There were very few places to hide in this week’s stock market decline. A number of the old reliable places to hide aren’t providing much protection in the current stock market drop. But I did see two splashes of green today among the sea of red.
My one-hundredth-and-twenty-fifth YouTube video “Quick Pick Plug Power” went up today. Plug Power is building out a network for green hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells. They’ve been involved in recent big deals with Walmart to power fork lifts in the company’s warehouses. And the company has Amazon, another big warehouse operator, as a customer too.The other market I like for Plug Power is backup power for data centers. This stock is very volatile, so be careful out. I’ll be adding it to my Volatility Portfolio on JubakAM.com on Monday after the April 22 drop of 3.54%
Forget about all the hoopla over Tesla (TSLA) founder Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter (TWTR). (If you can.) On Wednesday, when the electric car leader announces first quarter 2022 earnings the story will be China, China, China.
Even as losses accelerate for almost all stocks as we head into the close today–the Standard & Poor’s 500, which was down 1.31% at 2:30 In New York had moved to a loss of 1.74% as of 3:30–shares of Apple (AAPL) continue to hang onto the green.
It was sure hard to see a market melt up today, November 22. The Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 0.32% and the NASDAQ Composite fell 1.26%. Market leaders in the melt up rally like Applied Materials (AMAT) and Microsoft (MSFT) were down 1.65% and 0.96%, respectively. And it was even harder to see the trend I thought might be on its way in my Friday, November 19 post “Forward into the past with tech stocks:We’re seen this market before.” The rotation into tech stocks that I saw on Friday turned into loses of 3.12% for Nvidia (NVDA), and 1.92% for Alphabet (GOOG.)
But I suggest that you take a look at Apple’s (AAPL) performance today
Yesterday I picked Tesla (TSLA) as No. 14 in my Buy on the Dip Special Report. I put the stock in a group along with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) that I called Buy on the Regret. These were stocks that lots of investors who didn’t yet own wanted to own and would bid up at the the least opportunity. But I wrote yesterday, I thought Tesla shares had been pounded so hard in the last few days that I quick reversal was unlikely. I’d prefer to buy when I’d seen shares stabilize or drift high. Wrong. Which is why they play the game and not simply decide who wins by comparing the lineups. Today Tesla shares closed up 4.34% on the day.
Time–and more–to admit that this insurance policy I took out on March 24 against a big drop in stock prices isn’t going to pay off. I paid my premium and other than peace of mind–maybe–I got nothing in return.
The Apple September 17 Call Options with a strike of $150 in my Volatility Portfolio climbed another 23.3% today. The options looks to be moving up as traders position themselves for a bump in Apple after the company’s next new product day–speculation has the date for the announcement of a nee iPhone as September 14 with pre-orders to start on September 17. The announcement is likely to be big news and will probably drive the stock higher. For the September 17 Call Options, however, the date is something of a double-edged sword since a September 14 announcement–a big positive–runs right into the time decay of the options since them expire on September 17.
I expected the jump in the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Call Options (expiration of September 17 and strike at $90) before yesterday’s earnings report. Didn’t get it. Then. But today this option is up 72.17% to $9.90 on a 7.36% gain in the price of the shares to $97.74 (as of 2:20 p.m. New York time.) So I’m selling.
As of 12:15 p.m. the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down .01% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was lower by 0.75%. Tech stocks were down much more with the NASDAQ Composite off 1.85% and the NASDAQ 100 lower by 1.82%. The tech companies due to report earnings today after the close were all down. Apple (AAPL) was lower by 1.68%. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) had dropped 2.01%. And Microsoft (MSFT() was off 1.66%.
Investors and traders are less afraid of a drop in stocks than at any time in 2021. The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX), which measures how much investors and traders are willing to pay to hedge against volatility in the S&P 500, is down another 3.32% to 15.44 today, June 25, as of 3:30 p.m. New York time. The drop took out the former low for the VIX for 2021 at 15.65. I have to go all the way back to February 10, 2020–before the pandemic knocked the stuffing out of stocks–to find a lower level for the “fear index” at 13.68. So today I’m buying Call Options on the VIX–which will go up if fear and the index climb for November 2021 with a strike at 19.
