Search results

Looking for suggestions on books to read about merger/acquisition arbitrage. USAI/EXPE/ROOM/TREE are mostly trading in tandem, but not always - I'm interested in knowing how to exploit the divergences.

Not to worry :) . What's your next move?

My experience is that, if it's a stock swap, new option series will be issued, e.g. when TMCS was bought by USAI, new options in USAI were introduced that still had a multiplier of 100 but were worth, I think, 92 USAI shares. And the bid/ask spread suddenly began to suck, presumably because...

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I was using SMART routing, and I do look at the exchange that TWS is showing (and if it's PHLX, I start a 120 second timer in another window so I know when it's safe to change or cancel the order). In this case, it showed CBOE up until I got the fill at PHLX. But...

This has happened to me a couple times in the past few months, and since I use IB (where there's no on-screen log of every change you make to an order) and I'm usually juggling several orders at once, I thought I was just hallucinating, but last week I saw it in real-time. I tried to sell a put...

I see the purple non-auto-ex quotes (often just right after IB directs the order to that exchange :mad: ... it's kinda like the option specialist decides to put us on hold). But over the past few months, I've also seen quotes appear in light blue. What are they? Not listed in the manual.

I don't use alarms much any more, but I used to get hung a lot when I was in the middle of navigating through an "insert ticker" menu (specifically, choosing option series from the popup) when an alarm got triggered. This is on NT.

I mostly use Datek to use Streamer - I sometimes trade options, and it's useful to see the bid/ask trend of the underlying. I use IB preferentially, but if it looks like IB is routing to PHLX, I switch to Datek for that trade, because their software doesn't seem to get hung up if you try to...

Well, the specialists need to go home at some point! But it would be very cool to have an out-of-hours market, limited to open interest I presume, where the prices are set by the buyers and sellers. I bet you'd see these annoying 30% spreads shrink.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/business/01SEC.html is an interesting article about how underfunded the SEC is. Here's the real infuriating part: I think usage taxes should go toward improving the item or service being taxed (income or vice taxes are different, of course). So I'm annoyed...

One thing I've noticed with ERTS is that it very often hits a peak in the first half hour and then declines for an hour or two. So I do all my selling early.

This was for a Nov call, but all the options seem to have a spread of .50 to 1.00, with most in the 10% to 20% range. The underlying stock is also kind of fun... often has a spread of .40.

I've been looking at LSTR options the past couple of days, and I'm surprised the bid/ask spread is so large. Only one exchange handles them, but still - the spread is along the lines of 3.20/3.90. Are there any rules about how large a spread can be, or can the specialist do whatever he wants?

I use my IB account only for options (and one nonmarginable stock). So I've never used margin. It seems unfair that I'm held to this rule (and I don't blame IB, mind you) when the stated rationale for the rule is to provide additional collateral to help the brokerage firms meet margin...

Here's one: 14-JUN-2001 O GLWRC GLW JUN01 15 P CBOE 10 0.1000 -100.00 15-JUN-2001 C GLWRC GLW JUN01 15 P PHLX -10 0.5500 550.00 IIRC, GLW tanked on the 14th and I felt it could keep on going.

I've started looking at DIA options, and I noticed that (at least according to Streamer), trades seem to be going on after hours. (Today, for example, up until 17:17:19). The CBOE web site for DIA options says the trading hours go through 15:15 central. Can we really trade them after 4:15?

Thanks, all. It turns out CHEF is traded on the OTCBB. Not sure why the account rep said it was a pink sheet stock, although it seems that being traded on the OTCBB doesn't preclude a stock from being listed on the pink sheets.

I have some old stock I want to unload, CHEF, and it's on the pink sheets now. I'm using my broker's (not the one who sold it to me; they're out of business) online trading platform. I was surprised when my offer didn't show up on the level II display, nor did it show up on the level I quotes I...

My trading platform lights up icons on my watchlist when new news for a given company appears, but a lot of the time the only news item is spam from thesubway.com touting penny stocks they've been paid to promote; they generally throw in mentions of two active listed stocks, presumably to get...

I temporarily switched back to 722.4 because of the quote problem with 753 and 754, and was pleasantly surprised to again see quotes appear in purple for non-autoex options exchanges. Would be nice to bring that back.