Hello and welcome to the Investor Master Series. My name is James Boyd. We welcome you on this April 8th, 2025. We also have in the chat with us Barbara Armstrong. We welcome her as well. She's a fellow instructor. You know Barbara. And also just real quick, we got Doug J. Richardson. Gary, who's also coming in from the gym. So we're going to call him Mr. Committed here today. And Grace, Jay Richardson, MB, and many others. Welcome to all. When we talk about Investor Master Series, we're talking about taking topics like stocks, technical analysis, fundamentals, options, strategies, and really bringing it together, okay? And so we want to kind of have a place where you, as someone who might be intermediate or advanced, I can't actually have a place to bring it all together.
Now, if you sit up, well, James, I'm more brand new. Can I learn nothing here? Well, that's not true. But it's really geared towards more intermediate to advanced. Now, today I want to talk about kind of some snapback rallies. And I got some questions. And so we're going to go to those as we talk about some of the things right at the top of the hour. So let's get to those. Now, just real quick, remember, you can follow Barb and I on X. We do post content there daily throughout the week. Make sure you just remember. Capital J, capital B for Barbara Armstrong. Barbara, if you could actually put your handle right there in the chat so you could follow Barbara. And also those are announcements we post and also educational examples.
They are not recommendations. And also some market commentary that we also see. We share those right on X. Now, quick reminder that when we talk about options, remember that options carry a high level risk and are not suitable for all investors. When we talk about examples, those will be done in the paper money software application. And also when we talk about investing, investing involves risk. OK, we've seen some of that lately and things can go down. OK, don't know why. Well, we're going to remind you of that. But if we're playing stocks or options, they can go down, as we will see and as we saw. And also remember that when we talk about short options, those can be assigned at any time. Up to expiration, okay? Prior to expiration, think of that.
Regardless of if it's in the money, you're short, okay? You have an obligation. And so that could actually happen. Quick reminder there. Now, also, there's no guarantee that the stop order will be executed at or near the stop price. It is a market order. That's a good reminder there as well. That's the difference between setting a stop and buying a put. Now, we'll talk about kind of looking at market conditions. I want to talk about strategies. Yesterday we talked about bear, we talked about what we called a bear market game plan. And we did, which was kind of awkward because we're like, wait, we talked about bear market strategies or bear market game plan, but then we did three bullish trades. Wait, why? Well, that's because the market yesterday, the VIX went to 60.
And so how often do you get the market where the VIX is at 60? When we talk about strategies to potentially enhance our protected portfolio, that's really huge. OK, we're going to talk about some bounce back strategies, but also for some of you that think that maybe the sell-off is not done. We'll talk about some things on how do we maybe protect a portfolio or how do we try to enter a new bearish position at a key technical point? Could you play bullish and bearish when the market's falling? And the answer is yes, OK, as we saw yesterday. And then we'll do example trades on the trading platform. Now, first off, let's go ahead here and just take a look at the good old SPX for just a moment, OK? Now, as I mentioned before, yesterday we saw the market. It went down to $48. 35, OK? VIX.
Okay, so yesterday we saw the VIX was it touched 60. If an investor had put on historically bearish trades when the VIX was at that level, that would have, you know, historically, that would not be the best time to put on a bearish trade when the VIX was at that level. Now, you can do what you want, okay? When we think about what-When some investors see the VIX at that level, they think that maybe we could have a snapback rally. Now, what this is going to look like on the chart is when the VIX is high, the S&P or many stocks are going to be low. And what we saw yesterday is, if that dash line was the moving averages and that straight line is the price, many things were coming off lows.
And they're very far away from the moving averages. And what you're now going to notice is these prices they can snap back to the upside closer to the moving average. And the question I want to ask you here in this case is, can we, for example, have lower highs? Or are we making lower highs? Are we going from a lower low to a lower high? And that's kind of our point that we did yesterday and the point we're making right now again. We made a lower low when the VIX made a high opposite. And you can have some of these snapbacks. Now, sometimes these snapbacks can be 5%, 10%, 15% in just a period of days. And many stocks have actually done that.
Now, if you are a bearish investor and you say, James, I'm looking for an entry, well, you're kind of looking for this upward movement back up closer to the moving averages to try to place a potential bearish trade. Does that make sense? Okay, now, yeah, so Lisa, I think we're on the same page there. Yesterday, when we just looked at these prices, we just said, look, fixes at 60. Many of these prices are way, way, way far away from the moving averages. Statistical chances, pretty good chance to come back up a little bit. Could there be potential reentries or entries for bear flag trades? I think many technicians would say yes to that. OK, now, any other questions there? I just want to make sure we hit that right off the bat.
Now, when we talk about the SPX, OK, I need to ask you a question. If someone asks you, hey, you're in the market, and I want to kind of ask you, what are some key levels to watch? What would you say? Now, and I'm talking about from an old support, new resistance perspective. And this is very important to kind of set the lines here. So if we kind of said, where was the major breakdown? Well, major breakdown, 5,500. If I went down even below that and I said anything below that, what levels would we be looking at? If we're talking about any levels below 5,500, I'm just seeing your comments here. If we said anything below that, probably would say right around the level, let's say 5,400.
So if we take a look at below that, you got about 5,200. OK, 52. 23. So these up moves from here to there, these could just be the process of going from a lower low to a lower high. Lower low to a lower high doesn't mean it's upward trending. It just means it's, well, in the process of trying to make a lower high. When you go from a lower low to lower high, the price goes up. Now, the bad part about this is what I pointed out yesterday. Is when you look at a three-year weekly of the S&P 500, there's been some technical damage here. Remember, when those moving average lines are red, which they are, you have negative momentum and you have negative trend.
So we want to kind of be mindful here that we're in some overcast conditions. It's raining, thundering, and lightning the whole nine yards. Move this just real quick to a monthly time frame. You're going to see that if I take a look at this, click on that, on the monthly chart. So if you're kind of more intermediate to longer term, kind of don't like that chart either. Now, if you ask me, and so James, what do you think about this? Well, first off, I have to respect what's on the chart. The market doesn't care what James thinks. It doesn't care what James wants. Even though my birthday might be upcoming, it doesn't care. So when we look at, let's say, kind of the strategies, this is why yesterday we talked about bear market game plan.
Now, forget the fact bear market, okay? Just think of it as pulling back. When I say 'bear market' or anyone says that, people get scared, okay? Just think of right trend falling down, okay? Now, so things that we want to be familiar with is like we talked about yesterday, cover calls, protective puts, collaring, things like that, exiting. Okay? Now, when we also pull up, let's say, is there anything else in terms of when you look at the NASDAQ, is it different? No, it's not. When you look at the Russell, is it different? It's even worse. Don't even get me started on the small caps, okay? As we've joked many times, those companies are most likely going to struggle to say the least, okay?
Now, the one thing that we gotta say is when you look at, let's say, gold prices, gold has actually stayed up pretty well, okay? It's pulled back as well. But overall, it's hung in there better. Now, I want to look at statistical returns real quick and on a year-to-date basis, OK? So when we kind of just take inventory and we look at the YTD, the year-to-date, OK, we kind of say, OK, what do we got here, OK, looking at the numbers? When we look at the year-to-date, we see that the Dow is down 8%, OK, year-to-date. Got a blue color right there. We look at S&P, it's down 11. 5. NASDAQ down 14. 5. We're also down 17. 5.
So now, when you look at the weekly, now, I wasn't even here last week, and the market thinks, oh, James is out of town, let's smash that portfolio. Trust me, I'm always there, okay? I'm always there. I'm never gone, okay? Now, if you look at the week, it was down 6%, 7%, 8% on the week. And it's not a good thing when you actually see the highest returner being the VIX. Boo, if you're a bull. So here's the thing. Yesterday, I asked you, like, are you really now considering using options as protection or using options to trade bearish trends? How many of you now are considering that? OK, now I want to go back also just real quick to the sectors. And before we look at these trades.
And if we look at the sectors just real quick, you're going to see that right here, I just want to kind of show statistically. Now, when we look at this, I drew a kind of a little diagram yesterday. And we're going to use that y-axis right there for volatility. And on the bottom there, that expected return. Doesn't mean it happens. One thing I want to kind of point out right here yesterday is we kind of said, look, your y discretionaries and your t's tend to be the most volatile. Statistically, yep, there it is, just as we would expect, okay? Or just as my old friend said, just as I expected, okay? Now, if we look at, let's say, energy, it's also there as well, down 11% right there.
And if you look at industrials, we said yesterday, industrials and transports would be about right there. It's in the middle. And if you look at communications, down 8%. We said the materials, I'll include communications, okay? And if you look at what's at top, we said that really the V, U, R for staples, RE for real estate. Where are they? They're right here. Now, they're not up. But these four, they're down a heck, literally a heck, of a lot less than the other ones. Now, I'm going to tell you right now, if I ran into a friend of mine and he said, man, my whole portfolio was in discretionary technology. I mean, his or her feelings or how they feel about the market is drastically different than someone that maybe had a balance of sectors, okay?
And you're going to see that when we look at statistical numbers, it kind of lines up with the graph that we drew yesterday, okay? Now, I think this is very important because when someone invests, they are always kind of attracted to the G, the growth names. Remember, if that volatility is going up, the growth is going to tend to get smashed. Now, when the volatility falls, growth could actually start to go back up again. But these are kind of what we would call GARP, growth at a reasonable price, perhaps. And on the left-hand side, now, by the way, we could also maybe say potential value. And on the left-hand side, income. So income tends to be a little bit more attractive when the volatility is spiking.
These are companies that, for example, don't tend to actually have as much growth, but they tend to be more consistent, and they pay dividends. Now, that's very important you remember this diagram. Hopefully, it's tattooed in your brain now that when the volatility goes up, so when the VIX up, you're normally going to see that these get pushed down. And these tend to go up or hold more value. It doesn't mean that it's actually going to stay up, but you're going to see that those even got drugged down. The thing that people have to remember is, the harder the market goes down, the harder it goes down, the correlation of almost all things becomes closer to one. Even gold, even silver, even copper. So the harder the market falls, most everything falls.
Why? Well, because they're selling those positions. And going to cash, baby, okay? Why? Well, because they're trying to actually make sure they protect their capital, okay? Now, are there any questions here? I just want to make sure we're clear on this, okay? Now, the question from Zinc560 is, how is industry sector leadership today? Well, if we look today, now, by the way, why did you put GC there? Well, the reason I put GC there is that those precious metals are kind of trading like a sector, OK? So that's why I have GC there. Now, by the way, if we're saying that, hey, the VIX could be coming down a little bit from the high, what might we expect with this diagram now? What would we probably expect?
Well, it would kind of be the flip of what we just said. If we're actually now saying, look, that VIX is maybe not going up, but maybe it's kind of topping out, and maybe it's starting to kind of go down a little bit, some of these growth names might start to rebound. All of them? Oh, that's a strong word. Never say all. But some of them might be in that area where they might be starting to bounce. Now, are we saying that these staples, health care, utilities, real estate, they're horrible? Are these areas? Oh, that's not true. But on a percentage basis. The discretionary is technology, energy, and materials. I'll include that right there. Materials, MAT, OK? Those, percent-wise, probably could be at some key bounce points or trying to reverse.
Speaking of that, let's go to our first example here today. Now, if I were talking about like a growth name, one of the stocks that's had a pretty good snapback is Palantir, OK? Now, Palantir, if I actually look at this for just a second, Palantir, what do they even do? Go to the analyze just real quick. And you're going to see that here's some, if you said, where can I see some information on what it does? Right there. We're on the analyze tab, and we go to fundamentals. And so if you look at this, we can also see some data about earnings per share and the per share values. Now, I want to pull this up for just a second. This is one stock that, this was just yesterday.
So why do people try to buy when the volatility reaches maybe some extreme levels? In the last 24 hours, Palantir has moved only 25%, okay? And I'm talking about 25% from the low. If I looked at it from the low to today's high, it only moved 29. 8%. So why do people bottom fish when actually the VIX is high? Well, because remember, these two, three, four, five day bounces, they could be extreme as I'm showing. Now, let's kind of say the investor says, look, it's not just about price. It's also about the V word volatility. OK, now what I'm going to do is let's say the investor says, James, I want to try to sell something. OK, I want to try to sell something where I think the price could stay up above a certain spot.
But I want to try to be more conservative. What does that even mean? Well, that means in this case, we're trying to sell something maybe farther away from the current price with downside protection. Now, if I did, if I said that language, I'd be thinking, probably thinking about like a short put vertical or selling a put with a farther out of the money put protection. Okay. Now let's go to this just real quick. Let's go to the paper money account. Okay. First trade here. Now, the one thing I want to kind of bring out here is I want to go to the trade tab for just a sec. I want to bring up just real quick Palantir, okay? Now, we have a position on this. This is the position, okay?
We sold the 80, okay? And we bought the 75. That's in the IRA account. Okay, fine. That's where it stands. When was that trade placed? It was placed about five weeks ago. Has about another nine days left. I want to go just real quick to the margin account. Is it in there as well? It is. So what I want to do is I want to overlay this trade where we actually go farther out in time. And what I want to do here is I want to go sell the maze. Now, I'm kind of running out of time on this, noted, OK? Not up a whole lot on that. But I want to go a little bit farther out in time. Let's go look at maze. Look at the implied volatility, OK, 113.
We're going to try to use that implied volatility to sell something, okay? And the thing about volatility is when the volatility is high, if the investor says, 'I'm going to sell a strike with a delta 30 to 40,' and just kind of as a starting point, the investor might say, 'Well, James, could I maybe even sell something farther out than that, okay? As long as they get a certain percentage. Well, this return on risk, this is like doing the math of taking the option premium divided by the current stock price. Now, it's going to be pretty dang close, okay?' Now, if the investor says, 'When I sell something, I would like to get a certain percentage.' Now, for our example, let's say we said, 'Look, I would like to get 2.
5%.' Well, when that volatility is higher, the investor can sell higher up or meaning a lower strike on the option table. So let's say the investor said, 'James, I want to even try to maybe sell like the 70 that has a 24 delta.' Now that delta 24, it's just showing the relationship between the stock price and the option price, okay? So in other words, if the stock moves a dollar, the option prices theoretically move on a formula, or we could kind of say the ratio, if you will. The option should move theoretically about $0. 23. Stock moves $1.' The option moves about $0. 23. Now, that's not guaranteed. It's just built into the model price, okay? That delta is not stationary.
It moves based upon volatility and also time to expiration as well. Now, what I'm going to do in this first trade is we're going to sell the 70. And we're going to sell vertical. Now, some of you might be thinking, hey, where is the 70 on the price graph? Well, let's show you. 70, let's kind of put that marker right there. It's right there. So when you sell the put, you're really thinking that the stock could stay above that threshold. Now, the downside is if we bought the 65, that's the downside. Now, I'm telling you, I don't think you've had any better learning lesson lately than what we've just seen lately as far as the value of pets. Now, quick question. Did anyone last week have puts or apply puts to their positions?
Anybody? Now, We'll come to that because we've got a trade we've got to talk about. So this upper line is where we think the price could stay above. That downside is really; A, if the stock were to go down below there, we have a right to sell. Now, if we come to this, what I'm going to do is trade number one. We're going to sell the 70s, buy the 65s, and it gives us really $1.30 credit. If the investor said, You know, James, I want to widen that out a little bit. That way, I don't have to do two contracts. That's really going to be about 237 credit. OK, remember, the credit you received actually sell the puts as high. But you also got to remember the puts to buy.
They're expensive as well. So we're going to do the 70 and the 60s. OK, now let's not assume. Let's just double check the 60s. Liquid, a bit of a spread there, about $0. 08 currently. $0. 15 on the 70s. Trade number one, going to sell the 70s and then buy the 60s. Confirm and send. Now, Lisa actually says those puts, callers, are coming in handy. And I'll come to that in just a sec. But the biggest thing about puts is nobody wants the puts to become valuable. It's just protecting your capital, okay? That's really kind of what it's designed for. And it's also to create a defined risk, but also to decrease the fluctuation on the portfolio. Hello? Send? Now, so that actually fills. So we've kind of overlaid.
This April, we're thinking that's going to come off. And then with the Mays we just put on, that's the ones right there. Now, let's come back to a position. How many of you, and just be honest with, I won't tell anyone, okay? How many of you, for example, have positions and have been riding the downward slide and are now thinking, 'What should I do or consider now?' Has anyone been in that situation? Now, by the way, don't feel like you're a bad person, okay? There's just some stocks that you just want to try to hold long-term. Understand. However, Sometimes if you look at a stock like AM, we have 97 shares of stock, okay? And if we look at AM for just a moment here, AM, you're going to notice it's had a very big drop.
Now, what's kind of interesting about this is we had a stop on this, but for some reason it didn't trigger, okay? For some reason. Now, we fell down aggressively. This is Friday, excuse me, Monday, Friday. Thursday. Big drop, okay? Now, if you look at this, we've actually rallied right back to the moving averages. Now, if this was you, or you had a stock that looked like this, which you probably do, what would you probably be thinking now? A, try to sell the stock back up closer to where it broke down from. That's understandable. If we look at kind of where the horizontal or diagonal support is, We've now rallied right back up to where that break occurred.
A lot of times the market gives you an option to kind of, we'll call it, you get a little lucky that if you didn't have a stop and you didn't sell at that lower low, that sometimes the market or the stock will come right back up to where it broke down from. Now, sometimes this is a false sense of sometimes confidence. Oh, thank heavens I didn't have a stop. Because I would have been stomped out. And this upward move can turn into what? A lower high. So it breaks support. It makes a lower low. And what tends to come after a lower low? Answer, a lower high. What does the lower high look like? Well, we get an upward price move that typically tends to be only one to three days.
And we're not able to get above where we broke down from, OK? Don't watch the color of the candles. Watch where the price levels are as far as resistance. The resistance is probably going to be the old level support. Now, I want to kind of just now kind of play this game of, well, what could I consider now? Option number one is the investor might say, 'I'm going to sell now.' thinking that the price might even decline again and maybe fall back down to 95. Okay. But let's say that's not an option, that we nail the door shut and we say we're not going to pick that door. And I want to know how do we protect this? How do we do it? And how long does it take?
Well, let's say the investor says, 'James, I got 97 shares of stock.' First thing that we could actually do here is we could buy three more shares of stock. Now there's three more shares of stock just going to just. absolutely break the bank. Well, it's probably going to be about 300 bucks. Okay. So first thing we're going to do is we're going to buy 300 shares, three shares, excuse me, or $300 worth of stock. And we're going to buy three more shares of stock. Okay. Now, if I look at this and kind of say, where's that mid price, let me actually put it right there. We're going to buy three more shares of stock. Now what that does, and now kind of allows us to do what?
Now, I'm going to tell you right now, I think a lot of times when markets start going down, we get deer in the headlights. And sometimes we don't think, what could I do to change the delta? And this is something I want to make sure we hammer here today. So when we look at the delta, when you have a delta of 100, you are the most bullish you can be if you had 100 shares. If we said that the delta is zero for delta, like a neutral type strategy, this really being very bullish, how do we actually, now let's say we didn't want to have 100 delta. How do we bring the delta back to the left? Well, you sell something. You sell a call.
If we sell a call with a delta 30 to 40, it's going to bring our delta to the left. Now, when you're out here, you're not focusing on time decay, you're focusing on direction. If we go to the left or sell a call, you're actually saying, look, I want to focus on some direction, yes, but I want to also focus on that time decay. Now, I need everyone to say that with us, decay. Okay, now, what we're going to do is, how long does it take to sell a call? Well, We're going to go to the trade tap. We're going to go to the May expiration, 20 and 50 days expiration. We're going to look to sell a call out of the money. Now, let's think here just for a second.
Just think, OK? If the implied volatility, if the VIX was at 60, where do you think many, many stocks' implied volatilities are? It's at 50. How often do you get 50 on a gold stock? Not very often. The investor that's thinking or considering a cover call might say, 'hey, look, I'm going to go sell that call. Now, if you sell that call, and I'm just going to do this step by step, what we're doing is we're lowering the delta. Can anyone explain to me again, why are we lowering the delta? What are we trying to do? We're lowering the delta because we want there to be less directional sensitivity. We're also trying to generate a premium; an income, to help us get some time decay. Now, when we actually sell that call for $3.
10, confirm and send, and now what I'm going to do is put that right in that stock section, send that order. Notice the commission right there, right there. Okay, send. Now, if I do that, how long did that take? Now, last week, as you're seeing many, many stocks drop, and if you had 100 shares, and there's a good chance you have 100 of something. This is now turned into a covered call. The delta before was 100. But when we sell a call, it's bearish delta. That's a bearish position. I'm selling the call. And your delta now is 66. Now, is this a protection or an income strategy? Is this a protection or an income strategy? It's an income strategy. You do not have the right to sell anything.
You have an obligation to sell, not a right to sell. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to look to, now, how many of you think that the market drop is not over, that there's risk of things falling down even further? Now, still having the position, sold the call. Could we use some of that 310 and buy that put? Now, you've got to imagine how many people-in this last week might've said, 'I cannot believe that I was so fill-in-the-blank that I didn't maybe consider buying some puts last week for the investors that do options. Not everyone; not everyone. Okay. Well, let's go look at the trade tab for just a second. Okay. Could we, now here's the deal.
When the investor buys pets, they're choosing, they're just saying, number one, I want a right to sell something, just in case. Think of that as a parachute, okay? Also, if we sold this, if we bought that 90 put for May, the 90, statistically, it doesn't have a good chance of the stock being below the strike price. If we actually sold this, excuse me, bought this one, that has a better chance of being below the strike price, but not high. So when you buy puts, statistically, a lot of times, they don't have a great chance for it to be profitable. And they're also negative time decay. So buying puts by themselves, if you buy them out of money, they don't have a high probability of winning. Now, we're not using them alone.
We're using them in combination with selling the call and buying the put. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy the put here at 90, let's say the 90, okay? And we're going to buy something a little bit farther out of the money so that we have a little net credit left. What do you mean net credit? Well, we collected 310, but then we actually were paying $2. So we'll still have a buck left. That means we'll make up to the 110. We have the obligation to sell 110, but we also have a dollar credit on top of that. So we could potentially make up to about 111, okay? Now, if you take a look at this, we're going to buy this put, try to at the mid price, confirm and send.
Now, I just did this individually. Now, I want to kind of just ask a question to you for just a moment. How long does this take to put on a collar? Now, last week, on Monday, on Tuesday, on Friday, how long does it take to put on a collar position? Not very long, okay? So now if I looked at this position and said, is this still a bullish position? The answer, yes, it is. But the delta now is not 100. The delta now is 46. What is that telling us? Well, if we have a delta of 46, if it's positive, this says this is a bullish position. So what happened is we were way out here, 100 shares of stock. When we sold the call, It brought us to the left about 34.
We are at 66 delta with the cover call, CC cover call. When we bought the put as well, well, it brought us down to the left again. And here we are at like 47 now, 46. And that right there is a caller position. So what people do not understand, and I hope I don't go to my deathbed. I want to know from you that you're seeing the light. If you are concerned about market direction, investors that have understanding, number one, could sell some shares of stock. That's a way to do this, okay, without options. That's number one. Number two, if the investor says, no, I still want the stock, I want it to be a part of my portfolio.
But I want to brace myself and have a defined risk, you can change the delta, the portfolio, or the position, I should say, as well, by just selling the call and buying the put. Now, that diagram is going to look like this. Why is that? You're going to have a maximum gain from the obligation to sell the call, and you're going to have a maximum loss, which is the right to sell the shares at the strike price. So that's going to be the 90. And this is going to be the 110. Now, here's the quick question. Do we want the stock to go down or go up? How would we know? Do we want the stock to go down or up? Easy answer. If you have positive delta, you're in a bullish position.
If you're in a bullish position, you want the stock to go up. Now, so many times, so many times, people say, well, when the VIX goes up, the puts are expensive. No kidding. No kidding. That's why we're trying to sell something to help pay for the puts. Okay? I don't, I mean, hello. That's why we're selling the calls. Now, why don't some people sell the calls? Because in their minds, they're thinking, 'I don't want to cap the upside.' Last week on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, was anyone worried about capping the upside? Oh, it's funny. No, not really. OK. And so when the market's going down, many investors maybe let go of, like, forget capping the upside. I'm more concerned about the downside. But why don't they buy the puts?
They don't buy the puts because they're saying, 'I got to pay for them.' We're trying to use the money there to help protect here. I think there's a pretty good chance that if last week we were here, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, could we have collared some of these positions and made it where the portfolio did not drop as much? I think there's a pretty good chance. Now, what I want to do is I also want to go back and say, are there any other positions that we could just touch on real quick? Now, this is the AIG long call position, just real quick, okay? In this situation where that stock really fell apart, and it fell apart when I wasn't even here, You're going to see that one of the first things we talked about yesterday was really the fact of when we get, for example, cell signals.
Well, this had cell signals last week, there and there, okay? And then if we go back to it on Thursday, you even had a cross. The first, first, first, it's not an audio issue, okay? I said it three times on purpose. The first responsibility of an investor is to actually trade on their signals if they're getting exits from their rule set. So if we looked at this and said, James, last Thursday, this actually gave us a sell signal if we were using this methodology. So I'm going to go back into this. On the right, click on that AIG, create a closing order, and then sell that call. When you have a long call position, you have negative time decay.
And this is also one of the positions we would probably think, maybe that's not, with long calls, you need an aggressive upside move. Go up quickly. The concern is, if we're not in a strong upward trend anymore, do some of these have a harder chance of maybe gaining traction or an upward trend? That's the thinking on selling this. And also, that it had a bearish exit signal. Now, I want to kind of just say this last thing before we go to the questions, okay? One of the key things that we like to look at to kind of just track what is going on, and I just want to make sure we have this, okay? The number one thing that we actually have right on the monitor page, okay?
And if you go over here to the three lines or what we call the three pancakes, you want to make sure that you click on that. And you don't have old layout, but you have new layout. Now, when you do new layout, you're able to kind of establish these categories, which you can create. And you could also put some column headings. Now, these column headings are very important because we can put the trend, which is also like what we see on the market watch. But we can also look at the whole moving averages, what color is the whole moving average, the 10-period moving average. and also the 20-period moving average. So, what's our point? This page is really kind of showing the current sentiment of trend, okay?
And obviously, many things still in one condition and many stocks still in a red moving average, and the number in the box represents the number of days that it's been red. Now, scripts are not guaranteed for accuracy or timing. That's why you want to verify and have an understanding of what that's trying to show. Okay? Now, so let's kind of say this in real life. Let's say that you said, James, I went on vacation myself. You're saying that. And you just brought your iPad or your phone or whatever, your computer. But you have maybe tried to apply protection while you're on vacation. Sure. All of our trades we do in class. So I can't do that because that would be going behind your back. Okay.
So now we come back and we're kind of now saying, well, now what could we consider? Now, could have I done or could we have placed maybe some of these conditional orders or callers just in case? Sure. Okay. Now, other questions. Other questions. Now, Carol actually says something that's near and dear to the family that I have. U. S. beef exports down 92% due to the tariff war. Yeah. So kind of interesting there. So if you'll ever look at feeder cattle, live cattle, those have been in some new highs. That's going to be interesting to kind of really watch, kind of look and see if that kind of plays out over time. Usually people want to eat, okay, especially maybe some good stuff. We'll have to see if that continues to play out as well.
Okay. Now, the other thing I want to really bring up here in the last three minutes or so, James L says, 'never hold positions while on vacay'. I'm not really sure if I would, I know what you're saying. It kind of depends on how you like to play it. Let's say you said, 'you know, James, I'm on vacation and I just want to have some protection in place.' Now I have ammo right here. Okay. And what I want to do is in the last three minutes, just kind of show something that some people like to have a stop loss while other people maybe like to have pending protection. Let me show you what I mean by that, okay? Now, why not have stops on everything?
Or maybe why does an investor not have stops on everything? If the investor had stops on everything, they might have no portfolio after this last week. That might happen. What some investors consider, now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna sell this on purpose and I wanna kind of just show this example, okay? What some people do is they might say, you know what, James, I have this mo and I'm going on vacation. And I just want to have an order set up that if it were to drop, that there's pending option protection. How do you do that? Now, let's kind of, for example, say with Mo, we're going to go to the, I'm out of my time here today, but I think that's an important point that we've talked about before, but just also an important reminder as well.
Now, I think when we talk about the market in general. You know, when we talk about statistically, we probably say there's a decent chance the market in the short term might bounce up. Keep in mind for you, some of you are looking for some lower highs. Keep it. Keep in mind of some of those lower high levels to practice bearish positions. I'm out of my time here. Cameron May will be coming up next. I want to thank also Barbara for answering those questions in chat. She'll be on later today with getting started with technical analysis. With what we discussed, it was done, for example, on illustrative purposes only. Remember that investing involves risk. Having an understanding of long puts or callers or stops and position sizing, those are important factors for learning how to protect capital. And also remember that this class, we call it the Investor Master Series, is where we want to have an intermediate-advanced discussion like we did here today as far as protecting capital. Thank you so much. Stay tuned for Cameron May coming up next. Take care. Bye bye.
