Savvy investors are expecting a put option payoff in their day trading accounts this Christmas, while those without full options trading accounts are likely to get coal. The rest of the traders in the stock market who do have the ability to act on put options may have some significant opportunities ahead given the continuing shocks to the economy. Most of the market has had a significant run up since the lows of March however clearly the results have yet to reach main street. A stalled recovery that doesn’t reach Main street is likely to hit the major market indices hard when the final numbers are tallied.
A Put Option Payoff on Market Indices Could Be in the Future The late year rally in the Dow Jones and S&P 500 have been welcome news to investors with retirement accounts and 401Ks invested in those indices. Wise investors are taking advantage of the gains and present market liquidity by rebalancing money out of those stock funds and into safe havens such as money market funds, treasuries, and high return CDs. A put option payoff in these indices seems likely given the economic storm still roiling at home while two wars are prosecuted overseas.
Economic Storm Clouds Still Brewing – Reform Initiatives Stalled While Expensive Wars Continue President Obama has been caught between a rock and a hard place in trying to make headway on domestic fronts while trying to manage two problematic war efforts. His health care initiative – designed to save money on treatments while expanding overall coverage is moving like molasses through the halls of Congress. Meanwhile 30,000 more troops are engaging in the Afgan war effort – costly in terms of both managerial and monetary resources, leaving less of both for needed reform efforts and stimulus spending.
A is a fast paced way of getting at the short side of the stock market – particularly the Nasdaq.
To read more about put options or option trading generally, visit our tutorial to .
Commodities and stocks have been on fire the past two weeks and I think it just may be time for things to take a breather. While I continue to stay long, taking some money off the table to lock in profits is a safe play.
If you look at the charts we can tell the odds are pointing to some type of pause or pullback in the coming days. I figure any day now we could see some profit taking.
Gold ETF Trading – GLD
The Gold ETF is one of my favorite trading vehicles. Using simple trend lines and looking at the recent price action you can see that the price of gold is looking ready for a pullback. Buying at this level is chasing and that generally means you at the high and panic out at the low.
Silver ETF Trading – SLV
The Silver ETF looks to be in the same boat as gold. I expect to see some sideways price action or a pullback.
Natural Gas ETF Trading – UNG
The Natural Gas ETF sure has given everyone a wild ride in the past 6 months. The bear market is still in place which can be seen on the daily chart. So far this week the price has broken down and trading at the $11 support level. This fund could generate a or sell signal with my trading model in the coming days so I am waiting for a clear entry and exit point before jumping on the gas wagon.
Crude Oil ETF Trading – USO
The Crude Oil ETF has broken above its resistance trend line this week but still struggling to move above the August high. Volume is declining while the price rises which is a bearish indicator. USO looks ready for some type of a pullback as it digests this breakout before moving higher.
Mid-Week GLD, SLV, UNG, USO ETF Trading Report
What does the general public hear and think about the stock market?
From recent emails, local financial news shows, family, friends etc… all I am hearing is how strong the market is. Indexes are making new yearly highs and company earnings are better than expected this quarter. Sounds like all we need to do is and life will be great!
Well in my opinion the market is the perfect tool for misguiding and frustrating the general public. All my indicators are telling me we need more of a correction before rallying much higher. The market (smart money) generally anticipates good and bad news several weeks if not a month in advance. So the question is:
Are company earnings already priced into the market?
Is all this positive market coverage getting the general public to up here at this possible market top?
The answer is, only time will tell. No one knows for sure what the market is going to do but short term moves can be predicted with relatively high accuracy.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still bullish on the market but with all this good news becoming public information you have to wonder what is next. I am still long the market but trimming my positions to lock in profits and still stay in the game.
Smoking has always been one of the major symbols of masculinity and when it comes to classic smoking that gives one a class-apart image then majority of the male smokers prefer Cigar smoking. Remember the image of James Bond, Winston Churchill and the 70′s Hollywood male stars? You will find all of them with a common thing, i.e. cigar. Yes, because cigar not only symbolizes masculinity but also acts as de-stressor that also acts as a rudiment of entertainment. Many people often resemble cigar smoking with cigarette smoking, but in reality there are big differences between them. A good cigar smoker never smokes an entire cigar at a stretch, and doesn’t let a cigar pass the ribbon as these are not proper cigar etiquette. The most preferable way to smoke cigars is to smoke it in a quit room along with some fellow people to enjoy it fully. Though companionship in cigar smoking completely depends on the individual’s preference; some people like to have it alone and some with friends. Cigar smoking etiquettes also include not to stubbing it. An experienced cigar connoisseur never stubs it like cigarette; rather smokes it until the ribbon and then throws it out to ashtray where the cigar goes out by itself. Another etiquette aspect associated with cigar smoking is its holding method. A cigar should not be hold like a cigarette, i.e. in between the index finger and the middle finger. According to the cigar etiquette, it should be hold by thumb and the index finger. Many people enjoy smoking with different alcoholic beverages. Things like cognac and brandy go perfectly with it. Many people think that smoking a cigar along with cognac defines a class, which gives the smokers the feeling of true elegance and makes the smokers class-apart. So, before you move on to have cigars or discount cigars to taste the elegance of smoking, remember all the cigar smoking etiquettes discussed above.
Jarrod Jones has been associated with industry for over 15 years. Along with business he also has a passion for writing and he often shares his thoughts on cigar and through his writing.
Obviously, no one knows when the first fistfight took place; nor do we have much of a clue when the art of smacking folks in the face began to be codified, the rules written down, judges and evaluators brought in. But we do know that boxing seems to be an unshakeable part of human culture, celebrated by the roughest and the refined alike.
Indeed, the art of boxing challenges those terms: “rough” and “refined.” On the one hand, it’s a display of naked physical aggression, the kind of thing that we often (and rightly) hope to avert, contain, or sublimate through things like law, ethics, community norms, and diplomacy. On the other hand, the true boxer obeys a set of rules that are themselves highly refined, an honor code both written and unwritten. Boxing is not a moral free-for-all in which two Darwinian predators try to kill each other. For example, when one well-known boxer bit off the ear of an opponent in a late-90s fight, he was widely perceived to have betrayed (not exemplified) the sport.
The ritualization of the basic fistfight seems to have started fairly early in recorded history. Archaeologist E.A. Speiser (who went on to do some of the definitive scholarly work on the book of Genesis) found, in 1927, an Iraqi tablet that shows two men getting ready to duke it out – a picture that attests to a sport that already involves planned, observed, ritualized fistfighting, perhaps as long as seven thousand years ago. Ancient literary works from India and Greece, including the Hindu epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabhrata and the Greek Iliad – attest to the presence of boxing in those cultures.
The Greeks and Romans brought boxing to the level of a science, instituting rules and awarding prizes, although these were still not what we would consider civilized fights: the contests sometimes ended in death. In later Roman culture, boxing in gladiatorial contests was one of few avenues to freedom for certain slaves and criminals: if you won, you went free. (This social arrangement may remind some readers of the way that boxing in America has, at certain times, represented one of comparatively few economic opportunities for poor people of certain ethnicities – a situation that the great black writer Ralph Ellison attacks, with all the energy of a prizefighter, in the opening chapter of his 1952 novel Invisible Man.)
The violence of Greco-Roman boxing- its tendency to end with one of the two pugilists dead – caused it to be banned by 500 CE, with Theodoric the Great arguing that a sport that, literally, defaces its participants is an insult to God (whose image, according to the Christianity that Rome had by then adopted, is reflected in the human face).
Boxing survived on an underground basis, enjoying a major resurgence in eighteenth-century England. This time, various authorities tried to regulate the sport to prevent permanent injury and death. Heavyweight champ Jack Broughton introduced the practice of counting thirty after a knockout in 1743, and he also proscribed punching a person who’s down.
The Marquess of Queensbury rules, set in 1867, basically define modern boxing: it introduced the idea of three-minute rounds, mandated gloves and ten-second counts, and prohibited wrestling moves (think of the combined wrestling-and-boxing contest between Hulk Hogan and Rocky that begins Rocky III).
These changes not only kept boxers alive, they forced boxers to think strategically-boxing could no longer be simply an all-out punching contest, but a subtle psychological war largely determined by who could outthink the opponent.
For the first time, you could win by a point decision instead of a straight-up knockout. Boxing became more of a thinking person’s sport, and the great ring strategists and head-warriors of modern boxing followed: Muhammed Ali, Lennox Lewis, etc. (This intellectualization of the sport perhaps also gave rise to the love affair between twentieth-century writers and boxing: Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and Joyce Carol Oates have all written of their love for a good fight. F.X. Toole built a whole body of work on it, including the story Million Dollar Baby was based on. To cite a more recent example, writer Emily Votruba brilliantly considers women’s boxing in her essay “The Violent Season.”)
Boxing isn’t for everyone. For its violence, and for sociological dynamics that some consider questionable (see above), it remains controversial. Nevertheless, there are a few pointers everyone should probably consider:
1) Keep up your dukes. The elbows should cover your chest, and your knuckles, when not hitting your opponent, should be resting against your cheekbones (not near, but against them), where they can block a punch.
2) When throwing a punch, keep your elbow tucked in. Letting your elbow swing outward dilutes the force of the punch. You want your arm thrown out as straightforwardly as possible. As your punch comes out, twist your knuckle.
3) When hitting with your left, drop your head behind your shoulder to keep your face protected.
4) Don’t extend your arm all the way out – stop the punch when your arm is just short of full extension.
All of this is, in practice, very hard to do – and we haven’t even said anything about footwork! (Feet should be shoulder-width apart and perpendicular; only your head and shoulders, not your trunk, should be facing your opponent head-on; as you move forward, keep your weight on your back foot, and the opposite going backwards; keep a constant distance from your opponent; etc.) Nor have we said anything about double- and triple-punches or combinations. So the last rule is: practice!
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As any turkey hunter can tell you, turkeys can move a lot quicker (and a lot smarter) than many people give them credit for. Any a “perfect shot” has been lost when a hunter tries to move in on a turkey at the wrong moment or when the hunter tries to make a fast adjustment to a new move made by the bird. If you want your turkey hunting trip to end in success, then the most important thing you can do is learn the right time to move in on a turkey.
First things first: you have to attract the turkey in to you. Most of the time, at least one turkey will answer your calls, and the first part of moving in on a turkey involves listening to this turkey answering your calls and judging where the bird is by where the calls are coming from. At this point, it is important to know you shooting ability and from what distance you are capable of taking shots. Knowing your shooting habits will help you determine when you are ready to take a shot and when you need to move in a little bit closer. Of course, the distance at which you are capable of taking a shot will also determine the distance you will need to cover when you move in on the turkey you have in your sights.
Knowing how close you need to be to the turkey to take a shot is one part of calculating your perfect approach to the turkey is one part of making the perfect move. The other part is all about learning to judge the behavior of the turkey and being ready to react to it. Every hunter has experienced the scenario in which they have been calling to a turkey, and getting tons of returned calls from the bird, when all of the sudden everything goes quiet, and then the turkey suddenly pops up next to you. To try and avoid letting the turkey sneak up on you, make sure you key in to all of the sounds the bird is making – not just the calls. Calls can give you an idea of the turkey is at, but it is also important to listen for the sound of the turkey’s feet crunching on branches or the shaking of leaves as the turkey moves by. Putting all of these sounds together will help you keep track of the turkey’s location more precisely.
When you’re planning your move on the turkey, it is a good idea to stay in a position in which you are ready to shoot and ready to move quickly if the turkey suddenly breaks left or right. Squat down with your left shoulder pointed in the direction of the turkey (if you are left handed, go for your right shoulder). Keep your gun propped up against that shoulder with your head low, near the stock as through you were about to take the shot. You’ll be ready to react whatever happens from this position.
If you end up needing to creep up a little bit more, make all of your moves when you cannot see the turkey’s eyes. If you can’t see their eyes, they can’t see you. Of course, you will want to move as quietly as possible – any loud noise will scare the turkey away.
Last but not least, remember that safety comes first. A turkey might pull a fast one on you, but be sure to think before you react. A clear shot is the only one worth taking.
Bill is a turkey hunter enthusiast, and if you would like more and tactics, please visit