Search results

Have you looked at the weekly SP500 options (available at IB by selecting EW-week number)? The 2 week aways (Aug. 13 or EW2) earlier in the week could be sold for much better premium than 2x the EW1 (Aug. 6 or this Friday) expiring options. The ES (50x times the SP500 index) options...

The real innovation of modern societies if lobbyists who are so efficient at persuading law makers that exchange created front running and trading against customer order flow is not just legal but patriotic.

Its a hard world for quants too. I think the Elite Trader site is working because you people are looking for better information. I think Hhill's http://mindonmoney.wordpress.com site is very interesting, but it does include fundamental discussiions. Hopefully, I will not be relegated to...

Obviously IOC although up or down both are possible. Anybody have a guess of how the risk of being eaten by PNG cannibals effects volatilty?

The Nazi takeover of Austria in the mid 1930s was actually financed by a situation similar to the current AIG and large investment banks (or maybe more Madoff) melt down. Phoenix Insurance company that was the largest Austrian life insurance company was milked to provide the funds to...

Thanks for the comments. I just looked at my IB account and it shows that my current position is 20% short stock and 80% short options. So I think some options were exercised on Friday. For some reason IB does not let me log in to statements during non market hours so I do not know...

NAT (Nordic American Tankers) reduced it dividend to 0.50 per quarter on a 30 USD stock. It did only lose 6 cents versus consensus 9 cents, but it is a stock mostly held for dividends by small investors. The crude tanker market is in the dumps and all the NAT ships are on spot charters...

I have been working on a philosophical argument that I think shows that any option strategy that does not involve predicting market direction (or at least expiration day ending price) losses money. My observation is that outcomes from the following thought experimental will fail any kind...

This thread is full of mistakes. Unix was written in an early version of C from the start. The original primitive C compiler was already written. C is still used for complex algorithms that need efficiency. It is the opposite of object oriented. See the 1970s ACM paper on Unix. I...

The one week claim is false. The Computing group at Bell Labs had been working on solving the OS problem including spending millions of man hours on the Multics OS. They (also at least Dennis Ritchie but probably the entire Bell Labs software community) then realized that they could throw...

You should buy Cottle's online book at www.riskdoctor.com and read the sections on gamma scalping and adjustments to delta neutral. Also read his good advice on why putting in the wings is an extremely goodbidea. Although, I mostly ignore it for future options that trade 24 hours such as ES.

It seems that ET posters do not have enough brain cells to do fundamental analysis, but seemingly you people have enough brain cells to still press the buy/sell button. No wonder the quant hedge funds make money, but hey why don't you donate your money to me instead. Here is some...

I am not sure if my problem is related, but I am having a similar boot problem with tws. It may not be the same problem. I am posting this because seemingly IB support has lost the skill of looking at source code. I just moved to Fedora Core 8 Linux (stable) and followed the normal...

I think a much better way to profit from options is to sell short out of the money ES options about a month out from expiration (usually selling during previous month expiration week is good). This is the often maligned sell time premium strategy. I do not think the criticism applies...

The calls are not deep in the money and there are complexities involving possible loss of dividends, but look at selling Ship Finance (SFL) calls to add ~10% per year yield to the normal 8-9% SFL dividends. Idea is to sell the May 30 calls for 0.75 (current IB last price) and repeat...

This time I think Rogers is right both in direction and timing. My largest shorts are XLF and 2x short XLF long ETF SKF. I stupidly exited my Florida bank short BKUNA way too early.

Aren't you taking a big risk. I don't trade options and I don't have access to modeling software, but what if ES fell 70 points (about 5%). Wouldn't you be stuck with VIX up to around 32 and a 150 point loss? What would you have done?

Here is my Midwestern view of Novastar. I think NFI management is quite smart. Although, they are having problems with margin calls and write downs, they have secured large credit lines and losses are so far unrealized. For example, I am not particularly worried about my large paper loss in...

I think the reason for the IBM white paper is that there is huge skepticism of "algorithmics" (AI) in England going back to the Lighthill report produced for the British government in the 1970s. The Lighthill report is available on my web page (www.tdl.com/~smeyer). I wouldn't worry...

Thanks for the replies, but I what I am trying to do is improve entry after doing fundamental research. When I purchase a stock, I am hoping to hold it long enough so the profit (if any) will be long term capital gains. In the past I would just purchase the stock, but especially this year...