The Week Ahead: XBI, ARKF, ARKG, BITO, ARKK, KWEB, IWM/RUT

Earnings:

TSLA (63/69). Announces on Wednesday after market close, so if you're looking to play the volatility contraction, look to put on a play in the waning hours of Wednesday's session or, if implied volatility afterglow persists, early Thursday after it has made its move. If NFLX earnings is any indication of whether TSLA will "behave," you may want to consider waiting until after the announcement to avoid a repeat of "the Netflix experience." As it is, the January 28th options are pricing in something bigly: +/- $82 or so, so 862 on the put side, 1026.


Exchange-Traded Funds Screened for Rank >70%/30-Day >35%, Implied Volatility Rank Ordered:

Cathie Woods' funds continue to have a really bad hair day/week/month ... .

XBI (100/48)
ARKF (97/59)
ARKG (87/66)
BITO (82/85)
ARKK (82/62)
KWEB (74/58)
EWZ (51/40)

Pictured here is a bullish assumption BITO March 18th 17 short put, paying .60 at the mid price on buying power of 16.40. The broker is still requiring it to be cash-secured, so the ROC %-age is not all that sexy: 3.7% at max (25.0% annualized) as a function of buying power effect. Because of that, I would consider slapping on a cheap put to bring in the buying power effect, but the best you can currently do is to buy the 13, making it into a four-wide paying .38, and that amount isn't particularly compelling, particularly if you're going to be taking profit at 50% max. The ROC %-age is way better (9.5% at max), but I'd rather look at a setup where the long leg costs something like .05-.10, so I may stick a pin in that trade; lower strikes may populate at some point.


Broad Market Exchange-Traded Funds, Implied Volatility Rank Ordered:

QQQ (77/33)
IWM (77/35)
SPY (73/28)
DIA (72/26)
EFA (65/23)

In the retirement account, I'll basically continue to ladder out short put as long as IVR/IV remains elevated. This is the exact environment in which I like to make additions on the put side: weakness plus increased implied volatility. Naturally, one begets the other. I'll also be keeping an eye on net portfolio delta to see if additional short delta hedge is required to keep me from getting overly directional which can make things more uncomfortable in a protracted down turn. I point this out because what people primarily see in my feed is "short put, short put, short put" and not the short delta hedges put on that are just kind of running in the background. There is individual trade delta, but also portfolio-wide delta.



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