Recent content by Norman D Gutter

jrl: Well, I would rather have $100 winners every day than a $10,000 winner once a year--or whenever. Yes, the maximum potential profit for the trade was only $107 after all commissions (without assignment), 1.42 percent for two weeks. The way my record is, I'll take it. Maybe years from...

Hi Chris: As I said in my reply to Donna, my goals for the trade were more educational for myself, with modest profit goals. I did not have a true exit strategy. As I implied in a previous response post, it seems that everytime I exit a losing position it immediately spikes to where if I'd...

Hi Wayne: I've been studying spreads, and have paper traded a couple. They both went to maximum loss within two days. The surest way for a stock to go down is for me to buy it, of for a stock to go up for me to exit a losing position. I can understand how the market makers know my orders...

Hi luh: At present, I don't have authorization from my broker for naked option writing. Seems they don't see the risk potential as the same, for some strange reason. I've been paper trading some naked puts, and look forward to the day when I will trade them for real. Best Regards, NDG

Hi Osorico: I had thought about that. The first covered calls we did, in the Fall of 04, were to sell calls on two stocks we were holding as position trades. Both stocks promptly went up big, we bought back the calls to participate in the upside, and the stocks backed off to our stop. We made...

vhehn: Yeah, I'll just let it expire. I had that on my sheet as one of the strategies, but failed to put it in my first post. Too worried about the boss coming up behind me, I guess. :D NDG

Hi Donna: My problem is that, in our (my wife and I trade together) swing trading, we have a terrible record of picking stock direction. Our losses are not large due to good risk management, but still we are only 1:2 winners:losers on trades. I wanted to stay in the market, but didn't want to...

Thank you all the the replies. I'm having computer problems at home tonight. I'll post specific replies from work tomorrow. NDG

Good afternoon Elite Traders: Dipping a timid toe into the options market, I've got several covered calls going, all of which will expire Friday. Some are up; some are down; but the aggregate is up. The worst one is INFY. The trade history is: bought 100 INFY at 75.22 sold 1 Feb 75 call...

On Monday-Tuesday I came to the point of view that rubberbyrd was right, and the 500 was in the midst of an orderly pullback to at least meet its rising 200 MA, and possibly break it. Then yesterday almost all indexes had reversal candlesticks. The Dow was bullish engulfing, encompassing the...

As another said, why do you think the market is ignoring oil? Because it doesn't move in the opposite direction of the price of oil? That means nothing. There are a lot of reasons why the market should go higher. With a few notable exceptions, corporate earnings have exceeded expectations or...

Thanks, everyone, for taking time to respond. I wound up just keeping the short puts, and so in my paper trade records I took the assignment at of 300 shares at 43.625. That puts me in margin in my $10,000 paper trading account. I'm taking a few days to decide what to do. I'll likely sell 3...

Hello Traders: The news last night said that the Irani government moved billions of dollars of assest out of European banks Friday--or maybe it was Thursday and Friday. Iran is doing this in anticipation of UN sanctions due to its nuclear program. Now, if Iran pulled assest out of...