QQQ currently at 83 area. What are the best strategies for a retreat scenario of QQQ to the 79 area as first level, and 75 as second level. Time frame: before end of this year.
Shorting the QQQ at multi-year highs is an amateurish mistake, you should be thinking of buying calls. The QQQ is at about the level it was in late 1999. The question is can it reach its all time high in early 2014? EDIT: For AAPL earnings on Monday I would consider buying the weekly QQQ 83.50 calls instead of the expensive AAPL calls. Buy them within the last hour of trading on Monday October 28. The 83.50 strike depends on how the market moves on Monday, I recommend 2 strikes OTM weekly calls.
My portfolio didn't get that memo . QQQ IV is at rock bottom. So. I would be a buyer of options. In my case, I recently loaded up on tech names. So I bought some QQQ 72 puts in case we go any further than a 10% correction going into the end of the year. Otherwise, I'm already long.
I find AAPL PE low, and therefore believe it would likely stay in range, or may fall, more likely than rise. 368 is about about 10% above current appl price, which would correspond to 83.50 given appl's % in the QQQ. So I concluded that 83 to 83.50 may be more a resistance to QQQ, which it did today and the day before.
When IV is "relatively" low calendars/diagnals might work. You could sell the 80 NOV and buy the 75 DEC put which would frame your trade. That would cost .01 plus comish..or buy the 75 and sell the weekly's on a rolling basis. This works pretty well as long as we don't go violently down or up. You obviously want it to stay above 80 until Nov exp then it can go down and you have a paid for put. Up won't hurt you if you just do the Nov/Dec.
Thanks. Richard that diagonal idea would definitely make the insurance more affordable. Additionally, that would allow me to "frame" important government releases in between before volatility rises to the event. Would have been nice to do that prior to the budget talks, then I wouldn't have gone flat.