The Battle For Iowa

the battle for iowa
Trump surrounded by supporters at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday.

A Dark Saturday For DeSantis In Iowa

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida probably isn't a Metric fan, but if he were, the song going through his head today would probably be "Dark Saturday". Despite the sun in Iowa, Saturday was a dark day for his campaign. 

DeSantis spent some time handing out hard boiled eggs on popsicle sticks, 

But whenever he serves people food on the campaign trail, particularly in a shirt with his name on it, he comes across like the manager of a chain restaurant. 

Worse for DeSantis, is that he got overshadowed by Trump twice. When he sat down to be interviewed by Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa, he was drowned out by chants of "We Want Trump". 

And during one of DeSantis's other appearances, Trump's plane drew more attention than Desantis. 

No Boiled Egg Duty For Trump

The former President spent less than an hour on the ground in Iowa, but was met with the largest crowds. 

He didn't bother to be interviewed by the Iowa governor. 

Ramaswamy Saber-Rattles China

Vivek Ramaswamy did sit down with the Iowa governor, and said that if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he'd write a Declaration of Independence from China. 

Ramaswamy continues to gesture toward America's Founders, saying their ideas are ones we can rally around today as Americans, but it's not obvious how close his ideas are to theirs. Ramaswamy is a product of post-1965 America, which in many ways represents an ideological break from America's founding. 

In Case You Missed It

Speaking of Ramaswamy, in case you missed it, last week we looked at his career in pharmaceutical entrepreneurship (How Did Vivek Ramaswamy Get Rich?). 

And in a post yesterday (Exits, 8/11/2023), we looked at preliminary results of the trading experiment we wrote about here last week. 

Exits 3, 9, and 10 were from trades entered earlier, but the other 7 exits below were from trades that were part of our experiment using Piotroski F-Scores when selecting earnings trades. 

Options Trades

  1. Put spread on Lucid Group (LCID -2.71%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.61 on 8/7; exited at a net credit of $0.25 on 8/10Loss: 59%.

  2. $2 strike puts on Fossil Group (FOSL -14.04%↓). Entered at $0.10 on 8/9; exited at $0.10 on 8/11Profit: 0%.

  3. Split strike put butterfly on Beyond Meat (BYND -1.38%↓). Entered at a net debit of $2.22 on 6/13; exited at a net credit of $2.36 on 8/9Profit: 6%.

  4. Call spread on XPEL (XPEL 2.37%↑). Entered at a net debit of $2.25 on 8/8; exited at a net credit of $2.45 on 8/11Profit: 9%.

  5. Split strike put butterfly on Sonos (SONO -14.08%↓). Entered at a net debit of $2.03 on 8/9; exited at a net credit of $2.52 on 8/10Profit: 24%.

  6. Put spread on 23andMe (ME -3.92%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.35 on 8/8; exited at a net credit of $0.46 on 8/10Profit: 31%.

  7. $3 strike puts on Fossil Group (FOSL -14.04%↓). Entered at $0.71 on 8/9; exited at $1.05 on 8/10Profit: 48%.

  8. Put spread on The Cheesecake Factory (CAKE -2.43%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.62 on 8/2; exited at a net credit of $1 on 8/11Profit: 61%.

  9. Call spread on Alpha Metallurgical Resources (AMR 0.00%). Entered at a net debit of $2.45 on 6/28; exited at a net credit of $4.50 on 8/7Profit: 84%.

  10. Put spread on Allegiant Travel (ALGT -0.38%↓). Entered at net debit of $2.08 on 8/1; exited at a net credit of $4.23 on 8/8Profit: 103%.

Our conclusion was that the Piotroski F-Score probably makes more sense for trades over longer periods, so we plan to start using longer time periods next week. If you want a heads up when we place a trade based on our lessons from last week, feel free to sign up for our trading Substack/occasional email list below. 

 

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Authored by Portfolio Armor via ZeroHedge August 13th 2023