Friday, November 8, 2024
Options can make even the most mundane trade more exciting. The flexibility of options, especially when using spreads (combinations of buying or selling calls and puts), can allow for all kinds of creativity when designing strategies. Plus, the leverage inherent in options can quickly make the return (or loss) potential of a trading strategy a […]
You might think options trading requires you to commit to a decision about a stock up front: will the stock rise, or will it fall? But it is possible trade options even when you don’t know what direction the stock will ultimately move. A straddle is a way for you to you to play both […]
Are covered call ETFs the best way to write options? We’ll explain how these ETFs work and compare it to writing calls on individual stocks.
The 2020 economic shutdown produced wildly different results for businesses, depending on their positions in the economy. Some sectors, such as technology, sailed through the shutdown without a scratch. Other economic sectors, such as travel and tourism, took a tremendous hit. Is now the time to shift from the 2020 winners into stocks that most […]
There was a significant amount of unusual options action this past week in Pfizer (PFE). The pharmaceutical giant posted earnings during the week, which resulted in over 12x the numbers of average options traded on the day of the release. More impressively, 94% of the action was in calls, which is generally a very bullish […]
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s recent remarks really infuriated me. He is “Whistling Past The Graveyard”, again trying to deceive the public. Wolf Richter shares some of his recent remarks: “Inflation has come in above expectations over the past few months.” “The expectation is that high inflation readings will start to abate.” “We don’t in any way […]
In fact, according to The Economist, in 2020 about 30 million equity options were trading every day—50% higher than 2019. And so far in 2021, notes the Option Clearing Corporation (OCC), options volume is up to 39.2 million a day. While simple call and put buying is popular, traders are also turning to covered calls, […]
In this guide, we’ll explain how covered calls work, the benefits of writing covered calls for income, and the risks you need to be aware of.
August is an odd month in the markets… Trading desks are thinly staffed, so there is less trading activity going on. But I’ve been called back to the trading desk many times in the prime back-to-school season. Looking at a chart of the S&P 500 and the 10-year bond… there’s a correlation to what the […]
Last Monday, July 19, 2021, the U.S. stock market dropped almost 950 points, or 2.7%, on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. While 2.7% doesn’t sound like a lot, the negative dollar figure was eye-opening when applied to a sizeable brokerage account. I received many subscriber emails asking what to buy, what to sell, what to […]
