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The contract has 200k open interest doing about 20k per day, dominated by brazilians,hersheys,commecials, etc. I strongly doubt 1 broker can manipulate that mkt. He might be dishonest and run stops agressively but even then he will get busted eventually. I just came from there today for tests to...

One more thing, these commodities tend to run in cycles. Old addage is that nothing cures low prices like low prices and vice versa. Check out open interest Commitment of traders to see if commercials are getting short,etc. Be careful shorting it at these levels though, 2-3 days of sub 60 temps...

Hi illiquid. In 3 weeks I'll let you know. I will be in the NYBOT trading oj and cotton. They seem to do ok size 5k-8k contracts daily. Fun facts about OJ are- Brazil and florida produce > 50% of oranges. Due to Atkins diet no one drinks it at the same rate 3 years ago. There are about 5 locals...

riskarb, what model the ockhams or the strike independent straddles

I thought the best part of the book was the creation of true ATM straddle value disregarding the exchange set strike prices. You can use the formula and run it against stocks and have an idea of how straddle buywrites would have performed historicaly.

That is what I figured or if you don't spread, swing by the option pit, buy slightly OTM puts in case above situation arises. In that case, you can scalp in/out around that limit up/down area w/o having that catastrophic scenario. In addition, if it is that chaotic, you would be probably be one...

Here is an interesting question for the floor guys who might want to scalp a couple of ticks in this situation. Lets say it is limit offer and then big paper takes the limit offer and ticks up 5 . Mr. Local now thinks it is due for a bounce and buys a couple of contracts hoping for a quick...

Nitro your point about the synthetics is well taken and I hope these guys doing there are really doing the spreads on really deep ITM

If you could pick the right candidates and show consistency, this strategy would be a nice complement to other strategies since it is a basically a set and forget system (forget up until a certain loss threshold is reached. In fact one can take this set and forgt to an extreme and put in...

Elderedge..let me get this straight, you were buying 2 calls and hedging by taking opposite on the stock and you were positive? That is good considering the vols have been coming in the past few months. In addition, you strategy opens yourself up for those occasional homeruns. Imagine if 10% of...

A futures market without hedgers would be like the stock market w/o the institutions / funds who make up a majority of the volume. It would die within months much like the butter, milk, potato contracts.

I think certain classes such as floor locals have a much less attrition rate. Here is an interesting exercise for those who say attrition is not quantifiable. Take the list of members of an exchange 5 years ago-NYMEX, NYBOT,,etc. Cross out the ones who make their living doing brokerage and...

Whatever Don's motives are, whether they are altruistic or self-serving or a combo is not really material in this discussion. There are enough people who have done this week in/week out w/ good results. As previous poster has said, when one reads this journals, one should not think that this is...

I agree with former poster that Nasim seems to have a very dark view on life. Given his background I could see how he could see the world in charcoal coated glasses. Reading the book made me a little depressed. How would you feel if someone of"authority" says that one could be making a great...

As in most of trading timing is everything, a couple of posters here said that the key is in timing when to buy the tails. I personally know a couple of traders who put on cotton option tails past 3 months and made a killing. (i.e. six figure weeks). Why did they make a killing coz they bought...

There has got to be a middle ground between the polar opposites of Neidehoffer and Taleb's strategy. If I had to pick a side, I would side with Taleb since you can "amortize" our losses which can be paid for by gamma scalps. Trick is to discern when to put on the tail position. One of the...

Action would be what has happened before after major events. Gap up then flatline

SEC does not have to track em down. All it would take is for a disgruntled competitor of whoever is doing an overly agressive interp of these bullet laws to rat out. Most scandals we've heard past 2 years were a result of 1 guy from the inside blowing the whistle.

or what that man's law firm thinks is not really important when it comes to going against any gov't agency.It is strictly interpretation and precedents. This SEC interp letter is so black and white about subterfuges to the uptick rule. When sh#t hits the fan, they will interpret the SEC letter...

firms might try to turn SEC letter into a grey area again by perhaps putting on conversion on a diff strike. Might work up until an audit wherien the SEC will say why do you have this shit on.. and there would no other answer than " I need to beat the uptick rule" and the SEC will say have a...