Letting Options Tell You When To Avoid Stocks
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Just Screw It
There are few things more boring and pointless than hearing someone tell you about “the one that got away.” By its very nature, trading generates countless missed opportunities, and anyone who has done this for a while has approximately zero interest in hearing about the big fish that got away. It’s got to be as boring as listening to someone tell you about a dream they had last night.
I’m not here to write a post about the countless profits I let slip away last quarter, but I would like to share a tale of “blowing it” that I think informs my decisions in the immediate future.
Back in mid-February, I did something which I had not done in years, which was buy puts on individual stock. I had reason to believe that Nike (NKE) was going to weaken, so I bought some puts. When I buy options, they tend to be quite conservative. Specifically, I bought some puts that were in the money and didn’t expire for months.
(more…)Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
I am tremendously excited to reveal a new feature we added to SlopeCharts: we have animated the price cone. Now to some that probably sounds awfully peculiar, but check this out:
(more…)Price Cream Cone
What a extraordinary change in volatility the past five weeks. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy any option these days for a simple directional trade. Using the Price Cone feature in SlopeCharts, I can show you that the amount of volatility you’re paying for basically covers all possibilities except for an asteroid destroying Earth. Option sellers, on the other hand, are doing great!
Factory Collapse
No, no, not manufacturing-type factories. I’m talking about the locus of obese Americans with absolutely no self-control or self-respect: Cheesecake Factory. I’ve made this a frequent target of my short ideas, and as my put positions are up 53% at the moment (and I intend for them to be up hundreds of percent once it’s done).
