Well I hope I've figured it out. As I said before, maybe I just got lucky today. I said "I think" because I didn't actually go back and count up how many trades I did yesterday. It was around 8 trades, and I remember a couple of them being profitable.
260,000/22 =arond 11,800 shares.. a Jan09 12.5 call = 9.6 *11800 = 113,280 that frees up more than 50% of ur equity so why buy into stock and not option? how old r u?
Well that stock position is an investment, not a trade. So maybe it's rule #14 of investing that I've broken. As far as marriage goes, I was in fact married to the stock at one point, and held it thru massive plunges. Last year I finally wisened up and traded it for a period of time, and used the profits to increase my position by about 30%. The shareholders of this company acknowledge that we will be proven either idiots or total geniuses. But the company is on a roll as far as legal decisions go, and I am confident it will ultimately end up successful.
This company has shown that options are not good plays when litigation is involved. It always takes longer than you think. I am in my early 30s.
you kiddin me? you know what you're talking about? fallin in love with a trade is worth it but an 'investment'? portfolio theory is garbage.. but be very afraid of statistics.. 'investment' is the only thing that should always be diversified.
do yourself a favor. realize you don't have a system, count your blessings that you still have 270k, sell your idcc holding at a loss, and learn how to trade with a $30-40K account. Put the rest in 30% cash, 30% bond (or bond fund), and 30% equities ETF or mut fund of your choice in an independent account and forget about it. Don't sweat a 15% (45K?) loss on your money. Its nothing compared to the additional 100-150K you are setting yourself up to lose this year. You'll thank me because you will have lost considerably less than the path you are going down right now. Unless of course you have a few million in your other trust funds and this is all play money, bring everything down a notch. I know the pain of blowing up, and can see right through you. You don't have a fault tolerant trading system worth trading either. Go try ninjatrader and automate and backtest your system if you disagree. If you can't quantify it enough to backtest, you don't have a system. If it doesn't test well, then your journey is just beginning. If it tests well, automate and celebrate. Otherwise, you are gambling with casino odds (err negative expectation).
I think you're taking waaay too much heat. You have a trading cap. of about 40k, yes? And you lose more than 10% ($6600) in a single day. Never mind the fact that you got some back today, you're simply risking too much. I don't trade stocks, but to me those numbers are just too big.
I just looked at the chart of IDCC and it looks awful. That stock has more pain ahead. Plus the tech sector is overowned right now and very vulnerable to big selloffs like we had the previous couple weeks. I would bail as soon as Bennie cuts rates.