Quote from daddy'sboy:
Look here Mav, you say:
"What is in their mind has some validity but they are not explaining and defending the concept correctly"
Give me a break, please.
You've gone from claiming that their stuff is total bullshit and you were going to talk to their CEO to get them fixed, to now saying that they have 'some validity' and that the problem lies with their way of explaining things (as I said previously, semantics).
You've also agreed that p/c parity only holds true at inception and expiration, and not during the course of the trade (same as the optionetics crowd said).
So, back to square one. Knowing all of the above, which we agree on, do you now agree that the collar is a better way of trading a long term bullish view on an underlying than using verticals?
daddy's boy
P.S. I've also been wondering what happened to riskarb.
DB, their stuff is total BS and yes, I have talked to their CEO. About 2 years ago. I made some negative comments about them on my own message board which I ran and one of their minions reported me. I got calls from their lawyers telling me to delete all my negative posts. I refused to do that. They told me they would take me to court. I said go ahead. Finally their CEO sent me an e-mail and told me to call him. So I called him in San Francisco and talked to him for about an hour about his company. The conversation was polite, but I told him his infomercials were very dishonest. I had a particular beef about 12 years olds in Australia make a killing trading options as was portrayed in their commercials. He told me that was legit, I laughed. Like I said, the conversation was friendly and I respect him for at least taking the time to talk to me and we ended the call on friendly terms. It was not my intent to bash him. He agreed to pull the lawyers and I agreed not to make direct remarks about Optionetics they are negative.
Let me say this again, there is no validity in my eyes as to what they are doing. My statement regarding the validity of the strategy was only in the reference that they are both the same. If the collar and the BCS are the same, there certainly must be validity in the collar. The problem I have is the collar requires more margin and produces a substantially smaller return as any synthetic does that requires you to hold stock. That is not a flaw in the put/call parity model but rather a flaw in REG T margin. LOL.
My point about put/call parity only working at inception and expiration is the very principle put/call parity is based on. It's not that you can exploit it in the interim. I even gave an example on MO stock. Where MO pays a .75 dividend. And a naive trader who does not know any better puts on a reversal because he thinks he has a risk free profit by selling the puts and buying the calls and selling the stock. Obviously the .75 dividend is priced into the reversal and he will have to pay it through the short stock. Well, let's say out of no where, MO cancels their .75 dividend. All of a sudden this trader makes .75 on the trade risk free!!!!!! He screams from the rooftops, put/call parity broke down!!!!!! Uhhh, no it didn't. MO canceling their dividend did not break down put/call parity. You and they might both argue, well hey, anything can happen man between inception and expiration and that is my strategy. And I would say bullshit.
You can't put on that trade in the hopes that MO is going to cancel their dividend no more then you can put on the collar in GOOG knowing it's the inferior trade in the hopes that GOOG gaps down far enough so you can buy back the JAN 08 470 call which you sold for 70.00 for .05. That is the definition of lunacy. You just can't do that with a straight face. And then come back to me and tell me that you are justifying this outlandish behavior because the magic is in the rolling down of the calls which synthetically is the same as selling a call spread which can be done just as easily with the bull call spread instead of the collar.
See, we are disagreeing on more then just semantics here. The only point to creating a new term "lazy collar" for something that already exists, the bull call spread, is to try to get an audience. See, there is nothing new under the sun. But in order to sell it, you have to tell people there is, that gets them excited. It's kind of the reason why Steve Jobs needs to come out with a new I-pod every 6 months. Otherwise sales would slow down. Well, the people at Optionetics, and this may not even be their strategy, but this Alex Mendoza is one of their staff writers and apparently that lunatic Scott Kramer is too, they decide to manufacture this to get everyone excited. And it worked. I have to give them kudos for that.