PhilStockWorld July Portfolio Reviews – Part 1

We’re going to get started early this week.

Mostly because I want to be protected as Earnings Season kicks off today but also because my daughters are coming on Thursday and I’ll be taking off early on Friday.  We’re certainly well-hedged and we had a  test drop last week where the gains in our Short-Term Portfolio (STP) kept up with the losses in our Long-Term Portfolio (LTP) but, overall, the Short-Term Portfolio (STP) is down $58,798 (24%) since our last review as we have once again rallied back and gone higher but also because we got much more aggressively short last month and have not yet added enough longs in our LTP to cover a major rally.  

Short-Term Portfolio (STP) Review: The STP has our hedges and we’re supposed to lose money on the way up and the Dow is up 1,000 (3%) and the S&P is up 150 points (3.5%) since the last week of June – and really since last Thursday as well.  If this earnings season doesn’t knock us back, nothing will and we’ll have to make some more bullish bets to even things out better.  As I noted yesterday, however, at over $2.1M (up 150%) in our paired portfolios – I’d be happier just cashing them out and starting from scratch again.

• FXP – Ultra ETF against China and it’s a 2x ETF with FXP at $32.35 so a 20% drop in China’s FTSE 50 would be a 40% pop in FXP to $45.29 between now and September and that would pay $40,000 on the net $10,400 spread so $29,600 of downside protection.

• SCO – This one is killing us.  2x short on oil but we expected to top out at $75 around July 4th.  If oil goes back to $60 that’s down 20% and that would pop SCO 40% from $17.74 to $24.83 and that only put us in the money, so there’s no point to leaving this alone.  38 Jan $24 calls at $2.05 ($7,790) can be rolled down to 40 of the Jan $18 calls at $3.30 ($13,200) and we can sell 21 Jan $25 calls at $2 ($4,200) to pay for most of it. 

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Provided courtesy of Phil’s Stock World.