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Candle, sorry to come off as a smartass. I was sincerely curious as to your "angle" with the original post. Actually, I think you will get much further here on ET if you are willing to come clean with your actual motivation and a little background, along with some specific questions, rather than...

Sorry I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. I thought you were giving us "THE ONLY REMEDY" for our economic problems...If not, what is this "remedy" supposed to be doing for us again?

So the Bush economic policies were working? I thought staying out of the way of American businesses large and small while running up huge deficits might have contributed to the sh-t storm we just went through. Wait, you're right, things were going GREAT when Bush left office with his tail...

I was wondering the same. Is the OP trying to find a mentor, looking for someone to "invest" money with, trying to verify whether it is realistically possible to become wealthy by trading options, or merely trying to find out whether ET is a great place to hang out with wealthy option traders...

Hmm, since when do people back things up around here? Most of the posts here require the disclaimer "FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY".

Apparently no rich wildly successful option traders are present on the ET boards at this time. I'm actually somewhat surprised that not even any posers stepped up to regale us with fictional stories of their successes.

I hate to be a "gloom n doomer" but many of those jobs probably are gone forever (at least for workers in this country). Thanks to globalization, corporations have been able to "auction" all kinds of jobs to the lowest bidders all around the world. There is always someone out there a little...

I'm not sure what kind of criteria you are looking at, but you could also check out Trade-ideas. Scottrade was allowing free access to the service with $25K on deposit.

individual investors as a group are probably the only worse market timers than mutual funds. Yes, funds by and large are buying or selling based on investor purchases/redemptions. Mutual funds do have various degrees of leeway in terms of how much cash they are allowed to keep.

Why wouldn't mutual funds be buying the market highs? They are competing with benchmarks, and if the S&P/Russell/Nasdaq etc. are moving higher, these guys will probably be buying. They can buy the highs, and be forgiven if the market subsequently tanks. If the market move up and the fund manager...

Ha, when I first saw the thread title, I thought it was going to be Bernie Williams' glove. That would actually be worth something.

Well done Chop (unless the parameters change again). Intuitively, it would make sense to bet the largest possible amount early that would still leave you the minimum amount necessary if you have the worst possible start (two tails). If you lose twice, you have to bet it all each time; if you win...

I think the first bet should be zero, but as has been pointed out, you can't wait until two heads and then go all or nothing (unless you don't achieve two heads until flip 4) because you risk "winning" the game, but not having at least $200. I haven't played out this scenario, but maybe some...

I was thinking the same thing after my first crack at this. My problem scenario that always seemed to crush my system was: W W L L W Using your system, the first two bets would be $25 winners, leaving you at $150. Now you must bet at least $50 to get to $200 on the third roll. If you lose...

wait, it's not quite that easy...if you bet 1/3 on 1st two flips, and split, 1 win/1 loss, you will be back to your initial $100, with only two heads remaining to be declared a "winner". At that point, you would need to change your bet to 1/2 of the $100 bankroll, or $50, in order to reach $200...

bet 1/3 of your initial bankroll each of the first 4 flips. If you complete four flips w/out winning or losing, then you should be at $100, having won twice and lost twice. Bet $100 on the fifth flip.

I was also looking at XLI, GE is probably the largest holding in that ETF, but due to the large financial component in GE, the correlation probably isn't very good.

I used to trade GE quite a lot; it didn't seem to correlate very well with anything. You could check market-topology.com for some possible ideas. Maybe you could think about using a collar for some/all of the position. If you put on a collar for 50% of the position, you would be somewhat...

Anaconda, you are correct. No way market makers (or probably anyone who can afford a seat on the exchange) get hit with this tax. Therefore, the whole "Wall Street needs to pay its own way because the taxpayers bailed them out" is ridiculous. Once again, it will be hardworking taxpayers, trying...

Its funny how the proponents of these tax ideas all seem to call the .25 or .5% rates "insignificant", considering that the interest rates paid by savings and money-market accounts are generally in the same "insignificant" range. So I can pull my brokerage funds, stop my evil speculating, and...