As we approach the regular monthly option series for December (they expire on the third Friday, the 18th), we need to remember that a dividend is payable to holders of SPY on December 17. If we have short in-the-money calls on that date, we risk having them exercised and leaving us with the obligation to pay that dividend. For that reason, we will roll out of any in-the-money short calls a day earlier than usual to avoid this possibility.
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Any questions? I would love to hear from you by email (terry@terrystips.com), or if you would like to talk to our guy Seth, give him a jingle at 800-803-4595 and either ask him your question(s) or give him your thoughts. seth@terrystips.com
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Terry
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