Stay steady while bulls and bears let their tempers flare
Tensions were flaring on the Scutify Scuttles page last night, with both bulls and bears attacking each other. Remember that emotions are the enemy of successful investors and traders, so don’t let your emotions dictate what you do with your portfolio.
All that said, emotions and sentiment are often what drives the markets in the short-term. I am thinking all this bull and bear tension just might mean that the markets are about to make a big 5% move. Up or down is the question. When trader tensions flare, they exacerbate the volatility in the markets, because the scared bulls will likely sell if their stocks crack any further and the bears will buy to cover if their stocks pop any further.
I’m not trying to game the next move in the market and as I sat here this morning trying to come up with a “Feet to fire” guess for how this will play out in the near-term, I couldn’t. If the markets are liable to make a volatile move in the near-term, buying volatility via buying call and/or puts is probably the best way to try to game it. I’ve recently bought some call options on Yandex and other as well as having bought some put options on the XRT and others. I’ll just take the trades and the market action as they come for now. Steady as she goes, as usual.
Speaking of steady as she goes, here’s some of the best questions I got from Marketwatch readers, Scutify users, and TradingWithCody.com subscribers this week.
Q. What else are you on the “verge” of trading? You had previously mentioned shorting some retailers, like Barnes & Noble and the retail ETF? What else…you waiting for Go Pro IPO to invest there?
A. Yes, I’d mentioned shorting BKS and a few other retailers over the past few weeks or months or years and buying puts on the XRT. I can’t invest in GoPro until it goes public and I won’t know what valuation or metrics or what analysis will go along with it coming public until it does.
Q. $INVN beaten and unloved…what changes that and when?
A. $INVN needs a win in the the new iPhone for it to spike big time short-term, I’d guess. Mid-term, Samsung smartphones and tablets to take back off in big numbers and that stock would pop.
Q. Any insight into Twitter TWTR stock price movement? Sure the Sound Cloud acquisition rumor has had some impact, but in general $TWTR does not seem to be participating in the technology rebound.
A. Yeah, that TWTR is hated right here right now. $TWTR right now reminds me a bit of AAPL two months ago when it couldn’t get a bid and people thought it’d never go up again. I would expect that as long as tech/momentum stocks hang tough or go up over the next couple or three months, that TWTR would pop back to $40. Twitter doesn’t have the earnings and value that Apple did, and anyway no guarantees.
Q. Hi Cody, Thank you for your very interesting posts about the Drone Revolution– and the excellent recent trade in Yelp. How do you feel about Amazon these days? Is it time to scale in if we don’t have a position, or stay away?
A. Thanks for the kind words. I just ordered this drone from Amazon to do some “field research” on the Drone Revolution. It’ll probably be better than my home-made remote-controlled dune buggy movie making drone, huh? Good question on Amazon. It’s just not got much of a catalyst any time soon here that I can see and the valuation remains ridiculous if you just look at it’s P/E. I think that Amazon will likely grow top line 20% per year for the next three years at least, which would mean it’ll be doing $200BB in sales in a couple more years. I think a 1x sales valuation is likely a baseline case for the stock. 1x next year sales would give you a $250 stock, so there’s probably the level I’d get serious about building a position at. But as always, I’d suggest starting with a small 1/4 or 1/5 size position here and then give yourself room to add over time.
Q. Hi, Cody: any more thoughts on our most-definitely contrarian play on Russian-Internet YNDX, or are we still slaves to the media and actual eventss. (It’s recovered a bit. Also, you seem to have a subscriber, Strange-Currencies, showing a Russian Federation flag. Wonder (if he’s there) if he has any insights.
A. Nothing new with the Yandex. Russia’s stock market and Yandex have popped back up lately as planned, but not as much as we’d like to see. Yet, at least, but it’s up again nicely this morning and there are still a couple months to go in this trade.
