I can't stand them either, but Buffet's organizations do utilize options. A huge majority of the big players do to some extent.
I don't understand your comment. So what if Buffet uses options. I believe options are a wonderful investment tool for millions of investors. And hedge funds. And other institutional invesors. What I object to is Optionetics' outrageous lies and misleading statements - things that make many people sorry they ever heard the word 'option.' Mark
I've been taking part in weekly contests to guess the Friday close of the SPX, DJI, etc. I've entered my guesses twice and won twice (if I could only trust myself and trade accordingly ] Anyway the point of this is that the prizes have been books on options. I just received "The Options Course" by none other than George A. Fontanills. I've begun looking at his chapters on delta neutral trading. I'd appreciate some comments on this book, if you're familiar with it, Fontanills, if you want to comment, and esp. on delta neutral trading. I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it seems to comprise primarily straddles/strangles, ratio spreads and ratio backspreads.
His books are good. Much better than the courses in my opinion although I have no experince with the courses.
Thanks, Coach: Where do you think the SPX is headed? I finally put a bull call spread on today when the SPX was down 7 points and had to leave. Now I see that it ended down almost 12 points. I hope we didn't just see the top.
We are still in an uptrend. However todays GDP data brought in some more uncertainty. I would say any bullish position should go into DEC just to be safe since we may chop a bit with the fed meeting over and earnings season winding down.
Why would you go long on such an overextended market? - The latest Commitment of Traders is $34B short (an extreme level) - The SPX is hovering far above it's 20-day EMA (typically an entry point for dip buyers) - The NAZ just closed under the 1730 level (showing it was a false breakout yesterday) - The SOX is tanking (it's a market leading indicator) - We have elections coming up (historically a high-vol period) - The GDP came in lower than expected The risk/reward just does not make sense......
How do you use the commitment of traders for your indicator? Can you elaborate more about it. I searched the web and it seems that commitment of traders indicators are more useful for future. http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?column=MARK+HULBERT&siteid=mktw&guid={386CF5EC-7D76-4E07-BA0F-5763EEADEEF4}
My philiosophy in general on all of this is to let others much smarter I do all the hard work (such as figuring out COT, bull/bear Rydex ratios, etc.) and I just take that information, form an opinion, add to it my two-bit mickey mouse TA and make a decision. Seems to work most of the time.....