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The top options of last week on $INCY and $TD expired on Friday at 0 - .50 cents for a loss on the week of up to $5 dollars. Can we fade the top performers each week and make money?? These are the largest % return call/put options for this Friday's trading which expire March 24th next week...

There are two issues when buying a call versus the stock. 1. The strategy is built around high volatility and the out of the money calls are the most expensive. 2. When the trials are announced, the stock will spike and by the time the markets open it will be too late to buy a call to hedge...

Once the extrinsic was gone from my short straddle, I put a bid in for cheap and was hit so I'm out of $BCRX for a nice profit. My suggestion is to move on to another situation where the stock is cheap and vols are high. I just took a big profit in TGTX and rolled that into accumulating AXON...

When vols explode and UVXY jumped from 25 to 90, you want to sell short the UVXY ETF but the broker would not offer the stock - none to borrow. This always happens at the top when everyone is already short and getting squeezed. The broker increases margin and refuses to loan stock out so you can...

You can apply the same concept for calls as puts. There will be a time when the calls have a vol skew like puts. This tends to happen when the stock is flying up and people are scared that it will keep going up. We see this in stocks and some indices during a bull market. HK Index had a huge vol...

In the US, the market maker is the facilitator and they are getting the edge by taking your order flow and all low capitalized retail traders. They have unlimited capital effectively and each retail account has a margin account and thus trades too big and will get squeezed. They will be on both...

O Wait.. It's the weekend and another update - fix one problem, create a new one. around and around we go....

TD had all their programmers poached by Tastyworks so they lack the technical skills to maintain and develop a trading platform. The platform has gone from bad to worse over the last few years and there is no hope for them. The upgrades are not written efficiently and they have memory leaks...

There is ignoring all the trash talk in the market and then there is the annual letter from the world's richest man who is giving back in his own way to investors. He shares his views on how the industry is short changing investors and what to watch out for if they don't choose to own his stock...

You can leverage the TD forum to share all your trades with others via Tools/mytrade then use Tools/Trade Feeds to monitor all the people that you are following.. But then that is only one broker and most of us use three or more so both you and the broker wont know what direction to squeeze...

IB has a great report under account management/reports/portfolioanalyst. This is a PDF report so can be shared with others who trust you with their funds without worrying about a modified report.... has all the risk measures and includes new components like heatmaps of which sectors gave you the...

Just to be clearer, the argument has been that client execution is better when directing order flow to a facilitator. My point is that it's not better but worse! Yes - conflicts of interest. Bad - internalize order flow. In the US, the difference between market making and facilitator is blurred...

People struggle to understand the conflict of interest until IB unilaterally increases margin on outstanding futures contracts. They do this when they see that their customers are too big on one side of the market and increasing margins force people to liquidate positions for a loss and locking...

You want to talk about real markets with centralised trading and no selling of order flow? Korea and Hong Kong futures are more liquid then the US when it comes execution and is far superior. These markets can be traded over IB and they don't create volume (Churn) like US markets to trick you...

There will be a time when selling call spreads or buying vertical spreads will make sense against the UVXY. Based on my research, when we see a spike in vols and the UVXY explodes upwards and your broker has no shares left to sell short, it's time to put on the trade. Time is key to all trade...

These are the largest % return call/put options for Friday's trading which expire next week. This can provide a bit of encouragement for those buying options and help understand risk for those cheap OTM premium sellers. Top Call: $INCY Mar17 150Call up 1,670% on Friday ranks top. Closed at 5 up...

I like the idea that you chose to do vertical spreads so that you don't get margin calls. It's a good idea not to have stop loss orders in the market. When you sell vertical spreads, you will have a high probability of success but small if any profits after execution and commission fees over...

The US is the only country in the world that uses fragmented markets and allow brokers to sell retail flow indiscriminately to high frequency trading firms. The US is the only country where brokers don't have to guarantee the best price Fills across exchanges. In Europe, they have to track data...

Private equity is like buying call options. Most will expire worthless and a few will go up 10×100 times. The people that play are not that different from trading in the futures pit. Tom Baldwin got all the bond futures flow because he was willing to take my huge orders just before a big number...

The low Vix shifts the pendulum to buying options. When the Vix gets above 20, you can start selling premium. There have been many options that have gone up by more than 10x over the last three months. Traders that only sell premium have been killed over the last three months. It's good to...