Getting Ahead for the Little Guy
Wow. Interesting times for options traders. This morning, OptionsXPress has announced that it is acquiring options-trading training & tools company Optionetics.
In retrospect, this is unsurprising. Options & Stock education / tools company Investools used to recommend OptionsXPress as a platform for their students, which no doubt drove a lot of business their way. But then [...]
Back in December, I found GSIG on a list of stocks that were selling well below the company’s liquidation value, with low debt. It had plummeted from its ~ $10 value to a mere $0.52 when I picked it up, partly because of the overall market, but significantly because of mis-reported earnings and a subsequent [...]
I closed out a 2-month trade on Dryships (DRYS) today. Here’s how the trade went:
I sold March puts on DRYS on February 23rd at a strike of $5 for $1.50 per share (or $150 per contract). The current price of DRYS shares was $4.20.
On March 11, I rolled the March $5 puts to April – [...]
I recently read Scratch Beginnings – Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, by Adam Shepard.
The book is a response to Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, “Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America” Ehrenreich, a democratic socialist, performed investigative journalism in that book to reveal that the American Dream was dead, and that [...]
About two-and-a-half years ago, my wife and I set a goal. We wanted to take the entire family to Hawaii on vacation. So we planned. We’d save for a trip to Hawaii for the whole family. We wanted to do it within two years. We’d scrimp, we’d save, we’d go.
A year passed.
A year later, we [...]
Some traders refer to it as “Die and Hold” (especially in this economy). But the responsible, common belief is that the common investor is best served buying and holding stocks for the long term. But is it really the best vehicle for the common investor?
According to this article, perhaps not.
While over the long term, the [...]
While I knew there were issues associated with some of these vehicles, Leonard the Monkey points out at the Trading Goddess Stock Blog why the popular leveraged ETFs are really short-term trading tools.
FAS vs. FAZ
Actually, based on his charts and analysis, I’d have to say they are a bit worse than I expected. Maybe this [...]
After getting our savings accounts dropped down to a whopping 0.1% APR interest, and getting hit by some unfair fees (some of which we got reversed), we are now abandoning our bank. They don’t know it yet – I don’t think they have noticed. The last time I talked to them, I was transferred to [...]