How to Win a Rigged Game
Welcome to the Wall Street casino. The cards are marked, the roulette table is tilted, and the dice are loaded…but the game goes on. There’s no shortage of naive players, lining up to get fleeced.
But our experts have learned to win at the investment game, even when it’s rigged. One advisor who’s particularly adept at beating the unfair odds is my colleague Jimmy Butts, chief investment strategist of the premium trading service Maximum Profit.
Jimmy [pictured] has devised trading techniques that bring the investment advantage back to the little guy. Let’s see what Jimmy has to say about the latest trends and how they affect investors.
JPMorgan Chase recently announced that it has created what the bank calls its “Volfefe Index,” named after President Trump’s mysterious “covfefe” tweet. JPMorgan’s new Volfefe Index dissects how Trump’s tweets affect the financial markets. Do you think the president’s tweets significantly affect the markets and if so, how should investors play this dynamic?
We’ve seen how one of the president’s tweets can make the market jump or plummet seemingly overnight (usually a tweet referring to the trade war with China). So yes, his tweets can take a toll on the financial markets.
But what his tweets really illustrate is the emotional side of investing. It’s the knee-jerk reaction from investors to a simple tweet. Think about this. Investors are buying or selling based on someone’s thoughts… someone who’s leveraging a platform to speak his mind to try and get what he wants. We aren’t talking about SEC filings on a company, or a report about the economy. We’re talking about someone’s views that are being expressed over social media.
As long as you understand the emotional side of investing and that the president’s tweets can cause serious volatility in the market, you could possibly play this dynamic. If there’s a favorite stock you’ve been following but you’ve been looking for a better entry, one of the president’s tweets could create that opportunity.
The most difficult thing is, we never know when (or what time) the president will decide to shock the market with one of his tweets. But when it does happen, understand that most of the time the swings in the market are being driven by human emotion. Take a step back, look at the bigger picture and see if this can be a good buying (or selling) opportunity.
As I always tell readers of Maximum Profit, take the emotion out of investing and you’ll immediately begin seeing better results.
Following the drone missile strikes two weeks ago against Saudi Arabia’s oil installations, energy prices have been wildly bouncing up and down. Will the supply-and-demand equation reach equilibrium soon or is volatility here to stay?
We will likely continue to see volatility for the next few months as Saudi Arabia repairs and brings online its oil facilities. The volatility will likely stem from reports on how quickly (or slowly) that progress is coming along.
Remember, Saudi Arabia is a major oil producer and the attacks on September 14 initially caused the country to lose about half its oil production output, which represented about 5% of total world output.
Under these uncertain geopolitical conditions, which energy investments look most promising to you?
If you can stomach some volatility, and looking at an investment holding period longer than a year, the energy complex provides some of the best valuations of any of the sectors.
I like companies that have a strong position in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico. For example, I recently recommended one of the largest producers in that region to readers of my Top Stock Advisor newsletter, which focuses on world-dominating companies that are trading for cheap. Its share price has been hit hard for reasons I won’t get into here, but I believe that it offers great value at current prices and it sports a 7% dividend yield to boot.
Outside of the traditional oil and gas stocks that one might think of when we talk about the energy sector, we’ve had great success in the alternative energy sector. In April, my Maximum Profit system flagged Enphase Energy (NSDQ: ENPH) as a “Buy.” The company provides necessary equipment to solar companies. We closed it out five months later for a nice 180% gain. To put that into perspective, the S&P 500 returned less than 3% over the same time period.
Investors are rotating from growth to value. Which reasonably priced “defensive” asset classes seem most appealing right now?
I’m glad you said, “reasonably priced,” because the usual defensive suspects have been on a tear this year. The utility sector is up more than 20% year-to-date, and consumer staples are up over 19% year to date.
Many of the utility stocks I’ve looked at recently are trading at premiums to their historical valuation norms. Of course, as a momentum investor looking to ride those waves that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As we know, stock prices can climb higher, for longer, than what we might believe.
We’ve been able to capture the momentum in many of these more traditional defensive asset classes. Well-known chocolate-maker Hershey (NYSE: HSY) has shown strong momentum for us, as we’ve outpaced the broader market by an astonishing 40 percentage points over the last 10 months.
If you’re looking to capture a quick gain, you could ride the waves that are being provided by many of these more traditional defensive classes. But if you’re looking for value, I would say look towards the health care sector because it’s been a laggard for much of the year.
Briefly explain how your investment methods beat the rigged odds on Wall Street.
Investing, and trading in particular, is one of the hardest ways to make easy money. If you think you might have it “figured” out, the market will throw you a curve ball.
I wish I could sit here and tell you that I had the “Holy Grail” investing system that will make you a fortune overnight. But I don’t. Anybody who claims they do, quietly run the other way. But here’s what my system does provide: a roadmap on how to successfully navigate the market. It shows you when and what to buy, and when to sell.
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You see, anybody can tell you what stocks to buy, but few tell you when you should sell. The beauty of the Maximum Profit system is that we have a set of rules that guide us in our investing strategy. These rules help keep our emotions in check, whereas Wall Street leverages emotion to get what it wants. The insiders know that they can scare you out of trades or push you towards stocks they want you to buy.
My Maximum Profit system helps take the emotion out of investing. It simply uses a momentum indicator to identify stocks that have the potential to generate quick returns in a short amount of time. Our average holding period is six months.
We’ve also incorporated a financial algorithm into the system to ensure that we aren’t buying fly-by-night companies. We want strong companies that are on the verge of surging in share price. And the system doesn’t care where that momentum is coming from. It could be from a large well-known company like Hershey or a small alternative energy play like Enphase Energy.
On the flip side, the system tells us exactly when to sell. We don’t hang onto losing positions hoping for them to get back to our entry price, because “hope” isn’t an investment strategy. We cut loose our losers and let our winners ride, a strategy that has consistently worked well for us.
Editor’s Note: I’ve just gleaned valuable investment insights from my colleague Jimmy Butts, a contrarian who knows how to read the story behind the story. Jimmy is adept at pinpointing emerging opportunities to make money.
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