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A bit of a blanket statement, yes? If you worked in or around government during the last 15 years you would have seen a dramatic shift to outsourcing because of beliefs just like yours that the private sector is always more efficient than government, followed by a dramatic shift back to...

Pretty much everyone who has this concern is flattering themselves. If you've somehow stumbled on the one goose that lays golden eggs then a hedge fund doesn't want you. Either there's risk you're not taking into account or market conditions will change and eventually your strategy will stop...

Yes, what you're saying will work. You do have to remember that the margin hit will be pretty big, so you'll need a lot of excess margin to do that, but you will have succeeded in removing the "pin" at 107. And you'll lose a little on the spread and commission with the 100 shares of QQQ you sell...

I don't tell them anything, per se, it's just that making the marginal personal income tax rate higher drives business owners toward reinvesting in their business rather than taking the money out to spend on whatever they chose. Neither is a "better" use of money, as better is subjective and I'd...

That's why I mentioned the French happen to make most sailboats! I'd say me investing in growing my business helps the economy a lot more than the second order trickle down effect of me buying a consumer product, even if made in the U.S. For example if it was a powerboat I bought instead most of...

Do you disagree with their methodology, or does "common sense" just tell you they're wrong? Its a pretty robust and we'll accepted result, do you bring something new to the table here? Remember, "common sense" would also tell you the earth is flat and is orbited by the sun.

So I own a business and taxes are what incentivize me to reinvest. If I hire another employee or improve my software with my profit, I defer the tax on that profit. If I keep it for myself I pay taxes. As a result, cutting my tax rate would actually lead me to spend less on growing my business...

If you have 10 spreads, close out 5 and keep the other 5.

I'm an electrical engineering undergrad, but learned a ton in an MBA program even though it wasn't nearly as rigorous in a quant or theoretical sense. The combination of knowledge bases is pretty powerful though.

So the tuition is free because alumni donated money to an endowment to make it free and still pay the finance professors the going rate required for a quality PhD in finance to chose to be a professor vice the other options available to them. Money the alumni presumably feel they earned because...

In your case you could trade it into a 5 point spread instead of your current 10, or take the loss on half and bet the other half will go up. No free money in options or anywhere else, you got the risk adjusted premium for that spread when you sold it.

I don't disagree that we should make corporate taxes more rational in the U.S. But it's not going to solve the inversion problem. One of the 195 other countries in the world will always offer a better tax rate for offshore companies domiciled there than we can afford to offer to our own. After...

Got it. It's a funny exception to the requirement, but I am familiar with it.

The state requirements, which this is, are usually pretty easy. The FINRA licensing requirements are tougher. It doesn't appear that marketsurfer is registered with FINRA (unless he's a different person than I think he is), so I was wondering how he got around that.

Not trying to rip on you but I am very curious how you were able to raise that amount without being licensed (I assume you're working out of the U.S.)? You mentioned you were trained as an attorney so I presume you've thought through it, are you able to share how this is possible? Although the...

Would you or any rational person invest a the "strategy" that this contest is pursuing? It is essentially a search for the most volatile stocks, which anyone can figure out by looking at IV on options.

Just keep in mind your margin requirement may go up significantly if you close just one side of spread, so you may have to close the entire spread.

The startup and VC investment model is fundamentally different than the model you would use if you were running a mature company, which leads to a lot of confusion like this. A VC invests in 100 companies planning for 75 to fail completely, 10 to break even, 10 to do OK, and 5 to make the...

No, there's no way to eliminate the risk entirely except with a cash settled options. You'll either end up with an extra long or an extra short because you don't know if the exercise is going to happen or not for sure until after 4:00. Great point by rwk as well, never even thought about that one.

There's actually a name for your quandary, "pin risk". If the price closes just outside you'll be stuck with a position outside of the close, and there's no way to know how it will fall. That's why I love cash settled options, unfortunately there are really only the SPX weeklys, VIX, and the...