Those 10 Oil Futures (/CL) contracts I mentioned as a short in yesterday's morning post gained another $23,000 during the day as oil plunged back to $95.50 – not a bad pick for the first post of the year. We set our stops at $95.80 to lock in gains and we already took our USO puts off the table as they were up 100% and we hate to be too greedy, though we're happy to re-enter them if they get cheap again.
We still have our SCO (ultra-short oil) plays in place, to take advantage of a proper break-down. They had a longer time-frame so we chose to leave them active as we feel USO will be well below that $33 line ($92.50 oil) but, as Dave Fry notes in his chart, inventories are today and anything can happen.
As I reminded you yesterday, when we added 2 more trades for 2014, our big trade idea for 2014 is AAPL and, this morning, Cantor's Brain White agrees with me and makes it his top pick for 2014 as well. White declares Apple's valuation (just 9x his calendar 2014 EPS estimate exc. cash) "remains depressed," and predicts "new product innovations" will help it return to growth after posting its first EPS declines in a decade. He also expects Apple, which opposes Carl Icahn's buyback proposal but says it's still weighing cash-return options, to return more cash to shareholders in 2014.
IN PROGRESS
