The stock that has caught my attention was mentioned in the most recent All Star Charts monthly conference call and it's setting up in a nice base just above our buy level, with plenty of room to the ASC profit target.

Sometimes, I can't help myself when a good pun presents itself. Especially when I can use it to express my inner geekiness in options trading.

This name should be so obvious, it has "interest" in its name.

Wait for it...

For those of you who couldn't attend the complimentary All Star Charts Members-Only September 2020 Conference Call, here is a video recording. Enjoy!

Whatever your geopolitical, global macro, moral, or ethical concerns are about the price of gold and its implications about the US dollar, the Fed, the US Economy, etc --- the only truth is price.

And price is telling us that Gold is setting up for another run higher.

Sorry if that conflicts with your world view?

I don't trade Chinese stocks often. But when I do, I most definitely define my risks up front. I don't want to be the next person to become "UnLuckin'd", if you know what I mean...

With that in mind, there's a chinese stock that showed up on our recent Under the Hood report that has caught my interest for a tactical play.

You'd be forgiven if you read this headline and completely discarded this blog post to the trash heap. I feel you. But assuming you're reading these words, you seem to be willing to entertain the possibility of "unpopular" ideas.

In my experience, when getting bearish on a stock or an index, it is rarely a smart play (statistically speaking) to purchase straight long puts. The reason being that if I'm spotting a bearish opportunity, then likely the rest of the world sees it too and therefore people are probably getting nervous and beginning to hedge their long positions with puts or are starting to bid up speculative downside bets. In either case, it usually inflates the implied volatility in the options pricing, making puts an unfavorable purchase.

But every so often, we find a case where a stock or an index has really just worn people out and people have just lost interest. And when the security starts to show signs of losing support, the opportunistic speculator can get ahead of the crowd before the opportunity becomes obvious to everyone else.

This appears to be the situation in the Energy Sector ETF $XLE.

Well well well... markets go in both directions. Who knew??

I jest of course, but man it was starting to feel like the market will only go up forever. And naturally, when market participants start feeling that way and then they are suddenly hit with a small dose of reality, those of us caught leaning the wrong way tend to panic.

But the panic always recedes as cooler heads prevail and realize that they may have overreacted. This is the bet I'm willing to make right now with today's trade.

So is this two-day selloff a start of something new? Or is this a gift from the Pullback Gods to get into those longs positions you were FOMO-ing about?

— Sean McLaughlin, NLD 📈 (@chicagosean) September 4, 2020

Heading into Labor Day weekend, we sure have some excitement, eh? (shoutout to my Canadian friends).

I usually like to enter new trades on Fridays. But today feels like a precarious time to be wading in to these suddenly choppy waters.

This is the video recording of the September 2020 Conference Call for Members of All Star Options

One of the names that stood out for me in the latest Under the Hood report, was unsuspecting. These days I expect the names that are popping up there to be the sexy tech high flyers and/or cheaper low cap speculative names. But a certain name with a pretty popular cheerleader caught my attention.

If I was a long holder of big positions in $AAPL, $AMZN, $TSLA, $FB, $GOOG — any of the teracaps…. I’d be selling way OTM covered calls like a wild man here.#SKEW

— Sean McLaughlin, NLD 📈 (@chicagosean) September 1, 2020

Covered Calls is not a strategy we employ often at All Star Options, as there are better more efficient ways to use our capital to express similar bets.

But for any of you reading this who may be holding legacy long...

As September gets under way, it’s time to review positions with September options that remain open (haven’t already hit profit targets or been stopped out).

Most trades I put on for All Star Options tend to have a minimum duration of 30 days (short premium plays) and often as long as 6-8 months (for long premium plays). As options approach expiration, greeks like theta and gamma start to become my enemy and whipsaw my P/L. Therefore, as options and spreads get into the expiration month, my best practice is to put each position on notice — it’s time to take action.

This month, we only have one position with September options remaining on the books. All the rest have already hit their profit targets or stop loss levels. In the scoreboard below I denote the date we exited each position.

Here’s the scoreboard:

A semiconductor name that we got into a few weeks back stopped us out, and that sucked. But the beauty of honoring stop losses and stepping aside is that it allows us to gain fresh perspectives on new setups.

Armed with this new perspective, as well as seeing the stock show up in a recent Under the Hood report has me ready to test the waters again.