Counting with Doug: Financing a trip to Lake Tahoe solely with blackjack winnings?

Archive for August 2011

Checking out the Florida Everglades for a week

Looks like I’ll be leaving for vacation tomorrow with two positions open — both negative bets on VIX options. I’ll be spending a week decompressing in the Florida Everglades — no phones, no ‘net, no trades, so I’ll just have to see how things turn out when I return on August 30th. Enjoy the rest […]

Quickie VIX trade

With the gap down this morning, and VIX shooting past 40, I’m making a “quickie” spur-of-the-moment trade, and buying somewhat reasonably priced September 30 VIX calls for $3.10. Hope to be out of this one by Monday, as vacation looms.

Market Speculator back in action

It looks like the Market Speculator, a favorite blogger whose, er, speculations are always interesting to follow is back in action this month after a season on the sidelines. On August 5th Market Speculator posted four new long positions (which he apparently still holds). One of his new longs was the American market in general, […]

Betting on an end to the summer fireworks

For my late summer trade, I’m going to stick with VIX options, but try a little different tack: put spreads. I’ve put on what amounts to the equivilent of two VIX September put spreads: twenty contracts on a 27.50 – 25 spread and ten more on a 25-20. Essentially, this is a simple bet that […]

The painful buyback

The dream of pain-free easy summer trading has turned out to be just that — a dream. With this being the last day to trade August VIX contracts, I closed out my open positions for a nice hefty loss of almost $2,500.00. I’m going to chalk this up as a live-and-learn experience. And since misery […]

Earnings season may be winding up, but the season for rationalizations is in full swing!

With the market plunging almost 20% in three weeks at its worst, you knew it wouldn’t be long before some short term speculators were turned into long term investors! Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe has listed some of his favorite bear market rationalizations and bromides at Boston.com: ■Venture capitalists: “We are counter-cyclical investors.’’ “Economic […]

The death cross was a little late to the party

The violent trading of the past three weeks has finally triggered the infamous death cross on the SPX Friday: Death (and golden crosses), where the 50-day moving average cross over each other, are by definition trailing indicators. But how badly trailing are they? Simon Maierhofer has done some nice research on this at Yahoo Finance. […]

Amid the market carnage, Wendy’s might be better off than most

Ambitious longs looking to play a bounce when and if one arrives might take a look at Wendy’s, a stock we check on periodically here: The fast food chain, which recently shed itself of its Arby’s stores, has certainly dived along with the rest of the equities markets, but closed Monday not to far under […]

Cape Cod Doug’s Brazilian Bailout!

Every trader worth his salt has at some time or other known the feeling of being trapped in a trade. And once you’ve experienced that feeling, try to burn it in to your brain, and avoid getting trapped again! Making mistakes is unavoidable if you take a directional position in the markets. Learning from mistakes […]

These times aren’t normal, so why should traders be normal?

The trading life ain’t the normal life. At least that’s the thesis of the Rogue Traderette, an Australia-based market commentator who occaisionally dips her hands into swapping CFD’s (a type of option) and other intruments banned by the SEC in the good old United States. “RT” rather astutely points out that what traders would consider […]

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