Money Vikings Investing - July 21st, 2024

Market Report, Finviz/Sector Analysis, Sentiment, Earnings, Fear and Greed Index, Median 401K Balances by Age, How to Enter a Bull Call Spread (AR)🔥HotTrades: 🐻 SPY Puts. Covered Call Analysis.

Hope everyone had a great trading week and was not too affected by the Crowdstrike issues that brought down airlines, banks, and government agencies. We continue to see volatility increase as we get into the heart of earnings season, an upcoming US election, and other geopolitical events. Markets had a pullback this week and time will tell if it was a “healthy” one or the beginning of the complete deterioration of society (I kid!)

For trading, we go into our thesis for identifying good covered call candidates, and share our top trades in this area. (Premium HotTrades section).

Greg & Jerry

Pullbacks in SPY, QQQ this past week while VIX up to a 16 handle.

Lately, I’ve enjoyed watching the YTD performance through the lens of market cap and stock type. As you can see Large Cap Growth is up 20% for the year, while mid cap and small caps are up a respective 6-8% in all stock categories.

Momentum Based Strategies: I’ve created my own Papa Bear Tracker that is fairly close to the source (see Avg column of 3,6,12 month performance). As of the end of last month, I’ve split my top investments into VUG, IAU, and VWO. Currently VWO is down to 5th place, and VIOG (small cap growth) is in back in 3rd. If it stays this way until 7/31, I’ll be swapping VWO and VIOG. As time goes on I’m finding myself pouring more into this strategy.

In terms of technical damage, SPY broke the 20 EMA (blue line), but is still trading comfortably above the 50 and 200 EMAs (green and red lines).

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Finviz Heat Maps Weekly View

If you used a knife to make a cut from the upper right to the lower left, you’ll see generally that this past week was down for Tech and Communications, and positive for other areas such as Financials, Health Care, Industrials, Consumer Defense, and Energy.

The Fear and Greed Index, VIX

For all you Star Trek the Next Generation Fans 🖖, we’re hanging out in the Neutral Zone. This just means that we could be at a turning point.

Finally, a decent spike in the VIX this week. This means that option sellers will get more premium (and thereby take on more risk). Option buyers will spend more for their trades (but could also make more if they are correct in direction).

Median 401K Balances by Age

Greg goes over median 401K balances by age. How do you compare? Are these estimates a good proxy for how much you should have? Are they too small? Watch and learn more.

Earnings Next Week

Besides VZ earnings which I have a cash secured put in, there is Tesla and Alphabet on Tuesday after the close to keep an eye on. In addition to earnings, we have Existing Home Sales on 7/23, PMI on 7/24, and Initial Jobless Claims on 7/25.

Antagonist Research: How to Enter a Bull Call Vertical Spread in thinkorswim

Hot Trades - Bearish SPY Vertical, Cash Secured Puts and Covered Calls

On 7/11, I alerted traders that I bought to open a 559/560 bearish put spread for a $48 debit, then on 7/17, sold to close it for $58—a $10 profit. While not much money, it was fun to do a smaller timeframe (days) trade instead of my usual covered call and cash secured put trades which are over 1 or more months.