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The only thing that concerns me at this point is how much foreign money is leveraged in from afar and will retract to cover margin requirements on damaged positions they hold in China and other foreign markets. The dollar is getting hammered too and that might also shake out some foreign...

Big Time - surf's UP! I was able to put on a whole new block on the put side for the same premium as I got originally in this month but 100% further out than my first block. Its hugely funny to listen to CNBC and the chicken Little's talking like this is the big one - as if underlying value and...

woohoo ! awesome waves today. SPX down 17 and people panicking. Great volatility! kooowaaabunga! TS

The general problem with land is that there are real carrying costs such as tax that act like inflation moths to constantly nibble away at your value. My theory has always been that these costs/taxes are the very thing that help contribute to land's appreciation since who would ever think to...

Traders - be on your toes this week. I expect to see a moderate to large volatility swing as we have a packed economic report schedule. This could be great for option volatility plays and a way for spreaders to leg into some higher premium. Economic Calendar for the Week of February 26 –...

it's easy to tell the serious ones from the wanna-bees. The real thing are the ones with the big smiles on their faces knowing they have a gazillion bucks from the big brokerages underwriting their trading. I'd imagine that a lot of these guys don't even think twice about dropping a million or...

Mark may have more insight but I know there are at least 4 serious SPX market makers provided by Morgan Stanley, Citi Bank, Merill Lynch and others. TS

When I think about these kinds of situations I can only conclude that there must be a lot of money to be routinely made in the b/a spreads on high volume. There is a reason these guys are Market Makers - they make a nickel minimum on every transaction just on the bid/ask spreads. Who really...

hehe - I just found a way to train the lazy SPX options market maker(s) to do what I want him to do to get in today. Yesterday I could not get in on March SPX to the downside at all. There was almost no trading volume at mid point at the strikes I wanted with only a few bidding and asking...

Good for you. I am having a heck of a time getting reasonable executions today on SPX. Trying to sell some put credit spreads around the 1400 mark while we are down. But I can't get any significant interest at the b/a midpoints. Even tried adjusting my order size to 100 lot contracts and still...

Sure - no problem. I generally don't preannouce what I plan to do until after the deed is done hehe. I don't want to accidentally get someone else thinking about the same or similar position and then feel terrible about it if someone loses money etc. I have been watching for some up and...

I use a 3-tiered cash system . It has the advantage of yielding me the max average interest I can from my short term cash while also providing high liquidity for electronic transfer in and out of the account. As well it pumps up my margin rather nicely as I will show in a moment. My lowest...

No - the options are too thinly traded and that means that it would be very hard to get good fills and fair prices on either the long or the short side. There may be opportunity to those with the patience to become an expert on the supply/demand imbalance patterns but that's just not my game...

Speaking for myself this IS my regular/routine cash income. Proceeds all go into one huge trading account. I typically push my premium credits initially into a short term margin-able treasury product like SHY to get interest for the front month. As I earn the credit through expiration I sell a...

oops - hang-over induced brain fart here. In the above forgo the comparison to debit-spread I meant to say credit-spread. At any rate, its a very interesting position since we get to collect premium irrespective of directional move and have an opportunity to "extract" maximum profit if we...

Mech this is a conceptually interesting position. Do you have a link reference to this "Mickey Mouse Ear" spread? The PL plot has some interesting characteristics but it looks to me like all it really amounts to is a directional bet (fundamentally a debit spread) that pays at least a small...

My RUT settlement symbol .RLS shows it at 812.22 as of 12:09 PM EST. Are you connected "live" to the Internet or have a loose network connection? :D TS

Front month February SPX Credit spreads turned out pretty well. I held all positions through expiration. With FEB SET posting in at 1452.26 here are my results: FEB Iron Condor Positions & Results 130 SPX CALL FEB 1470/1480 Avg. Net Credit: $0.68/contract = $8,840 Margin at Risk...

Yeah - I got a small position (only 700 shares) in MED as a side bet. I bought on a dip and am looking for a fast trade but can go longer if need be. TS

Well I elected to stay through expiration. This SPX CALL 1470/1480 spread position is now looking almost as good as locked down and successful. We will see for sure around noon tomorrow on the new SET. There are only a statistical few historical cases of a massive (greater than 12) SET gap...