So I’m breezing through some Dorsey Wright newsletter that found it’s way into my email, and lo and behold I see a blurb about buy-writes. They love the idea here. I don’t. Which does lead me to thinking, since among other things, they’re brilliant, and I’m not. So what am I missing?
I guess there’s just [...]
So riddle me this. Short selling was still disallowed yesterday, yet financials utterly imploded. How in the world were those America Hating Evil Shorts going in there and pounding the Morgans and Goldman’s and all their friends?
Could it be, perhaps, that there are other ways to go “economically” short a stock without physically shorting it? [...]
OK, some people call me a “Maverick”. It may be because “Top Gun” was one of the first movies I ever saw with my wife.
Or maybe it was “Hot Shots”, not sure, it was a long time ago.
Anyway, here’s some Maverick-y ideas to play with this market.
Buy nearish term calls or puts, or both, and [...]
So let’s look at volatility another way, the volatility of stocks themselves. It’s absolutely soaring, ahead of options themselves n fact. Bill started the ball rolling the other day, and Dr. Brett keeps up the analysis.
The chart above (on Dr. Brett’s site, please click thru) shows the S&P 500 cash index (blue line) versus its [...]
My friend Bill brings up some very good points in the comments recently. Option volatility, most readily expressed by the VIX, is actually not high relative to actual market volatility.
The upper chart show 30 day implied vol. of the SPY in yellow, and 30 day Historical volatility in blue. And as you can see they [...]
How did those VIX numbers work in September?
On September 15th, the VIX exploded about 20% and shot above 30. The SPY closed at 120.09.
On September 17th, the VIX hit new closing highs for 2008. The SPY closed at 116.61
On September 18th, the VIX shot over 42, before the PPT came in with the Bailout and [...]
OK, quick primer on the VIX.
The VIX you see on the board is a measure that has existed only since 2004. So thus when you hear it hit a “record”, it’s not as impressive as meets the high. And it was indeed a record yesterday. Bill lists the prior Top Ten closes here.
Long story short, [...]
Well I’m not entirely sure I can grasp the concept of how a Double Inverse Short fund has distributions to pay out. What are they collecting? My head’s spinning.
Calling Greg? Or Roger?
Anyway, be that as they pay, they paid some distributions the other day. And the options froze. Then yesterday they reopened. Looking at DUG [...]
OK, so long as Inverse options remain all the rage, how about a quick refresher course?
The popular Double Ultra’s and Double Inverse Ultra’s track the daily percentage move of an underlying ETF. And then reset the next morning and track it again. And so on.
But over this course of time, this math does them all [...]
So let’s say you want to do something bearish, and are perplexed a bit by this maze of confusing new rules.
What about a good old married put, as jkw reminds me in the comments yesterday?
A married put involves simultaneously buying puts and stock in equal quantity. Which is a synthetic call when you place the [...]
