Recent content by cognitivefun

Thank you!

I am interested in learning forex but am a novice. I would like to work with a mini broker who offers good software. To me, that means an avoidance of something that depends upon Internet Explorer or installing software that can write DLLs or who knows what to my Windows machine -- I am very...

yes, they do give you this invalid password when they are shut down.

Great question. I am in your boat too -- just starting to trade futures. It seems to me that if you are a trend follower you have to select your markets carefully. So you have to look at a wide range of markets, not specialize in only a few. Someone said that markets only trend 15% of the...

if you are really a trend follower, you buy high. So buying crude right now would be a good proposition. Nobody can say crude won't go to $50 or $80 or $100 per barrel, can they?

it would seem to me that this strategy of options for black swans would work at any scale, providing you are very very patient. Even a $5000 account could buy $1000 of very OTM puts and hold tight, then do it again and again. If a black swan happens, those puts will be worth $20,000 or more.

If you read the the Gladwell article you might get a better insight into it. If you can, please explain it to me as a complete dummy in plain English. The article makes it appear as if he is losing 40% or so on a daily basis. If he was just buying very OTM puts he would be losing decay...

Taleb wrote the excellent book Fooled by Randomness. He shows how humans consistently mistake probability with expectation (probability times pay-off percentage). When you buy very OTM put options, you can get them cheap. They will expire worthless. But if you keep doing this, there will...

Yes, that is true. I worry though in event of a market crash that they will go belly up.

I am new to trading options in a serious way, but I have now worked with IB and with thinkorswim and I want to put in a plug for thinkorswim's software. They just came out with a new release that is exceptional. It lets you do market studies with live charts, essentially a prophet.net...

Of course it is quite likely ;) Perhaps JAN05 might be better...although you will probably lose your entire investment even then :)

Please pardon my asking what may seem a stupid question. Assume I buy JAN04 puts today, say on some stock, at some strike price that is slightly OTM. Now comes June and there is a big market downturn. The stock falls 40%, which makes my puts very very deeply ITM. What are my risks that...