Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Welcome to the Money Adjustment. I'm your host, Dr. Mark Kramer, D.C. i am a chiropractor who loves investing and trading. Are you interested in what's moving markets and your money?
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Great.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Me too. Let's get started.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: My intention for today's podcast was to show you charts while I was explaining possible trades and current positioning and themes for 2025.
Unfortunately, my charts did not appear. They were not recorded. So this is going to be another audio podcast. And what I would encourage the listener is to. You'll. You'll still hear the names that I was looking at, you'll still hear the what I was seeing on the charts. And if you're a technical analyst or you want to look at the char, I encourage you to pull up the charts and check out the names that speak to you. I think you'll still find value in terms of some themes I'm seeing for next year and some of my current positioning and how that may influence what you're thinking about your own portfolio. That said, enjoy the episode.
Happy December 23, 2024. It is Christmas Eve Eve, so Christmas is in two days. The market will be closed on Wednesday and I'm actually off this entire week. But I figured I haven't done a live trade in a while and I have a little time today to do one. So I thought why not let's get another podcast episode live trade with Dr. Kramer. I'm going to see if I could share my screen with you now. All right, the meta screen is open. Hopefully this is recording. And then I have open my Webull account. My Weeble account is my primary trading account these days. I usually try to keep it around $25,000 or over because $25,000 is the minimum requirement to maintain a margin account. What the margin allows you to do is.
Let's see if I can get over here. So with $25,000 in your account, you can see I have day trading buying power of $87,000 and overnight buying power of $43,000 and options buying power of $21,000. So I think part of the reason I don't have a full hundred thousand dollars is because I have a few open positions that I am on Q, which is a play on Quantum computing. That one is currently up 52% since I added it, I think two weeks ago. Went from my average price is $30, currently trading at 45, 75.
Amazon is my next largest. That's up 12%.
Got in at the $200 level. It's currently trading at 225 and actually down on one negative half a percent. That's Uber. I'm not even expecting Uber to work this year. I'm just loading up on Uber for next year because I think Uber could work next year. It's currently trading at a consolidation level of around $60 and could be trading between 60 65. But I'm still optimistic on Uber and right now I think one of the challenges Uber is having is there's a negative pair trade with Tesla. So as Tesla goes up, Uber's going down. There's some perception that Tesla's robo taxis will somehow negate the need for Uber. But the other argument, and the one I subscribe to is that Uber is going to be an aggregate. So it's not that these self driving cars are going to replace Uber, but Uber will be the app where people will still access rides to all of these self driving opportunities. Anyways, that's a, that's my thesis on Uber which is my currently like I said, my only down position.
I'm up about $1,200 on the month which is great because I've had a couple rough months. This is why I haven't actually been doing a lot of day trading. So we went back to some swing trading, taking smaller positions and that's been going well so far. So it's 9:27, it's three minutes to the open.
Let's take a look at what I'm watching.
It says I have active today is my watch list. I named this folder today. There's 23 positions which is actually too many for me. I will have to probably later today go through these and knock a few off that I'm no longer interested in. Like Baba was on my list.
Chinese stocks were popular for a hot minute last month.
Actually that one I might even just get rid of now. I'm not going to be trading that.
See Tesla is still a fun one to trade. It's kind of a staple trading stock at a like meta Bitcoin. You have to watch Bitcoin the Dollar. You have to watch the Dollar on S&P 500. Still watching that Uber snow. I'm not really trading snow these days. I'm going to take that off the list.
So let's clean up my watch list. I usually don't like a watch list more than 10 stocks and then the indicators like I said, the spy, Bitcoin, the dollar, those are the main ones. I have a few names on here. Roblox recently broke out I think last month after they reported Earnings. There's a lot of stocks in a category that look like this Roblox one. So you'll see what happened is there's this group of stocks, they peaked in November of 2021, took an incredible crash like losing 90% plus of their value and then they just basically consolidated for a few years up until recently.
And now within the past couple months they are tracking back toward their it's not all time highs. They're just tracking back to where they dropped off.
So there's a level here on Roblox as Our example is $64 and if it breaks that level it could be heading towards its all time high which is at $141. So one of my themes for next year barring a black swan event is that there is this category of high growth unprofitable stocks that lost favor for a couple years and have recently shown some momentum. Could be that some investors are front running these before 20 spot. I'm speculating on that. I. I have no idea. I'm just looking at the charts and, and I'm guessing based on the action that I'm seeing on the charts that this could be something that's happening. It's. It's a thesis of mine. I will be playing stocks like Roblox next year trying to think about. Palantir is actually another name that was on there. But Palantir is broken out from that whole group in that Palantir is actually a profitable growth company now. And a lot of people see Palantir as maybe like an Nvidia type move. Next year it's trading at. It's not apples to apples because Nvidia is actually profitable. And even though the stock gets more expensive, the company keeps growing into the price. So it's almost as cheap as it was a year ago. Even though the price itself is so much higher.
It looks like I'm hearing things. So maybe the market opened. All right.
Yep, 9:31 market is open. Things are already moving. I do not know if I'm actually going to be taking any active trades today. I just figured I'm opening it up. If a trade comes to me I will take it. If not, we'll just. At least you got to hear what I'm watching and some themes I'm looking at. So the biggest move so far in my today list is the vix. The VIX is a volatility index. It calculates calls to puts which are options and it gives you a sense of volatility. Usually when the VIX trades high it's because people are a little bit more in a panic state. And the VIX has been trading between, I want to say, what, $15 and $20. Let's see where the VIX is at, actually.
So you can see like all these little spikes in the vix. This huge spike was at that was in August of 2420, that actually of August of this year. And that huge spike was an excellent buying opportunity because that called out a bottom. It was a flush from the.
The yen trade. People were borrowing yen and then buying U.S. stocks because it was cheap to borrow yen. But then when the interest rate went up on the yen, then that trade unwound. But that caused this crazy spike in the market and a lot of stocks went down in unison. And it was great buying opportunity for people who are paying attention to those kind of things. Palantir is trading at all just hit $82. And it's kind of pulling back in from that. Alantir is currently my largest position in one of my long portfolios. And I have mixed feelings about it because when it broke out above $50, I protected my position with some calls. I did a strategy to just try to manage my risk because the position was so large, and if it came back in, it could really affect my portfolio.
But I didn't anticipate how fast and how high it would actually break up. So it went from like $50 to $80. And I have a call option on it for $55. So I'm still way up on the position. I have a cost basis of, I think under $30 on that stock. And it's a large position. But I've also capped a lot of my gain because basically when you sell a call against a position you own means that if people exercise that option, that position will get taken away from you. The advantages of doing it are there's a little bit of a premium that you can get on selling a call against your position. So you make money from selling the call. And then if. And if the stock pulls back to under the call price, then you actually still get to keep your stock. So you get the stocks and the premium and then you could repeat the process. And that works well when stocks are trading in a range, but one in this case, like when something like Palantir just completely breaks out, then your likelihood of getting that stock called away increases. So that's where I'm at. I have a high position in Palantir, but I'm not going to see as much profit on it as I would have enjoyed because I did protect my position. I do not regret protecting my position. I've actually been getting into a lot of cash during this recent uptrend because I do anticipate a bit of a sell off in January and I want to have some dry powder to be able to take advantage of opportunities, opportunities coming into the new year. So I'm in a large cash position right now, larger than normal. I think my long portfolio is like half cash, which is insane. If the stock market keeps going up then I'm going to lose some upside. But if it goes down, then I've at least protected some of my profits from 2024.
So that's kind of an overview of my overall strategies with some different portfolios that I have.
This trading one. So the VIX is bouncing around with Tesla.
Been trading around 430 these days, which has been huge I think in the summer. Let's see, Tesla in the summer was trading at, when I actually opened a position in Tesla was about 160 bucks. So. And Tesla is actually my second largest position and that's partly because it's grown so significantly. So let's see Tesla in October. Wow, you could have bought Tesla in October just two months ago for under $200. And then had you been able to predict that Donald Trump was going to win and that was going to have a boost on the Tesla stock, you would have doubled your money in two months. So that's the crazy stuff with the market.
You have to have a stomach too for a certain level of volatility that comes with that. Sofi is another one of those stocks. Let me see if I can get a wide on this chart. So you can kind of see this pattern that I'm seeing. If I go to this weekly chart, you really see it more clearly. So again, it's like the same thing in again, November 2021 stock completely crashes down till about June 2022, then trades sideways for a long period of time.
A little bit of a rounding out bottom here, almost like a double bottom. And now broken out, it's trading at $16. I did a fundamental and technical analysis podcast on SOFI a couple months ago right before they reported earnings. At that time the stock was trading under $12. I talked about this possibility of the breakout which is absolutely what happened. I tossed, talked about potential price targets.
I do think I said the $16 level, which is currently where it's trading. But if it follows this theme that I'm talking about for next year, it could trade back towards its all time highs, which we're looking at maybe 23, $24. And if it breaks out above that, I mean, forget it. Those kind of breakouts, you could see really huge moves. So that's highly speculative. I don't know what's going to happen next year.
We were anticipating a recession for the last couple of years which has not played out. So now people are bullish and trying to play catch up from not being in the market. And that's where it gets, that's where it almost gets cautionary because once everybody starts getting bullish and we take out recession and we're, we're feeling great, that's when the, that's when the bad stuff happens. So be cautious. I'm still at this point bullish going into the year. I think maybe early in the year we'll see the pullback from people repositioning. So there'll be a lot of selling.
But that's just a macro theme.
Let's see. Lilly. That's a good one. I did a quick trade in Lilly a couple weeks ago, which worked out well. What else is on here? Google. So I think Google, one of the large things I think for next year that it's going to compete with AI is quantum computing. And one of the big stocks that's involved in quantum computing is Google. And Google hasn't seen as much growth as its peers.
Google earlier in the year was just crushed because people thought Google had lost search, which it kind of has to chat GPT. So there was a narrative around Google that they really dropped the ball and it's been trading somewhat sideways or not as strongly as its peers. I think it's still up for the year though.
It looks like, let's see, trying to take a look here. December of last year. If I go out to the weekly.
So if we go to the beginning of 2024, Google. So that drop was in about March.
It wasn't terrible actually. Now that I'm looking back on it, I remember it being worse than it actually was. Thing is, Google kind of trades sideways again compared to those magnificent seven stocks. It doesn't tend to move as much. But it did break out, it looks like around actually in March. It broke out. Wow. Okay. So it's been kind of climbing. It's climbing its way back up.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: It's.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Google is not out of count. Parent company Alphabet.
But the reason I'm bringing it up is because with this quantum computing theme, there's a lot of smaller stocks like Ionq with smaller market cap that you could see some really big moves. In and already have. So I like those. But if you're going long on the theme of quantum computing, Google released their quantum computer, Willow and that really gave the stock some energy and there's a potential that Willow could do for Google what ChatGPT did for Microsoft. So when Microsoft took a position, ChatGPT, Microsoft was, grew a lot right out of the gate because they were seen as a leader for AI and now I think Google, if quantum computing, that theme really does stick and Google is seen as a major player in that, then that could have some exciting, that could be a catalyst for Google going into 2025. I don't know, I don't have a position in Google. I'm kind of watching it and that's my thesis on it, but I haven't heard a lot. I've heard a little bit, people are definitely talking about it, but I haven't. I think it's still early to take a position.
So looks like I'm not going to do any day trading today, which is kind of great. It's the holidays. I don't like day trading when it's coming towards to like a long weekend or a break just because if you take a loss and going into the holidays could be kind of a bummer. So just watching, looking, seeing what's happening in the market, I don't see anything exciting. Nothing's really speaking to me in terms of taking a trade. But I guess if nothing else, at least I gave you some overview of themes that I'm looking at and some of my positioning.
I tend to favor growth in technology stocks. I understand the space better. I've been watching those stocks. I like how they move. I like the large size of the market cap because it gives those stocks liquidity, easy to get in and out of.
So yeah, magnificent seven. We'll see if that theme still holds into 2025. What else is on this watch list? I have MU on here.
It was starting to see a little bit of a run up until earnings but they had a bad earnings report.
At least it was perceived negatively by investors and that stock dropped quite a bit. So I'm actually going to just take it off my watch list like I said, trying to clean this down to 10 names.
Right now I have 20 minus like the Dollar, Bitcoin, Spy and Vix which are just indicators or I don't want to say assets because the VIX is not an asset.
But those are, those are, those are tickers to watch if you want to get an overall sense of the market. So I have 16. I got to cut about six more names off of here. Hood, I love. I have a large position in Hood. I actually closed out a lot of it because it doubled on me. So it's just profit taking and portfolio management.
Still keep Hood on the list though because Hood is another name in that category of stocks that I showed you. And actually I'll pull this one up so you can. Anybody who's actually visually watching this or who's watching this and seeing it, you can see again, they have, they, they. All these charts have this very similar pattern. There's a spike up. They hit all time highs and then you can see they just all fall off. November of 2021 was just, it was a huge sell off for the entire market. The entire market was actually in a bear market for a couple years.
The Magnificent Seven woke up the market and took us out of a, took us out of a bear market maybe even a couple years ago. So now we're like two years into a bull. But these stocks really have never recovered to their all time highs. So that's another reason I think there's an opportunity to them to run in 2025. And there's just a whole group of stocks, they're like ARC names. Cathie Wood stocks. I know that's she's an emotionally charged name in the market. You kind of either love her or hate her depending on when you got into positioning and if you're following her and those kind of things. But she's, she's regardless, she's a well respected, I don't know if I wouldn't say hedge fund manager, but she's a portfolio manager and she's an active manager and her ETFs are actively managed, which makes them kind of neat. And she's like a face to the positions that they hold. And so she said in 2020 that her plays were five years out. So that's what she kept saying, Five years. These names are going to be huge. Five years. Names like Zoom and Square and what else was on there? Tesla. Tesla's been a large position of hers for a long time. And in fact she was. That's kind of one of the things that really brought her into the spotlight was her call on Tesla a long time ago when Tesla before it split was trading at like $300. And she said the stock was going to go to 3,000, which was absurd at the time. No one was saying that pretty much but her. And she was right. So that was kind of a neat thing. That gave her some Credibility and street cred, as they say. And she's one to watch. Although in that November 2021 period, her portfolio has crashed. And so things that rise high tend to fall hard. And her, her, her ETFs fell hard. Actually, I haven't looked at ARK in a while. You kind of need to just kind of see because like I said, these stocks that I'm looking at fit into that category.
So ARKK or Innovation ETF again. Yeah, look at exactly.
You can see this is when she was in strong favor. It went from March 2020.
It was trading at around $40 and it got all the way up to $160. So it was about a 4x move and it was almost a straight line up. It was incredible. And then it consolidated lower and then it completely crashed. And again in this November area, It's just consistent. November 2021, all of these kind of stocks fell. These are her etf, which is a cluster of these stocks l in unison with them and has been showing the same pattern. And again, you can see there's this level here. Actually I'm gonna draw it so you can really see it. Put a horizon line here so you can see we're trading right where it like broke out, went to an all time high, crashed back under, has not traded above until recently and now it's pushing that level. So this is gonna be where it gets interesting because if it breaks out above there, people who have been kind of, it's gonna be a rocky move up, but I think it'll still be a move up. So it's like $61. The stock could go to a hundred, one hundred thirty, may like 125, 120 before it hits some serious resistance, maybe 115, but still it's almost a double from here.
No guarantees, but these are, this is, like I said, it's my, it's my thesis. I'm just seeing this pattern in the charts and anybody can see them if they're looking at the charts. So if you're a technical analyst, when you're trading or investing, then you'll see this pattern and there's a number of market participants that are going to see this pattern that are going to be watching what I'm watching.
Yeah, again, no trade, no day trading. I'm not seeing anything that's speaking to me. And I guess if nothing else, that was a good portfolio overview and give you a sense of what I'm watching and themes for next year. Thank you for watching and listening and I plan on doing more live trades, more interviews, more fundamental and technical analysis on assets that I find interesting. Have a great week. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year. I hope you all have a great end of your 2024 and a super start to your 2020.
We'll see you soon. Bye.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Thank you for watching this episode of the Money Adjustment. If you want more like comment and subscribe, you can follow me on xrcramer until the next episode. Stay healthy and wealthy.
