As much as we’ve tried, even we’re still talking about the fiscal cliff.
Option Block 203: Still Talking About the Fiscal Cliff
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Pre-Market 12/4/12
A pre-market snapshot for Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Volatility Trading Digest – Strategy Selection
Trade selection using volatility as the primary criteria. Different trades for different volatility opportunities.
Volatility Trading Digest – Now More Bullish
Despite all the “fiscal cliff” chatter the equity advance continued last week as other select “risk on” assets began participating. Although the probability remains high there will be a successful retest of the S&P 500 Index (SPX) low of 1343.35 made on November16 at some point, we know better than to fight the tape.
Option Block 202: VIX: How Low Can It Go?
Can VIX really go to 10? Can we stop saying “fiscal cliff”? Can we all play MSFT CEO for a day?
Rising correlation and stock volatility
In 2011 and early 2012, one of the big themes was the elevated correlation among individual stocks. In the ?risk on, risk off? environment, investor appetites for stocks were indifferent to the fundamentals of particular companies: trades were all about the macroeconomic risks.
Is Long Term Risk Coming In?
This morning we had another continuation of the Cliff Dwellers saga. This is where the market participants watch and see what the Executive Branch and Congress are going to say and then hit the sell button.
Not Buying the SPX, Look at a Calendar
At Option Pit, our goal is to teach our option mentoring students not just the strategy, but the theory behind why one would execute a strategy. We want our option traders to learn how to construct their own trades, not just regurgitate others’ trades.
A Prisoner’s Dilemma for Weekly Options
Weekly options may be good for traders, but fragmenting the distribution of options order flow across time makes analysis more difficult.
Facebook Volatility is Still Cheap
I had to blink recently, because I thought FB was just a $20 stock. Nothing makes momentum traders happier than an upgrade of a whole bunch of technology stocks at once.
Option Block 201: Traders as Quarterbacks
Traders, you’re the quarterback of your team. How are you preparing for the big game?
Why Taleb is Wrong About Markets and Uncertainty
Once you cut through the layers of purple prose and elective neologism, Nassim Nicholas Taleb?s central thesis is not hard to understand: people often know less than they think that they do, and some human affairs are arranged so that they are negatively, neutrally, or positively affected by surprising events.