<p>Just an update on my volatility plays (because dstark asked). The first month was not a big success–down about 4%. But those things are going to happen with a product whose beta is somewhere between 4 and 5. However, I’m not complaining–my simple momentum system had me with large positions in RWX, VNQ and EWJ last month. You know what they say–even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.</p>
<p>Another group of possibilities for use of xiv in passive investment strategies is outlined here [An</a> Alternative Passive Investment Strategy | MarketSci Blog](<a href=“Private Site”>Private Site). The idea is to take advantage of the volatility of xiv and the persistent contango in the futures market, together with the strong correlation between spy and xiv to replace spy in an spy/ief passive investment strategy with a small amount of xiv (in the short term, 9% xiv/50%ief/41%shy) instead of 50%spy/50%ief. Obviously, there would be a wide variety of potential variants on this strategy.</p>
<p>EMM1, thanks for the update. It will be interesting to see over time how the strategy works. Obviously, 1 month is a very short time frame unless you are going to get hit by a bus this month. Don’t get hit by a bus. </p>
<p>the aapl butterfly wasn’t too bad today. What happened to my vz stock?? Anybody go onto the cboe site and try the new trade builder with trade analyzer?</p>
<p>That is a big drop in vz today. That kind of sucks. Isnt there going to be a merger in vz’ space? Aapl held up today. I sold more puts in aapl today including the 415 puts that expire in two days. I sold the 375 puts that expire 5/18 too. I don’t see a large downside in aapl in the short term…</p>
<p>I thought May 1 had the best percentage of up days compared to any other day. Oh well… The probability wasn’t 100 percent up today. Lol if investors sold because they are freaking out about May, the market will bounce back.</p>
<p>I bailed out of most of my positions. +$30K yesterday, gave it back today and I said no more. I sold in May.</p>
<p>Of course I might get right back in tomorrow. I’m very happy with the AAPL, INTC, NKE, TJX, QLD trades. I only made about 1.3% on TNA after being up much more than that - I should have taken profits earlier - I was in the dentist’s chair for a while this afternoon and got back to the office as the carnage was taking place.</p>
<p>In the past I would have called one of my kids to sell my positions. It could have gone up $30K too - I took a gamble. No biggie. I’m having a great year anyways.</p>
<p>Yup, I left PBA alone. I’m actually a little happy that it pulled back as it looked frothy. It also makes it easier just to hold it for the dividends. I held on to PSEC too. It didn’t pull back very much today. Actually Intel didn’t either. I think that it made a new high - it was up most of the day but I can’t imagine that it closed in the green. Nike is probably still near all-time highs too. It’s a confusing market. I have a feeling that the Fed is going to announce that they are increasing the monthly buy from $85 billion. Perhaps sometime this summer as things continue to slow down. The slowdown is global and it’s like a supertanker so I suspect that it will take some effort to turn.</p>
<p>I got a shock today as I looked at my accts. I had sold 5/18 vlo 38 puts, vlo 6/22 45 puts and bought 6/22 vlo 39 - 34 put spreads. At the close yesterday I had extra money in the account with the 6/22 45 puts, a lot of which disappeared in the morning but some is still there. This was coupled with huge losses in both the put spreads I bought and the puts that I sold. VLO spun off cst, the options were repriced and there were no bids on any of the puts or spreads resulting in huge losses in all of them with the way that Schwab reports it.</p>
<p>Yeah - I hadn’t looked at the bid - ask spread ( the bids were 0) and ended up calling Schwab to ask how could I lose so much on the put spread for both those that I bought and those that I sold.</p>
<p>I had a problem with Schwab today too. I was traded thru. The options traded higher than my offer. Schwab explained why. They routed the order to one exchange and it traded at a higher price on another. I might start routing the orders myself for orders before the opening. I was too lazy to go upstairs and use a PC for the order.</p>