Crazy markets

Man what another down day. Lovin' the ETF's for trading lately with these wild up and down days. I particularly love trading FAZ(short financials) and TZA(short small cap) but not a smuch as i don't have as strong conviction on it. On these huge downs my favorite has been TYH (long tech.). Theres some other i like as well but these have been veddy veddy good to me for past several months.

Full disclosure;sold all short etf's today and bought a good bit of tyh.

JOHN

Hopefully oil will drop so we can have some cheaper gas for the holidays.

Not looking to good on keeping oil cheap,lookin to go >100 bucks a barrel.

JOHN

Never happen. I'll give it the same chance as W taking over the White House tomorrow and installing himself as dictator of the US.

FAZ and TZA don't let them that much due to contango and backwardation issues. With the VIX over 32 , I've been writing covered calls on the weeklys Been collecting good premium on out of the money calls. wrote an LVS out of the money call today hopefully get called away on it, expiring tomorrow,

WTI OIL hit $98 today, Brent crude was above $113 today
good luck on your trades

No more am I listening to my investment advisor. He suggested that I sell short or write a put option on EDMC, which is a Pittsburgh based for-profit secondary university also known as Argosy University, The Art Institue, and/or South University. So I took his advice and took out a put option with a $15 strike price with a Nov 2011 expiry. At the time EDMC was trading at $18.50, today it's at $20.50. I executed 10 contracts, each contract consists of 100 shares each. The share price is not likely to drop below $15 by 11/18/11 so I'll probably be out of the money by about a grand. Lesson learned, I can lose my money on my own and I won't need anyone else telling me how to lose my money.


Edited to add: The company is currently being invested by the DOJ for fraud which made for a good enough reason to me to short it but maybe I should have extended out the time horizon to a 2012 expiration.

you must have BOUGHT the put option. IF you shorted or wrote the option u would make money by keep ing the premium(price of the option) after expiration if its above 15 at expiration. Shorting or writing an option means selling an option and collecting premium. PUT WRITING

In all my years,i've never heard the term contango or backwardation,thanks for enlightening me on something new.
I haven't written any covered calls for quite awhile,it always seemed that my strike ALWAYS got hit on expiry and my stock would get called(which i why don't understand at all why you hope whatever you are writing the calls on,gets taken from you,i'm assumig that was a typo.),and the price would jump right back up.Frustrating.
I've been consistently getting quick 3-5% hits trading the ETF's so i'm gonna stick with that for the time being while we're getting such wild swings. Another reason i'm jumping in and out so much is i have NO FAITH in anything long term right now,so this is working for me. I have only kept portions of some things i've had for quite awhile and will let them ride for now.
I wish you and everyone else good luck!

JOHN

Do you have any win limits and/or "special plays"? LOL

When I read posts like this, I realize how naive I am about these matters. Nonetheless, it would be a fun exercise to give a professional gambler and a stock trader the same bankroll (say $100K) and let them have at their particular field of expertise for a year and compare results. I for one am happier "playing" the casinos than the market.

I realize it's not "apples to apples" but there has to be some similarities.....market knowledge, finding value, etc. I also realize that being a passive investor requires less personal involvement; something that you generally don't have the benefit of if you gamble professionally. For some gambling activities (i.e. poker, vp, tournaments, etc.) you just have to be there.....if you're not playing, you're not earning.

Just some of my random thoughts....

Dan

I wanted to get called away because, I bought LVS 44 thursday and wrote a .59 call with a strike of 45, so i got the $1 plus .59. If not called away means the stock would go down of stay below 45 so i would make less. It was a 1 day trade since it was a weekly option expired Friday. Didn't want to be holding LVS down was hoping it would go up so I get both the Stock gain and option premium. Anyway It did get called away so i got the 45 sell price BUT LVS closed at 46.37, so I guess the option buyer on the other side was pretty happy too.