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As every option trader knows, there are a great many ways to make a directional bet with options. Here are some ways (I am using the last traded prices as of today (Wednesday) for Dec SPY options. SPY itself is at 118.60. 1. Buy the 118 call for about 2.68. If you hold until until...

Tim Wise is a white man (Jewish father, Scottish mother) who makes his living going to universities and getting paid large fees to lecture on the evils of white skin privilege. Hating Whitey is big business in academia and Wise has been cashing in for some time now.

Here is why the Republicans will not survive: 1. Once elected they never adhere to their principles, so people get disgusted and vote them out. In practice Republicans in office are simply Democrats with tax cuts -- which they pay for with more borrowing. Not even Reagan actually cut the...

Well, plenty of us do bet on volatility and that kind of stuff. If you want to make purely directional bets then use futures with stops. But if you want to make money on an asset that isn't going anywhere, it's hard to do that with anything but options.

Oh yes, whoever the neocons want to have a war with is a "madman" or "the new Hitler". It gets old. I don't think Ahmadinejad is going to willy nilly start a nuclear war. If he attacks the U.S. his country becomes radioactive glass. If he attacks Israel his country becomes radioactive glass...

Count me as delusional. We let China get nuclear weapons. We let India get nuclear weapons. We let Pakistan get nuclear weapons. We let Israel get nuclear weapons. I fail to see what makes Iran so special. They will use any nuke they produce the same way that other countries do -- to...

I can make money betting where an asset price *won't* go, which is difficult to do with stocks or futures.

The Republicans will abrogate the constitution by giving us the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and undeclared wars. The problem is that the Democrats will give us the same. Only one Republican has made following the constitution his priority and principal reason for being in...

The Tea Partiers' darling, Sarah Palin, thinks Obama would make himself more popular if only he would bomb Iran. From an interview with Chris Wallace: Palin: "... Say he [Obama] decided to declare war on Iran or decided really [to] come out and do whatever he could to support Israel...

I am confidant that the Republicans will nominate a candidate so horrible that Obama is a shoe-in -- like they did last time. After all, plenty of Republicans still think that what Americans want most is a war with Iran.

Everyone who wants to live in a waterless, essentially airless, completely barren desert for the rest of your life raise your hand! Maybe we could send convicts with life sentences there.

The government is incredibly competent at squandering tax dollars. So bailing out GM and selling at a big loss sounds exactly like what my government is best at doing.

It is commonplace for an option to go no-bid if it is well out of the money a week or two before expiration. I have some Nov MSFT 20 puts for sale real cheap -- 0.01. (They were the long side of a MSFT 20/22 credit put spread, and I've already bought back the 22 puts for a penny.) There are...

You can't. There are only three ways to retire today: 1. Be the CEO and get a real pension. 2. Be a government employee and get a real pension at 75% of your maximum salary, and inflation adjusted. 3. Be very, very good at trading. There is a reason companies moved their...

My favorite part: "Health Care Reform Bill, allowing children to remain covered by their parents' insurance until the age of 26" Leave it to Democrats to define a 26 year old as a child.

What's mysterious about honoring exits? Every trader does that. If I sell a credit spread for $500 and it has a worst case loss of $6000 do you think I'm going to sit around and wait until that worst case loss has been realized?

True. I've held leaps for over a year, and I've done one day scalp trades. My credit spreads are usually held (short) for 3 - 6 weeks.

I don't know if any of the claims made by the 911 truthers are in fact true. But I see no reason to boycott a station because they are willing to let someone advertise a point of view that some want to see suppressed.

Here is my modest proposal. I have long agreed with Ron Paul that we should end the military empire and stop wasting our money on all those overseas military bases. But I hadn't taken the concept far enough. We should auction off those bases to any country that wants to be the next global...

The way I see it the financial crisis still has legs. The U.S. debt situation has no exit other than default through inflation (you'll get your principal and interest back, but it won't buy anything). Forty cents out of every dollar spent by the federal government is borrowed. The price of...