Some studies have shown that market crashes are extremely unlikely to occur when the VIX is below 15 or above 50, but that they are likely to occur when the VIX is between 15 to 30; and, though this prescient gauge is driven by investors’ fears (which subject it to the potential of false positives) […]
Tag Archives: Options
Follow The Volatility
Similar to the value that comes from “following the money,” it can also be useful to investors to follow the volatility. Watching activity in the Options market can often yield valuable information; and, to do so, we can look to an indicator known as Implied Volatility (IV). Essentially, IV “implies” that a stock’s price will […]
Baby Options
Recently, new mini options contracts began trading on five of the largest, listed securities: Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG) SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). As opposed to their larger parents, which represent 100 shares of the underlying securities, these new offspring cover only ten shares of the underlying […]
Just Plain Monkey-business (JPM)
Recently, a congressional committee charged top officials at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) with misleading investors, regulators and the public at large when they attempted to mask more than $6 billion in losses, which were brought about by souring trades made by the company’s “London Whale” (too bad there were no whale watchers within the […]
Posted in Articles, Options | Also tagged Calls, JPM, JPMorgan, Protective Collar, Puts | Leave a comment
Mini Options
On March 18, 2013 Mini Options will begin trading on many exchanges. The new Mini contracts will represent 10 shares of an underlying security, rather than the 100 shares standard options contracts normally cover. Strike prices will be at the same price levels as standard contracts, and the minimum price variation for bids and offers […]
Posted in Articles, Options | Also tagged Investments, Investor, Mini, Minis, Trader, Trading | Leave a comment
O Canada
One of the best places I have found for income seeking investors to invest is in Canada. Canada is a resource rich country primarily known for its oil and gas reserves. However, what may come as a surprise to some is that Canada is home to much of the world’s corn, peas, wheat, nickel and […]
Diving for Dollars
With so much uncertainty in the world right now, one of the hardest tasks for investors is trying to determine the best place to invest one’s hard-earned dollars. Recently, I read an article about the the extraordinary length of time it will take to recoup one’s initial investment when investing in dividend paying utilities. Though […]
Collars
Taking our options trades one step further, another one of the options strategies I use quite often is the Collar. With a Collar a Call is sold against shares that are owned (or purchased at the time of the trade) and, with the premium dollars taken in from sale of the Call, a lower strike […]
Buying Stocks with Naked Puts
Using Naked Puts is a strategy I employ quite often. First, however, we need to know the definition of a Put and, more importantly, why is it “naked.” For a detailed explanation of both, you can click here. Again, using Kellogg (K) as an example: From the chart on the left, we can see that […]
