How To Turn Stock Market Mayhem To Your Advantage In March

Michael: Hello everybody. This is Michael Gross of OptionSellers.com here with head trader James Cordier. We’re here with your March OptionSellers.com video podcast. James, as we head in to March here, what’s on everyone’s mind is the obviously the big development we had here in February. Big stock sell-off, it’s on everyone’s mind right now… stock investors are busy brushing themselves off, wondering what’s next. Over here in commodities, we didn’t really see a lot of movement in the markets themselves, but we had some developments in the option and option volatility. Why don’t we start off this month by maybe just talking a little bit about what happened in stocks themselves. James: Michael, it’s interesting, a couple of years ago we had BREXIT. We had Switzerland leaving the European Union, we also had the election outcome a year and a half ago. All these events didn’t really change fundamentals on a long-term basis, but what they did do is they injected a lot of volatility. The 3,000 point drop in the Dow Jones here just a couple weeks ago did exactly that. It turns out that there’s something called the volatility index in stocks. There was an instrument that was built for people to go short or long on it. It seems as though everyone was way short volatility. In the stock market, that got unwound, it developed a 3,000 point drop in the Dow Jones, and now we’ve got to the stock market recouping quite well. It’s probably going to continue to rally everything as far as we can tell. The U.S. economy looks good, the global economy looks good, stock profits look excellent right now. Volatility spiked in a dramatic way. For ourselves selling options on commodities, we saw volatility index spike as well. Precious metals, energies, and some of the foods did have a spike. In many cases, a lot of the positions we had did increase in value during this large increase in volatility. It’s not always fun when this happens, but it is absolutely a key ingredient in option selling. It allows us to sell options, as you know, 40-50% out-of-the-money. Without that creation that happens every 6-12 months in the volatility index in commodities and in stocks, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. It’s a key ingredient and it did happen this past month. We’re very excited about the opportunities that it has now in selling options. Michael: It was kind of ironic, James, because you and I were watching this unfold, we were watching the stock market take a nose-dive, and we’re watching our commodities boards and basically nothing is going on. We have gold and silver prices staying silver, the grains and foods were business as usual, crude took a little bit of a sell-off, tied into stocks, but that was really the only one. Over in natural we had to sell off, but that was really already under way. It didn’t have much to do with stocks. Yet, you saw option volatility spill over from that stocks and it increased the value of those options temporarily, but now you’re seeing that come off a little bit. Is that right? James: It is. The volatility index in the stock market is practically to the same level as it was prior to the 3,000 point sell-off. In commodities, it has now come back about 75% of the level that it was at. The fundamentals never really changed at all, especially in commodities, and I think it sets up a great landscape for doing what we do. We’ll find out relatively soon. Michael: You know, a lot of people, they want to get diversified from stocks. That’s one reason why they’re interested in selling commodities options in the first place. You know, it was interesting… on CNBC they had an article about on the biggest day down in the Dow it was down, what…1,075 points or something like that? They ran an article that there was only 7 stocks higher that day and 2 of them were cereal and tobacco. It was Kellogg and one of the tobacco companies- I forget which one. CNBC’s analysis of that was, “well, even when stocks are down, people will still eat and they’ll still smoke”. That’s a point we make constantly is that no matter what’s going on, people still need to eat, they still need to drink coffee, and they still need to put gas in their tanks. James: The breakaway from the correlation from the stock market was very evident on that day. Gasoline and crude oil and soybeans and coffee… business as usual. That’s why a lot of our clients like being diversified away from the stock market. On that occasion, we did see the volatility index increase options on commodities, as well, and that’s just a key ingredient for us doing the business that we do. They did increase while we were in them. We just see, going forward, just a great opportunity to use that additional premium to position clients. Michael: So, we got a little bit of a surge in volatility, that pushed premiums up, and now that’s coming off. The premium is