<p>Sounds like you have a lot of experience with bookies.</p>
<p>I am making a citizen’s arrest. Pleaee turn yourself into the nearest presinct. :)</p>
<p>I don’t think John Paulson is being dishonest…He understands When he speculates with other people’s money…he wins no matter what happens to the speculation. He does win more if the speculation works out.</p>
<p>I don’t think investors understand how these fee structures can kill a portfolios performance.</p>
<p>Warren Buffett understands…Not too surprising. :)</p>
<p>The implied volatility of Aapl options got crushed today…</p>
<p>It’s not everyday an option almost 10 percent out of the money (apr 650 calls)…with a delta around 20 is going to drop almost as much as the stock…</p>
<p>And the stock drops and the in the money puts drop…That doesn’t happen everyday either…</p>
<p>Expectations for volatility in Aapl over the next several weeks are declining…</p>
<p>Which makes sense since the dividend story is out…</p>
<p>Plus…market volatilty in the near month is near 4 or 5 year lows…</p>
<p>I don’t think that is good for sellers of premium …because you don’t
get much for selling premium…and I don’t like what this implies for traders that like volatility…if option premiums are correct…it looks like a dull market over the next several weeks…(implied option volatilty is not always correct…otherwise we can all sit on a beach somewhere and just sell premium and collect the money). But…it is pretty dull right now…</p>
<p>My Fidelity Portfolio display said that I made 33% on selling the option. It’s only on a small amount of money though. I guess I got lucky. I should have sold more calls. It appears that this experiment isn’t very representative of selling calls in general.</p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt that there were a ton of articles the last few days on selling AAPL calls.</p>
<p>Short term percentages moves are going to be so much higher with options…which is why people like options…</p>
<p>It is a double edged sword though…if we are wrong…</p>
<p>If you sell call options against stock…I am going to guess you don’t have to put up any margin…</p>
<p>At GS…to sell that 1 option naked (the apr 650 calls)…with no long stock against it…you put up $25,000…</p>
<p>So in a way… A person isn’t making 300 on 900…a person who just sold that option short is making 300 on 25,000.</p>
<p>Just in general…a couple of heads up…
if earnings are going to be announced before options expire…the options usually trade at higher volatilities…</p>
<p>And if anybody sells options before a major event like drug approvals for example…those. Options are going to trade at much higher premiums…so sellers of premiums have to be careful in these cases…</p>
<p>There are lots of folks touting both the bull and bear cases for the market. I bought more stuff today (chasing the market) and am feeling very very nervous about the market in my gut. My past experience when I buy like this and have this feeling is the market is ready for a significant correction.</p>
<p>My gut says there has been a heck of a lot of good (better than in a long time) news recently, and it will be hard to beat it (ST), and that most of the recent is in the market.
Talk is cheap, though…
Unresolved with negative news potential: foreign debt and currency crisis, election.
Have no leverage left on ANY assets as of this month.
A lot of cash and a few LT stocks. (And too many expenses HA HA)</p>
<p>Options are fun- gratification (or disappointment) is close to instant.</p>
<p>“Options are fun- gratification (or disappointment) is close to instant”</p>
<p>True…</p>
<p>My areas…
I heard that Northern Marin…which was decimated in the housing bust…is seeing multiple offers on homes that are priced right.</p>
<p>In areas like Tiburon…which is more expensive than Northern Marin…homes are selling around the 1.5 million level…and lower…pretty quickly if priced correctly…but the more expensive homes languish…the Silicon Valley money hasn’t crossed the Golden Gate Bridge… yet…and buyers are very price conscious. Buyers don’t pay up.</p>
<p>Here is another example of typical behavior for many investors and why they lose money. In May of 2008, I moved one acct from equities to bonds. In September of 2008, I sold another acct and went completely into cash. It was around this time, that I predicted here in cc that the market would bottom out in March 2009. On a third acct, I jokingly had a wager with a coworker as to who would sell closest to the market bottom. I won that wager - I sold 1 day before the market bottomed. This is typical behavior - sell low, buy high. I was saved on this only because I got back in within 2 weeks.</p>
<p>I hear this a lot lately. Reasons that I’ve heard are: boomers retiring,selling stocks and going into bonds for safety; more investors are trading options rather than stocks; more investors are in etfs rather than mutual funds or individual stocks and the retail investor is dumb money but as I think the Altucher guy said ( I like him, Ritholz and really like Howard Davidowitz - they’re so entertaining), everybody is dumb money.</p>
<p>The retail investor en masse is never coming back,just like housing will not approach ‘bubble days’ for many years</p>
<p>It really burns me up when talking heads say the market will contiue to move up because the retail investor has yet to come back…i read that as ’ once the retail investor comes back, let’s pull the rug out again’</p>
<p>No - most of these people think they’re smarter than they are. They think they can use their technical indicators, fundamental analysis and sentiment indicators to predict the market -mostly they can’t.</p>