Options

Timing the Market with the Put-Call Ratio

November 4, 2012

The put-call ratio is one of my favorite sentiment indicators. As investors know, it often pays to be a contrarian. The most famed contrarian investor, Warren Buffett, says it best – investors should be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy. The put-call ratio gives investors the ability to see into […]

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Covered Call ETFs: Do the Returns Justify the Fees?

June 24, 2012

As volatility pushes higher and expected future returns decline, investors are turning to income strategies to generate better long-run returns. Covered calls are one such way to boost returns and reduce volatility. Covered Call ETFs There are only two American covered call ETFs: CBOE S&P 500 BuyWrite Index ETN (BWV) – The BuyWrite ETN tracks […]

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Strategy to Combine High Dividend Yields, Options Income and Price Stability

January 8, 2012

I came across an interesting article on SeekingAlpha where the author suggests a strategy for exploiting the high yields of the Dogs of the Dow (I recently wrote on the 2012 Dogs of the Dow) mixed with selling long-dated options (LEAPS) on those positions. Using Dow stocks also tends to minimize the risk of outright […]

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My Thursday Market-Crash Awesomeness!

August 4, 2011

For anyone following my tweets, you would have seen on Friday, I bought 20 puts and 20 calls on QQQ knowing that there was going to be a BIG move in the market this week with all this debt ceiling deadline nonsense.  The problem was, I wasn’t quite sure which way, so I went long […]

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