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Good afternoon. This is James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with a market update for October 6th. Well, it really wasn’t that long ago when the U.S. stock market was in dire straits, unemployment was in double digits, and millions of homes were under water in the United States, not literally, but figuratively, and millions of homes were completely vacant. Basically, giving the keys back to the bank and saying, ‘you take it.’ Several years later, after something called quantitative easing, we have unemployment at 5%; we have the stock market making new highs practically every day and, the only trouble right now with the housing market right now in the United States is there aren’t enough houses to sell. How much of this can be attributed to quantitative easing I’m really not sure but, what’s been announced recently is the rollback of quantitative easing – actually selling back the bonds that we’ve been buying here in the United States which drove interest rates down to zero. With all the uncertainty around the world, geo-political, the height of the stock market, the value of the dollar, all these uncertainties are really causing investors to purchase options, both puts and calls, and especially in commodities, such as precious metals, energies, and foods. I’m not quite sure that’s such a great idea. Of course, we’re always selling options and we’re looking to take advantage of over-priced puts and calls in the main commodities that we follow. All this uncertainty is causing a lot of buying but, the rollback of quantitative easing, the normalization of interest rates here in the United States, we think it’s going to be quite a stabilizing factor and, we think that selling options on commodities right now is ideal. Over the last six to twelve months, we thought that gold calls were too high and we took a short position there. We thought that coffee calls were too high, along with the price and, the price of coffee has come down. We recently took a pretty decent sized position in short natural gas thinking that calls double the price was probably a good idea and all three of these different positionings that we’ve taken have done extremely well. Going into the fourth quarter of this year, we’re looking at the price of crude oil. Crude oil, of course, has been supported by OPEC nations banding together to keep some production off the market – a resounding ‘yes’ by many market participants buying crude oil above $50 recently. To peel back the onion on crude oil production – countries like the UAE and Iraq, and a couple others are participating in the rollback of production to the tune of 30% compliance, not very impressive. Going into should season, of course, that is much after driving season, well before heating season, we’re looking at not only cheating amongst OPEC nations but, of course, here in the United States we’re looking at a huge ramp-up of production of crude oil. We think that ten million barrels a day is probably right around the corner and, going into shoulder season we expect crude oil prices to ease somewhat. We like being short the market in the mid to upper 60’s. We think that oil will likely be in the 40’s later this year. We’ll have to see how that plays out. Anyone wanting more information from OptionSellers.com can visit our website. If you’re not already a client of ours and wish to become one, you could speak to Rosemary at our headquarters in the great city of Tampa, Florida. As always, it’s a pleasure speaking with you and looking forward to doing so again in two weeks. Thank you.

Michael: Hello, everybody. This is Michael Gross of OptionSellers.com here with your monthly podcast for September 22nd, 2017. I’m here with head trader, James Cordier. James, welcome to the show.

James: Thank you very much, Michael. Always looking forward to them.

Michael: Boy, we had kind of a quiet summer and then, all of a sudden, in September a lot of news stories breaking and we saw a lot of volatility start to come into the commodities markets, at least in some commodities, not so much in stocks. James, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Tell us what’s going on.

James: Michael, that’s a really good point you make. Often, they call them the dog days of summer just for that reason. A lot of investors and traders alike are kind of taking off June, July, and August. As we went from August to September, a whole lot has been hitting the wire. We have Kim Jong Un lighting off his rockets, yet again. We have interesting things happening in Washington D.C. lately, and there’s always a lot of talk about the value of the stock market, how high it is, and, of course, interest rates in the value of the dollar. Practically hitting on all cylinders here as we start getting ready for the 4th quarter of the year.

Michael: Obviously, as commodities options sellers, that is a good thing. If you’re listening, you certainly want volatility. That’s what makes those deep out-of-the-money premiums fatten up a little bit. In addition to what you talked about, James, I know we had a couple hurricanes blow through here, too. It did some things with energy prices, orange juice, and I know you were on CNBC this month talking about that and also Fox Business. A couple commodities there were affected by the storms.

James: You know, Michael, you really have to stay informed being a commodities investor or trader. 12 years ago, when we had these hurricanes hit New Orleans, just amazing havoc on oil production and natural gas production. A decade later, practically the same regions are getting hit and people racing to the options screen to buy calls in natural gas and buy calls in crude oil. The storm that hit Houston did absolutely nothing to commodity prices, such as natural gas and crude oil. It did pump up the price of gasoline, as you can imagine with the refiners going down. Boy, was that a great opportunity to sell options as people were watching the news and the weather channel that weekend.

Michael: James, that’s a good teaching lesson, too, because I know something you talk about is the people that trade by following the news, and what you always talk about is if you know the real underlying fundamentals, those can be opportunities to go in and sell premium on people selling off the news that aren’t really familiar with the real story and how that could likely really affect prices.

James: Well, it’s interesting, Michael, we just go through our day to day business and we’re familiar with the new production areas of natural gas and crude oil. Basically, the Gulf of Mexico 10 years ago was everything, and now they’re producing oil in the Dakota’s, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arizona now for a huge find. You know, you definitely want to be on top of that when the normal investor comes in racing to buy energy calls. We’re more than happy to sell them based on the fact that we probably felt very little impact from the storm this year, and certainly that’s kind of the way that played out.

Michael: Well, great. If you’re listening and you’d like to watch James’ interviews on both Fox and CNBC on those commodities, they are available on the media page of our website – that’s OptionSellers.com/media. James, let’s go ahead and move into our first market this month. The gold market: a market that even a lot of non-commodity traders follow. We’ve seen some pretty good strength in the gold market through, not just this year, 2017. Gold prices have been pretty strong, but especially through the months of(continued)

Good afternoon. This is James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with a market update for September 19th. Well, as the 3rd quarter of 2017 starts coming to a close, and we start looking at the 4th quarter, believe it or not, are we happy with our performance so far in 2017? I can absolutely say yes; however, with 3 full months left to go, we are certainly going to try and add to that and make 2017 a very good year to remember. A lot going on in the market now, of course, Kim Jong Un is stealing all the headlines by lighting off his rockets yet again. The Republican President is making deals with Democrats right now – quite interesting.

Normalization of interest rates, not only in the United States but also in Europe, looks like it’s just around the corner. If you’re ever going to raise interest rates, let’s do it while the stock market is at all-time highs. Certainly, causing as little flutter to the economy and market as possible, let’s normalize interest rates and get that over with. I think that’d be a very good idea for everyone involved. With a $20 trillion deficit, I don’t think that we are going to be having interest rates go up very fast, but raising them a quarter here and there, I think, is a very good idea. We’ll have to wait and see if everyone else feels the same way, especially Janet Yellen and her team.

Going forward into the months of September and October offer seasonal trades that we like very much. Long term fundamentals in both natural gas and coffee, in our minds, is either neutral or neutral to bearish. The coffee supply in the United States is at all-time record highs at a time when Brazil is basically making their crop. The months of October and November is when the coffee crop there flowers, they turn into cherries, and then will probably become the largest crop ever in history harvested from the great nation of Brazil. That will probably add more coffee beans to the market in the next 6-12 months, and we think selling options there 70% above the current price is probably a good idea.

In natural gas we have practically the same timing. The market usually rallies in September and October, building supplies for the winter, and then we do like the idea of being short with that market by selling calls in natural gas 80% above the current price. With all the drilling right now going on in the United States, with $50 oil and the ability to produce oil up to $35 a barrel, we think that the offset of oil production, of course, is natural gas – the bi-product of all that drilling.

Natural gas probably costs anywhere from $0.90-$1.10 to produce right now and the more drilling that goes on, especially in Texas, the more natural gas we’ll have over the next 6-12 months, as well. Natural gas is in the low to mid $3 range. We think selling it at $6-$7 is going to be an excellent idea and we think we’ll be taking profits on that trade before year’s end.

Anyone wanting more information from OptionSellers.com can visit our website. If you’re not already a client and wish to become one, you can contact Rosemary at our headquarters in the great city of Tampa, Florida in order to possibly become one. As always, it’s a pleasure chatting with you and looking forward to doing so again in 2 weeks. Thank you.

Michael: Hello, everyone. This is Michael Gross from OptionSellers.com here with your August edition of the Option Seller Podcast and Radio Show. James, welcome to the show this month.

James: Hello, Michael. Glad to be here and always fun to do.

Michael: We find ourselves here in the middle of summer and, of course, summer weather often times can take headlines in the agricultural commodities. That’s what we’re going to talk about this month. We have several things going on in some of our favorite agricultural markets. In the Northern Hemisphere, of course, we have growing seasons for crops, such as corn, soybeans, and wheat. Down in the Southern Hemisphere, we have winter time, which is actually an active time for some of the crops they grow down there because you have crops like coffee and some of the other countries, cocoa, that aren’t planted every year. There’s trees or bushes that tend to bloom every year, so winter can often be a time to keep an eye on those, as well. James, maybe to start off here, we can talk a little bit about weather markets themselves, what they entail, and why they can be important for option writers.

James: Well, Michael, many, many years ago, my introduction to commodities investing/trading came along in the summer. There was an incredible hot spell and dry conditions in the Midwest in the United States right during pollination time. That was my introduction to commodities and commodities trading. Weather markets, especially in sensitive times like July and August for the Northern Hemisphere, certainly does bring a great deal of volatility to prices and great opportunity for a weather market to grab hold of particular prices, and that was my introduction into the commodities trading. I’m quite sure that, as summer heats up, of course, here in the United States, so does trading and certain commodities and it looks like we’ve hit that start up again in 2017.

Michael: Okay. Being in these markets as long as you and I have, we’ve seen our share of weather markets. After a while, most of them tend to follow a typical pattern. You see a weather scare, you see prices rise in some commodities, and prices tend to immediately price-in a worse case scenario and then you get the real report or then it rains or whatever happens, and then prices tend to force the back-pedal… not always, but most of the time that tends to be the case. If there is a price adjustment upwards necessary, prices will often do that, but often times that spike often comes in that initial wave of buying, and that tends to have an affect on some of the option prices. Would you agree?

James: Well, certainly a lot of investors who trade seasonally, or perhaps had taken advantage of weather rallies years before, they will look at the option market. Generally, they are not futures traders, so what they might do is they’ll say, “Well, if the price of cotton or the price of corn or soybeans might be going higher because of dry conditions, lets see what options are out there for me to buy.” I would say that the biggest spike, not only in prices, but in prices for call options, particularly, often happen during these weather phenomenons, and so be it. The call buying that comes into the market during these weather patterns. Usually, as you mentioned or alluded a moment ago, it usually winds up being the high as the public pours into the market. It has happened many times in the past and seems to repeat itself time and time again.

Michael: Yeah, that’s a great point, too. You’re talking about that you have a lot of the general public who love to buy options, the media loves to pick up on weather stories and the public reads it, and it tends to feed on itself, and you have public speculators coming in that are buying up options, often times deep out-of-the-money options. These are often times that people who know the fundamentals want to take a look at that and say, “We could take a pretty good premium here with pr(continued)

Good afternoon. This is James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with a market update for August 4th. Recently, my wife and I were driving through Tampa and we were driving past the Tampa Port Authority. Christa says to me, “Look at all the cars.” I looked to my left and I saw the largest car lot of my life. All cars with the exact same emblem on the front, the only difference was the colors of the car. They were sitting looking for a home. It looked like a sea of automobiles waiting for the car dealer to possibly call them and say that they needed them. 30 days later, those cars are still there. I noticed that again today… Interesting.

Over the past week, automobile sales came out approximately 15% below what they were in this same period last year. Automobile inventories were approximately 40% higher than where they’re supposed to be during a healthy U.S. economy. Practically every barometer of the U.S. economy right now is showing either signs of stagnation or great weakness. It’s quite interesting… you have the U.S. dollar falling to a near 2-year low based on these facts, and yet the stock market continues to climb, making a new record-high practically every other day.

So what gives? It’s really hard to tell. Needless to say, interest rates in the United States were supposed to climb 3 or 4 times this year. It looks like they only maybe raised once or twice, and I guess that is all the ammunition the computers need to keep pushing the stock market higher. Eventually, the U.S. economy is going to have to show some growth for the stock market to continue to climb. We’ll have to wait and see exactly when that happens. Of course, some very special months of September and October are coming up, and maybe they’ll have something to say about it.

We certainly are rooting on the stock market, for any of our clients that do have equity holdings. We’re certainly not rooting against it, but by no means would we want to necessarily be pushing stock markets right now. It’s certainly at an extremely high level, practically new highs every day, and yet the U.S. economy continues to show signs of slowing, if not cracking, definitely making for an interesting scenario.

I was speaking to one of my clients recently in Florida. She mentioned that she is a closet bear in the stock market. As a matter of fact, a lot of her friends that do quite well for themselves are stock market bears, as well, she went on to say. I kind of like that phrase, and I asked her if I could possibly borrow that from her, and I just did.

Opportunities in commodities right now, we think, are extremely high, with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of investors trying to seek the ability to move their investments around and not be all allocated in just one implementation. Our looking at opportunities in commodities with the weaker dollar, I think, there will be many now and in the future. Energies and metals are two that we are following very closely. We think that they’re going to be making a pretty decent move over the next 6 months, and we’re going to be positioning ourselves accordingly.

Of course, we spoke of coffee recently. We’re currently putting positions on there. As August is often a cold-weather season in Brazil, and I’m looking at forecasts there and there is nothing happening anytime in the near future as far as southern Brazil, where cold temperatures can actually affect the crop. They don’t grow coffee in southern Brazil anymore.

Anyone wanting more information from OptionSellers.com can visit our website. If you’re not already a client of ours and would like to become one, you can certainly contact Rosemary at our headquarters here in Tampa about possibly becoming one. As always, it’s a pleasure chatting with you, and I’m looking forward to doing so again in 2 weeks. Thank you.

Good afternoon. This is James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with a market update for July 21st. For those of our clients in Dubai, Australia, New Zealand, France, and in South America who may not be familiar with the movie Trading Places, I apologize in advance. I’ve seen the movie probably 50 times and it always seems to turn out about the same way at the end. The Duke brothers are trying to corner the orange juice market. Supposedly, they have the crop report in advance and they were hoping for it to show that cold temperatures in Florida reduced the crop, which would then move prices higher.

Similar things happen every July and August. Many investors in the United States and elsewhere bid up the price of coffee with the idea that cold temperatures in Brazil will reduce the crop there, which then, of course, would propel prices higher. Many years ago, over a decade ago, we did have cold temperatures in Southern Brazil that did cut production that year and prices did jump dramatically. As a matter of fact, that volatility is still in coffee options, which we enjoy practically every year.

This year, once again, as we approach the very middle of winter in the southern hemisphere, coffee traders are starting to bid up the price of coffee. It has gone up about $0.20 a pound just recently. Options, some 60%, 70%, and 80% out-of-the-money, are now in play and that is something we’re going to try and take advantage of over the next week or two. The fundamentals in coffee, we feel, are extremely bearish. Supplies of coffee in the United States are at all-time record highs and the country of Brazil is going to be producing 2 record crops in a row. This year will be the off-cycle of crop and next year is the on-cycle crop, expected to surpass over 60 million bags. The second largest producer of Arabica coffee, being Columbia, only produces 10 or 11. This tells you the enormity of the Brazilian crop and will likely be flooding the market later this year and, of course, next year as well.

While cold temperatures do descend on certain levels and areas of Brazil in July and August, we feel that this sets up just a great sale in options going forward. If we do have some cold temperatures, we think the price of coffee will do something similar as the orange juice price did at the end of Trading Places, and we feel quite comfortable about going short some 80% out-of-the-money. Calls 220, 230, 240 a pound, when coffee we expect later this year to be trading around 110-120 per pound, basically one half of the price of the options that we are looking to sell. We think this is going to be an excellent opportunity going forward for this year, as well as next, and we plan on taking good advantage of it.

Anyone wanting more information from OptionSellers.com can visit our website. If you’re not already a client of ours and wish to become one, please feel free to contact Rosemary about doing just that. As always, it’s a pleasure chatting with you and looking forward to doing so again in 2 weeks. Thank you.

Good afternoon. This is James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with a market update for July 5th. It’s so interesting; practically none of our clients have ever traded commodities. They don’t have commodity accounts, nor have they had commodity accounts in the past, and yet they all saw fit to read our book, understand short options on commodities, and read some of our materials - enough to get them to open an account and sell options on gold, silver, coffee, and soybeans. It’s certainly an investment that you’re not going to hear discussions about when you’re out to dinner or at a barbeque with friends.

Options on commodities certainly is a new idea to many investors; but when you think about it, commodities like crude oil, gold, silver, and coffee, they’ve been around for a long time and will always be around for a long time. I get in front of this camera every 2 weeks and discuss opportunities in these different markets and selling options, you know, 50% out-of-the-money, how opportune strangles can be and such, understanding fair value of a commodity like soybeans or corn, and how that can interpret and be used as an investment.

Well, this past 6 months, the end of the 1st half just happened, and we’re quite pleased with the results of selling options on commodities for our clients. We do like the prospects and the landscape for short options on commodities over the next 2-3 years. It’s kind of difficult to see the landscape past that, but right now, with a lot of the things going on with the world economy, here in the United States, and a lot of interest in clients and investors getting diversified from the stock market, we think we’ll continue to deliver opportunities in doing exactly what we do.

This summer, of course, we have movements in energies and in grains. We look at taking advantage of some of those over the next 30-60 days. Hopefully, we’re looking forward to a very good second half of 2017 to cap what we already did so far this year, hopefully very good results then, as well. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and I look forward to working for you in the second half of 2017.

If you’re not already a client and wish to become one, you can visit our website or contact Rosemary at our headquarters in Tampa, Florida. As always, it’s a pleasure speaking with you, and looking forward to doing so again in 2 weeks. Thank you.

Good afternoon this is James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with a market update for June 17th. Well this past week Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve did what was very well advertised, and that was raising rates by another 0.25%. Certainly not a big deal. Basically all market analysts and participants were certainly expecting that.

What did come out yesterday, I think, however is practically monumental and it's historic. We're all familiar with what happened some 8 or 9 years ago and that was something called QE. "Quantitative Easing", a way to actually drive interest rates down to zero and in some cases, below zero.

What happened yesterday was the announcement of finally reducing the Fed's balance sheet, a balance sheet that has ballooned up to $3.5 trillion. The plan is to reduce this balance sheet by some $600 billion a year, over the next few years and bringing it down to the neighborhood of $1 trillion.

It's so interesting some several years ago, the discussion of Quantitative Easing and what it was going to do for economies and what it was going to do for inflation. Certainly, people who have never invested in gold, never bought crude oil and never did anything like this, all of a sudden became mainstay.

The idea of owning gold or owning oil and being part of a portfolio and a storage of wealth, definitely had mixed results over the last 8 or 9 years. Sitting at my desk, I think we just turned the page on that entire idea. Will the gold market ever rally again? Of course it will. Will crude oil prices ever get $2 and $3 increases from time to time? Of course they will as well.

However they're gonna start doing it now on their own accord based on fundamentals. One of the fundamentals for oil to rally now is going to be "we're consuming more than we're producing". Certainly not the case right now, we think that oil prices are going to languish in the 40's here for quite some time. As we go into the 3rd and 4th quarter of this year, we really see oil prices having a difficult time getting much higher then where they are right now. As a matter of fact they could be a few dollars lower, would probably be better idea.

As far as the gold market, it's trading around fairer value right now, around $1260 an ounce. For gold to rally, it will need to see some inflation. We keep talking about inflation at goals of 2% in several different zones in the United States as well as Europe. There was talk that we finally achieved that, and then of course this past week or two, those hopes were dashed, that inflation was running at levels that the Federal Reserve was interested in having and certainly that's not the case yet again.

The gold market has to have some sort of banking crisis. It has to have inflation. It has to have something along these lines to cause investors to think that it's a good investment and right now, that market is certainly lacking all of these. The gold market will always rally $25 and $50 from time to time based on different knee-jerk reactions to market analysis.

However, gold, oil, stores of wealth, we think that that page has turned this past week. We do love the idea of selling options in those commodities going forward. A lot of ideas right now of volatility finally creeping back into the stock market and commodities markets, are giving us what we think are probably the best opportunities to come along in quite some time.

The end of quantitative easing is certainly one of those and that is a opportunity builder right now. We're not going to discuss all the opportunities that we think are coming up right now in the next 30 days. We're going to be putting those in clients accounts and we'll be discussing those more in future updates that I'd like to give you.

Anyone wanting more information from OptionSellers.com can visit our website. If you're not already a client of ours and like to become one you can talk to Rosemary at our headquarters in Tampa, Florida, about possi(continued)

Michael: Hello everyone. This is Michael Gross and James Cordier of OptionSellers.com. We are here with your July OptionSeller TV Show. James, welcome to the show this month.

James: Thank you, Michael. Always glad to be here.

Michael: We have a pretty full slate this month, so we’re going to jump right into things. First thing to talk about this month, obviously, is the FED rate hike coming down. It hiked another quarter point in June. So, that’s going to have a different type of effect on commodities. James, I know you talked about it in your weekly video, but maybe just cover that a little bit right now for our viewers and what that might mean for commodities markets.

James: Okay. Most recently, interest rates have been, here in the United States, pegged at zero. With this latest quarterly rise we are slightly off of zero- somewhere between half and one percent. The quarter point rise really wasn’t a big surprise, certainly, but what Janet Yellen specified was the rollback of the incredible amount of cash and bonds that the government is holding. This rollback of the size of what the government is holding is just incredible – it’s some 3.5 trillion dollars and we’re going to see them start to sell that back into the market.

Michael: So, how would that affect say… the first thing you think about when you think of interest rates is probably the U.S. dollar. How is that going to play out, do you see, as far as its affect on commodities?

James: Well, as we effectively went into quantitative easing, as you know, some 8 or 9 years ago, the talk of the town was “We’re going to have an incredible amount of inflation, we’re going to have inflation, and we’re going to have infrastructure spending creating inflation”. A lot of people weren’t familiar with quantitative easing or what that meant to interest rates. Basically, a lot of people would put commodities into their portfolio. Someone who has never traded commodities before, thought that having gold or oil or something like this as an investment because of quantitative easing thought that would be the way to go because, certainly, interest rates at zero was going to spur a great growth worldwide and inflation. It simply didn’t pan out that way. Now, rolling back the balance sheet of the federal government from 3.5 trillion dollars to 3, then 2.5, then 2, then 1.5 is going to reverse this thinking for the majority of the people who are looking for inflation hedges. The inflation hedge is probably going to be not so popular going forward. As a matter of fact, not only not having an inflation hedge in your account or in your portfolio, but the fundamental factors that create inflation aren’t with us anymore. So, we don’t have 0% interest rates, we don’t have quantitative easing, we have that rolling back, and a time where inflation never really actually took place, clearly everyone is very familiar with what happened to China the last 7 or 8 years with the infrastructure spending. That’s done. That’s complete. Without quantitative easing and without 0% interest rates, the need for investors to put gold or oil in their account just haphazardly just to own it as an inflation hedge, we think that that time has come. So, gold and silver and crude oil will rally on its own accord, but as far as simply people buying it, hedge funds, private investors, we think that’s in the 9th inning and that’s likely wrapping up.

Michael: Of course, we have better ways to take advantage of commodities prices other than buying them outright, as most of our viewers know. What we’re going to point out to those of you watching and listening, we talk often about how commodities are diversified and they are uncorrelated to equities and interest rates and that type of thing, especially the way we approach them or you would approach them as an options sellers, because, yes, when James is talking now about interest rates and it’s affect on inflation, that’s a bigger macro-type issu(continued)

Good afternoon. This is James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with a market update for May 19th. Well, the VIX has been in the news recently. All-time lows for the stock index barometer that talks about the volatility and, basically, there has been absolutely no fear whatsoever. The stock market, of course, has been rallying to practically new highs nearly each week for the first quarter or two of this year, 2017, and absolutely VIX trading below 10, the lowest level seen in decades. Basically, investors want to simply go long the stock market, and for many reasons – 0% interest rates and really nowhere else to look for any type of return.

Well, a lot of ideas -- was the U.S. was the best house in the neighborhood? Always stronger than China, always stronger than Japan, and always stronger than the European nations. That changed dramatically this past week. U.S. auto sales and other parts of the housing market here in the United States are starting to show signs of easing. At the same time in Europe, many nations, France, Italy, and Germany, are actually doing quite well. What is this doing? This is causing a little bit of mayhem, not only on Wall Street, but also a lot of investors thinking about possibly taking money out of the U.S. and going into Europe and other instruments. Of course, what’s happening in Washington D.C. recently isn’t really helping matters. Just before visiting with you today, I was watching the DOW fall practically 400 points today. I think that’s the largest sell-off since last September.

Things do seem to be changing. The U.S. economy does seem to be cooling off somewhat. The stock market, of course, near record highs practically constantly every time you look at the newspaper. That seems to be changing. A lot of investors are starting to think that simply closing your eyes and simply going long stocks may not be the best investment in the world. At OptionSellers.com, we’re not rooting for the stock market to fall, but what we are rooting for is a little bit of volatility. We had very large positions in short options over the last 6 months, allowing decay to happen in mainly gold and silver calls as well as coffee calls. With volatility coming down and the price of those markets falling, we’ve been able to book great profits so far in 2017.

We’ve gone to quite a bit of cash recently if you look at your account. We are margined less at what our target level is, basically trying to be patient and waiting for volatility to come back into the market. Well, we just received that. We are going to be, I think, rewarded quite well in not selling options when volatility is at all-time lows, but trying to be patient and having some powder dry so that when volatility does come back to the market we are able to take advantage of it. That’s what we see happening here in the next 2-3 weeks. Volatility is back. It’s back in a big way.

As you know, for all of you that have read our book and followed our valuable materials, you know that volatility is the catalyst of higher premiums and that is, of course, what we are looking forward to selling. We will be looking at putting an additional 15-20% of your capital to work over the next 30 days as volatility has now begun to pump up premiums on both puts and calls. Again, our two favorite trades going into the summer of 2017 is short natural gas and short soybeans. Not only are these two of our favorite seasonal trades, but the fundamentals bear that position to work quite well going into the 2nd and 3rd quarter of this year.

Anyone wanting more information from OptionSellers.com can visit our website. If you’re not already a client and wish to become one, you can speak to Rosemary about possibly becoming one. As always, it’s a pleasure chatting with you. I’m looking forward to doing so again in 2 weeks. Thank you.