59 South said:

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Great news. I can say it's pretty darn normal here in the UK now and has been for a month or so no matter what dribble the bbc puts out for the world to see. Hope America can get there soon.

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how did y'all get there? Took lumps early?

So what your saying is to back to the truck up to oil stocks. Demand should be coming back.

I honestly don't know. It was crazy. Moved here literally days before full lock down in mid March that lasted until late May or so. It was creepy af being in London during the lockdown. A thriving metropolis turned into a ghost town... but then gradual easing since then in a very disciplined fashion. Something I don't think American culture could ever pull off.

Never much mask wearing to be honest. Max mask wearing about 10% or so and only inside stores but oddly enough I see randos driving alone in their cars with them on from time to time.

And on oil stocks lol, yea it's gone full on here in the UK in the past few weeks. Madness and full capacity for cars. I think there's actually more car traffic now due to it being "safer" than public transportation and rail. I saw an article recently stating U.K. car sales were up over 10% yoy in July

I would looks at midstream before Oil, IMo.

I'm already in PSX, COP, OVV

Thinking of buying more of the two former

I own a truckload of PAA that I bought under $5, mostly for the dividend.

In the US, what I can see unfolding is:
- vaccine available in next 4 months. USG wants to perform challenge trials. Maybe not ethical, but it will immediately demonstrate effectiveness or lack thereof
- supplementary high quality rapid testing rolled out by the private sector. Want to eat at my restaurant? Take a test. Want to go into Target, take a test. That will crush Covid extremely quickly. My company would certainly mandate this if there was a solution low cost enough to test everyone daily. This would be a god send for schools. I'm optimistic about this in a big way.
- rush for solutions before fall / winter cold and flu season. From my same VC contact I have heard that HHS and the CDC are "very concerned" about what may be coming re: infections if we don't have any solutions, hence the rush for a solve. Very concerned = utter panic to me
- some portion of the population won't get vaccinated because they won't or they can't. The testing should help with a ubiquitous solution. Until there is a great private sector testing, life can't really return to normal
- per same contact, the actual infection rate is somewhere between 5-10X greater than reported cases. Daily positive cases have gone down because not required to be reported rapid tests are a greater share of total tests. Don't be fooled. This is continuing to expand. IFR probably 4-5X more deadly than flu, biggest unknown is long term disability and lowered life expectancy

Taking it back to markets, less appetite for stimulus once vaccine or rapid testing is close. Main Street really suffering and banks are going to take huge losses in Q3/Q4. Trade it but be careful on being long on a fundamental basis. Expect democrat White House and Democrat house. Possibly senate too but only 1/3 of seats are up and possible republicans can retain most. Our beloved home state may fall to the communists. My gut tells me we are very close to a near term top, I could be wrong. Eventually momentum has to reset and we are near that point. Seasonality, election uncertainty, continuing economic pain (1M weekly claims is not good news ever...). I think floor is 3000 unless black swan occurs. Inflation will sneak up on us. Refi now if you can.

Net net, we are probably through the worst of covid but now have to deal with mega unemployment and inflation. Bullish after market takes a break.

Do you guys have any updated thoughts on OSTK? I feel like they might still have quite a bit of room up?

I'm looking at buying puts on XRT in the near future. Carter Page, who really nailed the SLV play a month ago is recommending shorting the XRT. XRT's largest position (5% of the portfolio) is $OSTK. Long way of saying.....might be time to take some profits on $OSTK.

Here's the segment with Carter Page's technical analysis. The entire thing is good (only 7 minutes) but if you want to jump to the comments on $OSTK, you can jump to 6:17. GL!

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/08/14/the-retail-wreckage-is-just-getting-startedheres-why.html

Game changer?

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29667299/fda-allowing-saliva-based-test-funded-nba

I have stopped believing we plunge. Maximum spy 3000 which is less than 10%. To your point, I expect sideways soon, probably up first and then sideways. I am also getting defensive. 2016 was a great indication that polling and predictors like 538 blog can be totally wrong. It was great to see it gets stuffed in the dems faces 4 years ago.

For the White House, it comes down to swing states. A 1-2% sentiment shift in those states is enough for Biden to win. Trump won Michigan by 0.23% and Pennsylvania by 0.72%. Dems are more motivated than ever.

I am having the opposite experience on sentiment. Staunch republicans are going to vote that way no matter what. All the RINOs and moderates I know have softened in their support or have moved to Biden support. It would be a great surprise to see the Republicans retake the house, I just don't see it happening. I tend to think the senate remains republican given only 1/3 is at risk. The dems would need a +2 standard deviation performance to take it. That would suck. I don't want to pay a wealth tax or deal with stupid laws that further kill the golden geese. We will find out in 75 days either way. It's not something I want to be right about.

Orlando Ayala Cant Read said:

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Do you guys have any updated thoughts on OSTK? I feel like they might still have quite a bit of room up?

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I like them in the short term and most definitely in the long term. It's not a highly liquid stock and has wide spreads. Be careful on options. Wish I had taken a long position sooner.

Company is going through a buyout. PE group (buyer) is pushing to complete everything before election. Since this is the Stonk thread, Top down they feel Biden will win.

I hope they are wrong because Harris will be allowed to make the policies while Joe sniffs her hair.

You would push this process through regardless of who you think wins. There's a lot of risk introduced by carrying something like this over the election time frame

Fireman said:

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I'm looking at buying puts on XRT in the near future. Carter Page, who really nailed the SLV play a month ago is recommending shorting the XRT. XRT's largest position (5% of the portfolio) is $OSTK. Long way of saying.....might be time to take some profits on $OSTK.

Here's the segment with Carter Page's technical analysis. The entire thing is good (only 7 minutes) but if you want to jump to the comments on $OSTK, you can jump to 6:17. GL!

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/08/14/the-retail-wreckage-is-just-getting-startedheres-why.html

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I think we see 200 before we see 20 again. With the profits I've taken, I rolled into OSTKO. I'm more bullish with the offering then before it, especially with OSTK past all time highs and with their current leadership and tech hitting now. Bank of America, Credit Suisse - 2 big names on the offering that wanted in. Watch for B of A to get into the crypto sector. I don't trust "analysts" especially cnbc, but that is just my 2 cents.

great follows on OSTK are @HiddenPivots and Marc Cohodes... @Alderlaneeggs, here's a snippet:

oldarmy1 said:

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I don't think the Democrats win a majority in anything and Trump is re-elected. Every single contact I have across the country says looking at Democrat lead disasters, one after another, has scared them to quietly vote Republican. We shall see. At some point markets will go sideways into the election and the closer we hang near the top the better the odds my scenario occurs. We'll see whose right soon enough.

I'm layering January $8 SPXS calls every $0.30-$0.40. The longer we hang near all time highs the cheaper the January SPY puts will be. I haven't pulled the trigger on any of those yet. Historically when the markets get this close to all-time highs it eventually eclipses them.

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I like the SPXS calls. Any thoughts on if and how we should play a spike in the VIX post election?

Thinking the same.

I like SPXS/SPXU, but I could see buying Jan VXX OTM calls as being very cheap insurance. Debating a long position in these as well, but certainly don't want to buy too early or deal with stops on the way up.

OA - would love your thoughts on VXX calls (and ZM), if you're kind enough to weigh in.

Would VXX tend to go up as the election neared regardless of whether SPX continues up over the next month or so? That nearterm uncertainty should increase volatility, no?

I'm just starting to look at VXX really for the first time right now. What is the relationship between VXX and the ViX? It seems like ViX spiked even harder in March. However the VXX spiked over $40 in April and December of 2018 while the ViX was a lot more muted.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-sells-jpmorgan-occidental-stock-buys-barrick-gold-51597438489

Berkshire exiting JPM and Oxy in favor of Gold.

I had been considering adding a few financial stocks after exiting them a few months ago. Any thoughts of adding any financial stocks at this time?

Fightin_Aggie said:

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https://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-sells-jpmorgan-occidental-stock-buys-barrick-gold-51597438489

Berkshire exiting JPM and Oxy in favor of Gold.

I had been considering adding a few financial stocks after exiting them a few months ago. Any thoughts of adding any financial stocks at this time?

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you want to go opposite uncle warren? Bold.

Not really. That's why I posed the question

Didnt buffet tank luv down to $23. It is now mid 30s. Could be buy opportunity after early sell off.

Audjpy at 76.6 on a bull candle. Will see what the change is from now to wake-up, but seems promising for the rally monkey

What are the boards thoughts on Amazon doing a stock split? Is this a realistic scenario or wishful thinking? It's currently sitting in a nice ascending triangle on the daily and pennant on the weekly timeframes. If it pushes through 3240 it's looking prime for new ATH. If the stock split is a likely scenario, I would be tempted to buy some leaps on amazon here as soon as it broke out of the triangle formation.

McInnis 03 said:

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Audjpy at 76.6 on a bull candle. Will see what the change is from now to wake-up, but seems promising for the rally monkey

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Lost the gains and back to even.

Bought some sept 15c's on ripsters GRWG suggestion, it ripped up this weekend.

QD - $1.93 pre-market