Well, that could’ve been A LOT worse.
On Friday, the market was gearing up for a disastrous weekend as Hurricane Irma made its way to Florida. It was certainly a violent and destructive event...but it wasn’t the “storm of all storms” as we all feared. In addition, North Korea didn’t fire another missile during its holiday on Saturday as many were expecting. All in all, it was actually a pretty good weekend.
Unfettered by the fear that clouded last week, the market put together a welcomed relief rally on Monday that saw each of the major indices jump by more than 1%. The S&P finished today’s session at an all-time high with a surge of 1.08% to 2488.1. The Dow is back above 22K after a rise of 1.19% to 22,057.4, while the NASDAQ improved 1.13% to 6432.3.
In the portfolios, Options Trader wanted more time for one of its positions, so Kevin sold the current Call for a triple-digit return but then reinvested in a further-out option of the same stock. Now, he has several months of time for a rising stock rather than just a few weeks. Also, Black Box Trader swapped four names in this week’s adjustment and banked three profits along the way. Read the highlights section below for specifics on these moves plus much more.
Today's Portfolio Highlights:
Options Trader: The truckload carrier Landstar (LSTR) has enjoyed a nice upside breakout…and Kevin is expecting more to come. But there was only 39 days of time left on the portfolio’s Oct option. So the editor sold to close the Oct. 90.00 Call for a return of 181%, and then immediately repositioned the money by buying to open a Jan. 95.00 Call. Now he has more than 4 months of time to fully capture LSTR’s move higher. Read the full write-up for more on these moves.
Black Box Trader: Four positions were swapped out in this week’s adjustment, and three of the sold stocks were positive. The deleted names were:
• Pilgrim's Pride (PPC, +3.2%)
• Centerpoint Energy (CNP, +2.6%)
• Extreme Networks (EXTR, +2.1%)
• Coca-Cola European Partners (CCE)
The new buys that replaced these names are:
• Firstenergy Corp (FE)
• Owens Corning (OC)
• PVH Corp (NYSE:PVH)
• Restoration Hardware (RH)
Read the Black Box Trader’s Guide to learn more about this computer-driven service designed to take the emotion out of investing.
Zacks Confidential: Investors poured $391 billion into global ETFs in the first seven months of 2017, which means it has already surpassed last year’s record of $390 billion. Yes, the popularity of ETFs are growing at a record pace, and more and more of them are coming out every day. Kevin handed the keys of this week’s Zacks Confidential over to Neena Mishra, who explains the benefits of this market while offering 3 new ETFs that you may want to consider: Best New ETFs of 2017.
Counterstrike: "The two factors that were holding stocks down late last week, helped stocks surge today. A North Korea missile launch was expected over the weekend, but never happened. Irma was supposed to be more devastating than Harvey, but it looks like the cost will be half as much. For those reasons, fear was sucked out of the market. The VIX crashed, bonds sold off, and investors bought up stocks." -- Jeremy Mullin
Insider Trader: "As I've said many times before, Wall Street hates uncertainty but between Irma finally hitting, and not as badly as feared on the mainland, and last week's debt ceiling deal to push it until December, suddenly there's a lot less near term uncertainty out there.
"That only means one thing: time to get back into stocks.
"The S&P 500 saw only its 4th 1% gain session of the year, which is hard to believe. That's how low the volatility has been, both up and down, that stocks have mainly been grinding higher in small doses." -- Tracey Ryniec
All the Best,
Jim Giaquinto
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