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Sell In May and Go Away?You might have heard the saying “Sell in May and go away.” It is an old investing adage that has been around for decades, but does it actually work? In this blog post, we are going to find out what’s best to do. We will discuss: 1. What is the meaning behind “Sell in May and go away?” 2. Does sell in May and go away work? 3. Should you sell in May and go away? 4. Two reasons not to sell in May and what to do instead. Let’s get started: 1. What Is The Meaning Behind “Sell In May And Go Away?” The saying “Sell in May and go away” has been around for a long time. It was first recorded in 1937 by John Hill via The Financial Times of London. The original saying was “Sell in May and come on back on St. Leger’s Day.” This phrase refers to a custom of aristocrats, merchants, and bankers who would leave the city of London and escape to the country during the hot summer months. St. Leger’s Day refers to the St. Leger’s Stakes, a thoroughbred horse race held in mid-September and the last leg of the British Triple Crown. And it seems that American traders have adopted the saying. Americans are more likely to spend more time on vacation between Memorial Day and Labor Day. 2. Does “Sell in May And Go Away” Work? And indeed, for over 50 years, the stock market performance supported the theory behind the strategy. From 1950 to around 2013, the DOW has had an average return of only 0.3% during the six-month period from May to October period. In comparison, the Dow had an average gain of 7.5% during the November to April period. So it seems that “Sell in May and Go away” is a strategy that may have worked for many years. But In recent times, it seems like the strategy has fallen out of favor. Technical analysts at Merrill Lynch looked at historical data and found THIS out: Looking at 3-month seasonal data going back to 1928, the June-August period typically is the second-best of the year, with gains 63% of the time, and an average return of 2.97%! 3. Should You Sell In May And Go Away? With all this conflicting data, does it make sense to sell in May and go away? Is this a good investment strategy? You know me — I always say “Trade What You See And Not What You Think!” Always look at the market data! As an example, last year, between May 4th and August 31st, 2020, the Nasdaq rose 28% (refer to chart). If you would have sold in May and "gone away," you would have missed out on these gains. 4. Two Reasons Not To Sell In May And What To Do Instead Maybe it makes sense to sell in May and go away when you’re an investor. MAYBE... But as a short-term trader like me, May is a GREAT month to trade, and here’s why: I like to trade The Wheel Strategy . With this trading strategy, you are selling option premiums. And there are 2 factors that influence options premiums: - Volatility When volatility is high, option premiums are higher. The Volatility Index VIX for the past few month, has been pretty low in March and April. But now, in May 2021, it's spiking up again. This means that options premiums are higher, which is perfect for a seller like me: I can get more premium! - Down Days Step 1 of The Wheel Strategy is selling puts, and you get more premium for puts on “Down Days” for such strategies. According to the NASDAQ , thus far, in May 2021, we had 7 “down days” and only 4 “up days." On “down days," there are many more trading opportunities. Last week, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst week since February, I made $3,722 in profits. Here Are Some Of My Trades In May: Let’s take a look at these trades in more detail: - Trade #1: Snapchat SNAP Snapchat recently had some rough weeks. In less than 2 months, it traded from a high of 72.50 to around $50 where it found some support. Most retail investors would stay away from a stock like this but I saw an opportunity to “buy it at a discount” : I sold Puts with a strike price of 47 and an expiration of 4 days. If SNAP closed below $47 on May 14 (the expiration date), I would have gotten assigned and bought SNAP for $47. I would consider that a bargain. If SNAP closed above $47, I would have just kept the premium that I received for selling calls. In this case, that’s $525. SNAP did close above $47 on May 14, and I collected $525 for 4 days of exposure in the stock market. - Trade #2: Square SQ Square looked very similar: Mid-February, the stock made a high of $280, but then it retreated to $200. Most market participants would not trade a stock like this, but looking back over a six-month period, I saw some good support around the $200 — $203 level. I sold 5 Puts with a strike price of 202.50 and an expiration date of May 14th. I received $100 in premium for each put, so I collected $500 in premium. On May 14, SQ closed above $202.50, and I made $500 in only 4 days. That’s a very nice return. - Other Trades I Took I sold 119 Puts on Apple , sold 212.50 Puts on Boeing , And I sold 39.50 Puts on Dave & Busters . All of these stocks have lost in value over the past few months. Investors who follow a ‘buy-and-hold approach” would lose money in this scenario, but as an active investor, I can apply trading strategies that make money even if the stock is going sideways or even moving lower. Summary “Sell in May and go away” is an old Wall Street adage that might be useful for buy-and-hold investors. But active investors like me are always on the lookout for trading opportunities. And with the right trading strategy, the increased volatility combined with markets that are moving lower is a dream come true. You need to have the right trading strategy. I personally like to use the PowerX Strategy for markets that are trending, and I trade The Wheel Strategy in choppy market conditions as we experience right now. With such a strategy, I am able to make money even if the stock is going sideways or lower. I for one will NOT sell in May and go away!
TVC:NDQEducation
by rockwelltrading
2
When To Sit On Your Hands When TradingNow, as you know, I like to use the PowerX Optimizer to find the best trades according to the PowerX strategy, along with The Wheel Strategy. So here’s my morning routine. Usually, I’m in front of the computer at 8 a.m. Central Time. That is 30 minutes before the US markets open. I run the scanner on PowerX Optimizer, and it finds possible trades based on my criteria. My Criteria For Finding Stocks My criteria, for starters, is I like to look for long and short signals because I like to play the markets both ways. I want to see at least a 60% return on my investment. I also want to see stocks that have a closing price between $5 and $250, because I don’t like to trade stocks that are below $5. I want to see a profit factor that is higher than 3. This means that for every dollar that I would have lost trading the strategy, I would have made $3. I also want a risk-reward ratio of at least 2%. Usually, there are anywhere between 4 & 8 stocks that come up on my scanner every day. I use three criteria to find A-plus trades. So here’s what I’m looking for. Number one, I’m looking for gappiness. I look back to see if the stock had a lot of gaps over the past year. I look back over the past 13 months. Number two, I’m looking for is trendability. What does trendability mean? It means that I want to see nice trends to the upside and the downside. And the last thing, number three, is I’m looking at the P&L chart. What does the P&L chart mean? Now, this is one of the strengths of the PowerX Optimizer software, and this is why I use it every single day. The P&L chart basically shows you what would have happened if I had traded this stock according to the rules of the PowerX strategy over the past year. So I can take a look at the trading report where I see for the past few trades, what I would have made in profits & losses. When To Sit On Your Hands Anyhow, this morning (at the time of this writing) I just saw EVRI on my scanner and it passed MOST of my criteria. First of all, it did pass all my scanner criteria, otherwise, it wouldn’t have come up here. Also, it did pass 2 out of my 3 criteria in terms of gappiness and trendability. But when it came to the P&L chart, it didn’t meet my criteria. So this is where this morning I did the most difficult thing for a trader. I was sitting on my hands. You see, at the beginning of my trading career, I had this little voice in my head and this little voice in my head said, “If you don’t trade, you don’t make any money.” Well after I forced some trades, I realized, well, if you don’t trade, you also don’t lose any money. This is why it’s so important. In the beginning when I got a new tool, or when I had a new trading strategy, I wanted to trade it. All I wanted to do was trade. However, when there’s nothing to trade, DON’T TRADE. This is why I use the PowerX Optimizer. It a fantastic job of keeping you out of trouble. So now, as you know, I am trading two strategies. In addition to trading the PowerX strategy, I’m also trading the Wheel. So also for the Wheel, I started looking for trades. Let me show you what I was looking for this morning. One of the trades that I thought, ahh you know what, this might actually be a decent trade was Marriott, (MAR), but when I looked, however, there wasn’t enough premium in there to sell according to the Wheel. I looked at another stock that came up on my radar this morning, which was (PENN). There was some great premium in there but PENN sounded rather risky. You see, for me, it is very, very important that I have a great track record. Now at the beginning of my trading career, I would have forced these trades. I would have said, “Oh my gosh, I cannot be done working after one hour,” because this is what happens sometimes in the morning. I sit down in front of the computer at 8 o’clock, which is half an hour before the open, and I run through the PowerX Optimizer, and don’t find anything. Now, one of the things that of course, I do every single day, is that I check my open positions, and in the PowerX Optimizer, I have my watch list. So first I look for new trades, and secondly, manage my existing trades. I don’t, however, need to overmanage my account when there are days where there is nothing to trade. What I used to do way back when I was still new to trading, and nothing would come up, I would adjust my criteria. I said, yeah, you know what? Instead of getting a 60% return on my investment, why don’t I lower it to 50%, or why don’t I lower the winning percentage to 35%. Maybe lower the volume to 200,000. I had to learn the hard way early in my career not to do this. Summary So anyhow, in summary, there will be days when you’re all excited, but you see, in order to make money with trading, two conditions have to be met. Number one, you have to be ready, and number two, the markets have to be ready. You may be ready but if the markets are not ready, you got to sit on your hands. The beautiful thing as traders, it’s not that today is the trading opportunity of a century. No, tomorrow there will be more trades, on Wednesday will be more trades, on Thursday. Every single day I’m running the scanner according to PowerX Optimizer and I will find more opportunities to trade. So today, one of the hardest lessons, and this is why I wanted to share it with you, sit on your hands. Anyhow, if you enjoyed this video, do me a favor and click on like so that more people will see it.
TVC:SPXEducation
by rockwelltrading
SOYBEAN upward move play with Teucrium Soybean $SOYB trust fund (1) Futures Technical Analysis Bullish triangle with RSI breakout. Enought space for bullish move. s3.tradingview.com (2) SOYB trust fund I've skipped the futures instrument, because I'm not like options on futures. My choice for Soybean play is $SOYB with relative high IVR value. Optimal for Short Put Vertical strategy, similar TA here, with RSI pullback. s3.tradingview.com (3) Clear uptrend Higher Lows Higher Highs. s3.tradingview.com CONCLUSION: Max profit: $685 Probability of Profit: 55% Profit Target relative to my Buying Power: 47% Max loss with my risk management: ~$200 Req. Buy Power: $1320 (max loss without management at expiry, no way to let this happen!) Tasty IVR: 66 (ultra high) Expiry: 35 days Buy 10 SOYB May21' 20 Put Sell 10 SOYB May21' 22 Put Credit Put spread for 0.685cr each, because IVR is relative high. Stop/my risk management : Closing immediately if daily candle is closing BELOW the box, max loss in my calculations in this case could be 200$. Probability of loss in this way: ~25% . No stress above $21.1 level. Take profit strategy: 65% of max.profit in this case with auto sell order at 0.27db. Probability of profit this way: ~75%. Of course I'll not wait until expiry in any case! If you liked this article, check my other ideas. Anyway: HIT THE LIKE BUTTON BELOW , and for fresh option ideas FOLLOW ME( @mrAnonymCrypto ) on tradingview !
AMEX:SOYBLong
by TanukiTrade
RUSSEL ETF 20% profit play during correction with Iron Condor One of the most highest probability of trades are: neutral Iron Condors with high Implied Volatility on large indices. (SPX, DJI, RUT) The more an indice is overbougth, than better this strategy works, as the correction also results more movement into downside. Unlike other overvalued stocks, however: the indices are not collapsing. (except for 1-2 extreme cases where immediate intervention is required, eg March 2020) I'm always trading the alternative ETFs of these indices: SPY = S&P500 = ES mini futures IWM = Russel 2000 = RT mini futures DIA = DJI = YM mini futures .etc... On Friday I've opened an IWM Iron Condor, so here are my reasons: (1) RTY1! Futures Analysis The Russel mini futures at local top hit the 3 year trendline, bluffy upside trendline permanently broke. (2) Divergence with breakdown Hard daily divergence in the last few months, my smooth RSI trendline breeaks. (3) Relative high IVR Relative Implied Volatility Rank (IVR) increases. This value, if high enough (e.g., above 45), favors neutral credit strategies like Iron Condor. In the case of indices, this is particularly rare, occurring every few months. At these times you can safely open neutral strategies (wide wings), for example: Iron Condor, Strangle. (4) My Iron Condor hunter script signal My Iron Condor Hunter indicator give me an automatic signal with safe ranges. As you see: in the past almost every time indicated the safe range successfully. (I'm not counting the 2020 Marc, every regular strategy failed in that crash). (5) Safe levels are well defined in my range I'm always defining safe price levels (based on the nearest short term high/low points). In my case these levels are well defined inside the Iron Condor Hunter range: CONCLUSION: I've opened an Iron Condor on IWM (Russel ETF) Profit target: 20% Max profit: 68$ Max loss: 332$ Tasty IVR: 13 POP: 69% Expiry: 42 days Strategy: Neutral IC Buy 1 IWM April16' 185 Put Sell 1 IWM April16' 189 Put Sell 1 IWM April16' 244 Call Buy 1 IWM April16' 248 Call Stop: Closing immediately if daily candle is closing below put strikes or above call strikes. Safe levels (190,205,229) are defending my borders. Take profit strategy: I'm taking at the 55% of max.profit in this case. Inside the curve I'm usually in profit. If you liked this article, check my other ideas. Anyway: HIT THE LIKE BUTTON BELOW, and follow my fresh ideas ( @mrAnonymCrypto on tradingview ).
AMEX:IWM
by TanukiTrade
10
Old Nuggets: Defined Risk Skew AccommodationSkew. It can be a pain in the butt if you want to trade both delta neutral and probability neutral. In QQQ, a delta neutral setup at the moment would be: selling a spread on the put side with the short put leg at the 275 (17 delta) and on the call side with the short call leg at the 344 (17 delta). However, this results in a short put strike 38 strikes away from current price and a short call strike 31 strikes away. It's delta neutral, but the probability of profit on the put side is 83% and on the call side 78%, so it isn't both delta neutral and probability neutral. Ugh. Fortunately, there is a solution to obtain both a delta neutral and a probability neutral setup, and it's with a variation on the iron condor: a "double double" -- double the contracts on the call side, with the put side being double the width of the call side spread. Because the risk associated with the put side spread -- that attributable to a five wide -- is greater than the risk associated with the call side (2 x 2 or the equivalent of a four wide), the maximum risk of the setup is that of a five wide -- the widest wing of the setup. In other words, doubling up the number of contracts on the call side doesn't increase buying power effect, because it's attributable to the widest wing (i.e., 5 > 2 x 2, so buying power effect is that attributable to the five wide). Here, you can't quite go exactly double due to strike availability at the moment on the put side (there's only five wides there), but you can go five wide on the put side, and 2 times a two wide on the call (the functional equivalent of a four wide) to get both a net delta and probability neutral setup: Put Side Short Put Leg: 17 delta Put Side Probability of Profit: 83% Call Side Short Call Leg: 2 x 12 delta Call Side Probability of Profit: 82% Resulting Setup Delta: .07 Naturally, skew isn't always to the put side; it's sometimes on the call side, where we'd do the opposite to accommodate skew: double up the number of contracts on the put side (but at half the spread width of the call).
NASDAQ:QQQEducation
by NaughtyPines
6
Using VXX as VIX alternative with good P/L Yesterday I've played an alternative VIX instrument. I've tired to searching good ROI or P/L rates at VIX $20 VIX support, so I've searched some alternative, but VIX related instrument. Lets see what can give us this BARCLAYS BANK VIX Short ETN (=VXX) (1) Yearly support + incoming buy volume The lowerst value of the previous year was $13. In the past month significant buy volume arrieved. Combined this two reason could lead into sidewalking or bounceback from this level. VXX is a Trust, so we see volume displayed (unlinke in the case of the VIX) (2) VIX play ROI vs VXX ROI You could see VXX like an ETN alternatative of the VIX. Same dates for big edges, and melting down between the big edges. Compared this two instument's ROI: the conclusion is obvious. VXX ROI at support $13 for April with vertical spread: 37/63 = 58% VIX ROI at support $20 for April with vertical spread: 20/80 = 25% CONCLUSION I'm buying a few call spreads for April, because the IVR not so high. I think this is a very good P/L rate with a very high probability of profit! Target: ............. 52% Max profit: ...... $111 Max loss: ......... $189 IVR: ................... 20 POP: .................. 65% Expiry: .............. 44days Strategy: long call vertical spread (average IVR) Sell 3 VXX April 16' $13 call Buy 3 VXX April 16' $12 call Stop: Closing immediately if daily candle is closing below $13. Take profit strategy: I'm taking at the 65% of max.profit in this case. If you liked this article, check my other ideas. Anyway: HIT THE LIKE BUTTON BELOW, and follow my fresh ideas ( @mrAnonymCrypto on tradingview ).
CBOE:VXXLong
by TanukiTrade
8
Rolling (IRA): TLT May 21st 148 to June 21st 145 Covered Calls... for a .92/contract credit. Notes: A continuation of my TLT covered calls. (See Post Below). With the May 21st 148's at greater than 50% max, rolled out to the June 145's. Total credits collected of 6.42/contract with the June 21st 145's currently valued at around 1.60/contract, so I've realized gains of around 4.82/contract on the call side so far this year. With a cost basis of sub-110 (the last time I acquired), I remain fine with either being called away or continuing to work covered calls. My natural preference would be for the underlying to settle so that I wasn't constantly chasing calls down the ladder, but you can't have everything.
NASDAQ:TLT
by NaughtyPines
[ X ] United States Steel Corp short call vertical spreadLazy day, lazy trade. My Iron Condor Hunter script indicated a potential iron condor for this instrument for the 12 - 23 range. Let's check for the best setup for this signal. (1) Basic TA to background check After a quick TA I judged it too risky, because it limiting the downside potential correction. The script indicated good ranges in the past 4 years, but now I'm a little bit hesitating about the downside move limit. The script shows me 12$ as secury bottom target in the next 30 days, but the lowest low may be ~10$, based the green trendline (2) Murrey Math levels -1/8 and +1/8 are used for some kind of attempt to catch a trend reversal. -1/8 is an extreme support level during a bearish trend , while +1/8 is an extreme resistance during a bullish tendency. A test of these lines indicates that the current trend is weakening. As a rule, the price doesn’t revers here and starts corrections towards 0/8 and 8/8. After that, the previous trend resumes. On the weekly perfectly fit to my Murrey Math Lines Auto +1/8 script. (3) Daily divergence Divergence on daily chart , without any more comment..... Indicated local correction. Breaked down my custom oscillator => correction validated. CONCLUSION : Modifying the strategy from the originally planned Iron Condor to Vertical Spread. Sell 1 X Apr16' 21 call Buy 1 X Apr16' 23 call Max profit: ...... $80 Max loss: ......... $120 IVR: ................... 18.3 Probability of Profit: 73% Expiry: .............. 45days Strategy: Short call vertical Risk management: I'm closing the trade immediately - if the daily bar closing outside my strikes - and I'm cutting my loss. (no matter what I'm believing)- usually I'm losing mutch less than my max profit in this case. Danger zone starts at 20.28$ Profit management: I'm sending an order at the 50% of max profit, immediately after my position opened - as usually.
NYSE:XShort
by TanukiTrade
3