Here we are again!
The last time I wrote a Breakout Defense article was back on December 11th when I said: "Wow! I mean wow! Will this market ever go down? My mother called me this morning and she’s raising her GDP outlook for 2011 too – that’s how crazy things have gotten out there. I’m just waiting for the Pope to come out and tell us to buy CMG and Netflix and THEN we’ll know it’s a sign." Clearly, my Mom and the Pope nailed it as the the Dow is up another 500 points (4.3%) since then and CMG made a comeback yesterday and is a bit higher than Dec. 10th's finish at $238.22 and NFLX is well above $194.63 so the infallibility streak continues for the pontiff!
As with last time, I would urge you to spend some time reading (and now viewing) David Fry's market commentary over at ETF digest. Dave's take on the IWM, which we have been playing this week, is that it is still rolling over and that investors should not be fooled by the Dow. I'm not here to debate the points - this is an article about what we can do to make sure we don't miss the rally train if it does leave the station and, like last time, it's very easy to set aside a small amount of capital into highly leveraged trades like this, which can make excellent returns on even small rises in the market. On the whole, I remain cautious and still believing that we may be in a blow-off top but we have plenty of bearish short-term bets and we need some balance - just in case...
We had just a 4.3% gain since our December picks and check out this performance on those already:
- FAS Apr $20/25 bull call spread paired with the sale of the April $21 puts for net .15, now $3.98, up 2,553%.
