Recent content by OldTrader

Since I’m bullish on COIN and BTC right now I like to sell the weekly 430 puts. If they are assigned that’s going to put you long the stock at roughly $227.

Exactly! Alof of traders here just have not read the rules!

The time is irrelevant. If it were a question of being right at the exercise price that would be where IB would come in. But in this case the stock was well above that at $365. Do you really this they’re just going to let the seller of that Call have all that money?

If the stock is above your exercised price the exchange will exercise automatically.

I wouldn't get too confused as to whose cash is what. See my example below.

If the price drops your equity increases, so you could potentially withdraw down to maintenance requirement. In my opinion that wouldn't be too smart because you're too close to getting a margin call with a small rally. I would suggest withdrawing no more than half, the initial margin.

Robert: Using your scenario of starting with $100K cash, shorting $100K AAPL would only require $50K initial margin. Therefore, you could withdraw $50K from the account. Note to the original poster, this is not called a margin loan. You're just withdrawing the excess margin in the account...

Good advice. Personally, I had a loan at 3 1/4 %, and decided to pay it off because I couldn’t get a high enough rate on my funds. I’m about at a break even right now after tax if I were investing those funds over 5%.LOL!

I don’t like the bank stocks here, either technically or fundamentally, big or small. I just don’t think any of that has an anything to do with house prices going down. Let’s face it, banks have a lot of issues: 1) Commercial real estate loans coming due in the next couple of years, 2) Assets...

I bought my first house back in the early 1980s. I put 20% down and got a conventional loan at 11.75%. I thought I screwed the bank! The rates at the time were on the way to 20%+. I spent the next several decades in the stock market and real estate. Mostly I never saw rates under 9%...

I gather your strategies, both mean reversion and chart patterns, are very short term such as day trades.

First, you can't participate at an auction at IB. Second, they don't have an inventory either. They act as an agent. They charge $5 as far as I know, that's what I've been charged. As I understand it, at the auction you can buy $1,000. I doubt you can do that in the secondary market. As...

If I were you I'd use Interactive Brokers for some or all of you money. We went through this back in 2008. At the time some futures brokers went bust. We also had some money market funds "break the buck". What I like about the account at IB is that in terms of cash they keep $250K in the...

I think you wrote a very compelling piece. What I wanted to say is that everyone can't be a day trader. In fact, the people that make all the money aren't day traders. Look at Warren Buffet. He rarely sells. Even mathematics works against the trader. As you said, you have 4 good says, and...

Evidently you aren't familiar with the Velocity Futures-Sentinel Group fiasco from 2007. I'd suggest you, and anyone interested read up on it. Goes to show what can happen when futures brokers don't have their customers interests at heart. OldTrader