Long term I still like ADT bear positions. Short term, here at $43.24 is an opportunity to reduce size if you're holding more than you are comfortable with.
Also, I realized that by calling out the ADT short while keeping quiet about my other, bullish positions, it kind of makes me look like one of those unfortunate traders positioned short-only into this moonshot-rally market. So actually, that's not the case. I just don't have enough confidence in any of my individual bull positions to warrant mentioning them here. Finding stocks with strong uptrends isn't difficult though, so without calling out specific names, I'll just say that positioning short only into a raging bull market is pretty much never the right thing to do. Just take your pick and balance out your bear positions with some of the many uptrends out there... but you probably want to wait for a better entry point than right now. Both the PPI and CPI have the potential to shake things up a bit, presenting a possible pullback to buy into later this week.
I never got especially big with those GLD bearish options positions. I've added a little more size right here at 1381. Part of the problem is that I can't afford to blow up like I used to. My account size seems healthy on the surface, but unlike in the past I no longer have millions in outside assets to replenish my trading account in the event of a blowup. Five rough years took their toll. ADT: Notice how weak this thing has been trading while the spooz rally huge. Just imagine what it'll do when the market eventually sells off a little. Can't think of a much better bear position to even out one's longs.
Was thinking the same thing about ADT over the last few days. Recent buying and selling doesn't seems correlated with the larger market, but if the indices ever roll over I can't imagine the bids would stay out there. I'm a little disappointed I didn't get aggressive on Friday morning when it felt right, and instead waited with limits 25 cents off. Could have been 23% larger in size. Gold has always been hard for me to size into. Overnight session needs to be watched, tends to push to my pain thresholds (but not in that schizo random way other instruments do). That's why I was trying to stay tight with my exit last week (and failed to add on there also).
Here's a new market call. I don't know if we're about to develop some volatility (in spooz) or not, but I'm liking the risk/reward of buying UVXY right here, right now. AH current price: offered at $5.96. We'll know by the end of the week if this is going to work or not. Edit: If some volatility does develop here, I plan to exit this by putting out limit orders to scale out as it goes my way on any big down day. If we fail to sell off on Thursday and Friday, I'll get out with (likely) not much harm done. Worse case scenario for this position is that the market just rips straight back up, and I'm considering some kind of hedge against that sort of thing... maybe. Notice my other two public positions are pretty healthy so far. That would be short gold and short ADT. (Did I just jinx it?)
Now that is a bold call. I follow VXX (which tracks the same thing as UVXY but's just 1X instead of 2X) and it's reaction to market dips recently have been very muted and disappointing. It doesn't go up as much as it has in the past on dips.
I sense a lot more uncertainty about the tapering of QE after today. That could cause a big spike in the vix.
The reason the vix was dead today is the last 1000 dow pts up the vix hasn't dropped. it should have hit $9 or so
Regarding that UVXY I bought AH, I figure on one of two things happening during the remainder of this week: Either the trade works out well due to volatility increasing, or the spooz rocket straight back up. I've bought OTM calls that expire this Friday to address the second possibility. SPY would be ideal, but ES is what's open all night, so that's what I was buying tonight. If it wasn't so illiquid, I'd have called this out before/during the buying process. I like the 1660, 1665 and 1670 ES calls., purchased with almost 5% of the total capital invested in UVXY long.
... <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=3807484> Taken as two legs of the same trade (Leg 1: UVXY long $X @ $5.96 and Leg 2: ES calls long $0.05X, prices as shown above- My total average cost for each strike is within 8 cents of the "last" traded price.), I'm pretty sure this trade makes money or I wouldn't be posting it here...