Yep. A fail so big it's actually a win?

No. Not at all.

I sold a huge in the money call on it though.

11/21/2008 4:58:34 PM

Quote :

"I don't even see when ERX was at $36.73. Way to fail it up big time."

Look at the intraday high listed. It's there.

And I don't understand you're trade. You bought the stock or an option?

11/21/2008 5:05:00 PM

Put out a market order for the stock. Got it at the intraday high.

Sold a covered call on it for December at $35.

11/21/2008 5:06:47 PM

Nope it never went all the way to 18 however I am up 9.5% on the day overall which pales in comparison to the amount im down haha.

11/21/2008 5:52:06 PM

^^ So, options are on my list to learn and ultimately employ as my trading skill goes up, but I'm not there yet. I just read up on the covered calls and I get it basically, but, not totally, do you mind walking me through the thought process and your strategy?

Let me see if I get it first I guess. You're holding the stock at 36.73 and someone that bought your call paid you a premium for the option. What was the premium? And I guess they are hoping the stock will go higher to make it worth exercising to them, at which point you'll have to sell for a small loss at $35. If it goes considerably lower, the option will expire and you're still holding the stock (and the premium), possibly to write another covered call on it to get some more out of your stock? Or, if it expires but you feel like it might run past then you don't write another call and you just sell for profit outright?

11/21/2008 9:44:06 PM

So, you're getting me addicted to options. This is essentially describing what you have done, right?

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/06/InTheMoneyCallWrite.asp

I was just putting my foot into the water with a small trading account and a few basic investment books to read to start building my knowledge base. I held off on an option book but now I think I'm going to go ahead and get one. How long have you been using them and have you really been able to minimize risk and make some decent returns using them? Been burned yet? Back when you could catch Cramers radio show in the area, he would have Lenny Dykstra come on and always talk about being able to control a lot of expensive stock with options and really make some cash, but I had no clue what he was talking about at the time. Makes more sense now.

11/21/2008 10:59:09 PM

One of the main benefits of options is the ability to trade volatility. I like the idea of selling Vol right now - a simple strategy for this would be to write a call and a write a put ("straddle") and collect the overpriced premiums that we are currently seeing in the options market...

11/22/2008 10:04:46 AM

FAS up 100% in premarket trading on the Citi bailout news. I'd like to say I was thinking about getting a piece of this late last week, but, I wasn't.

Edit:
WTH, now it's only up 30%

[Edited on November 24, 2008 at 7:41 AM. Reason : .]

11/24/2008 7:33:55 AM

didn't have time to look at the market till just now.

go SSO

hopefully it continues to run for another day, but trailing stop is set.

11/24/2008 3:34:44 PM

Yeah kickin myself for having my buy at 18 on SSO, almost got there but didnt quite dip enough, oh well let it run then it will be time to start watching for the inevitable collapse I guess and buy the other side lol

11/24/2008 3:41:48 PM

hmm, i had a trailing stop set at a buck, which is tighter than a middle school cheerleader.

set it at 24.46, so at that point the stop was at 23.46, it went up as high as 24.86, so the stop went to 23.86, and then it dropped sharply, and my stop didn't execute.

was my trailing stop too tight, or did it just drop too fast?

11/24/2008 3:56:29 PM

This rally is sure to have a couple more days in it, and let me tell you why.

So, awhile back (mid summer) I had moved my 401k out of whatever target fund it was in and over to a basic money market type fund. Essentially, cash. I had been waiting and waiting and waiting for this thing to seem to find some sort of a low and I was going to move it back over. I lost patience last Tuesday and thought the little blip at the end of the day was going to turn into something more. I moved my 401k back into some Dow-linked index fund just in time to catch the 2 day sell off. I figured I might as well leave it to avoid missing some sort of rally I was hoping we'd have. Now that I am back to break even, I'm scared to leave it in for the inevitable fall back down that is going to happen again, so I moved it back out. This means another 10-15% for those of you with skin still in the game.

11/24/2008 4:38:12 PM

so I finally made a good move and picked up 3,000 shares of GNW @ $.85 on Friday.

closed @ $1.70 today.

let's see if I can sell it before it tanks after the open bell on Tuesday.

11/24/2008 4:47:05 PM

Can you sell in the afterhours? It's down to 1.38 already.

11/24/2008 4:49:01 PM

^^^^ i'm just making a wild guess here, but you're sure you didn't accidentally set it so that your trigger price was $1.00, did you (i.e., trailing SSO by $20.xx or whatever)?

11/24/2008 6:02:25 PM

^^if you sell in the after hours you will get whatever it opens at, unless there's some other system I don't know about

11/24/2008 11:22:12 PM

if your brokerage account offers after hours trading, you should be able to trade after hours at whatever it's trading at after hours.

[Edited on November 25, 2008 at 8:37 AM. Reason : asf]

11/25/2008 8:37:42 AM

^^^

That might have been the issue, but if so it's very counterintuitive. i'll check into that.

either way, i'm glad it didn't execute, sitting at 25.25 in pre-market.

11/25/2008 9:21:29 AM

just don't put in a market order - that's the next morning

11/25/2008 9:21:43 AM

Will be interesting to see if this rally continues or if it starts to turnover today and head back down.

11/25/2008 9:23:19 AM

anyone have a play on POT?

11/25/2008 12:05:47 PM

I'd advise you to smoke it.

11/25/2008 12:22:21 PM

haha figured

dumped SSO in high 24's, waiting to rebuy.

11/25/2008 12:37:33 PM

nice, i got stopped out at 24.

looking at SRS again.

will it drop more, or is it gonna sky past 200 again?

i might as well call up a bookie, but i guess i can't bet on sports with my 401k.

11/25/2008 12:55:12 PM

So what do you guys think about buying some RIM, since the Storm is coming out soon?

11/25/2008 1:24:59 PM

bottom starting to drop out

11/25/2008 2:13:11 PM

if the qqqq drop below 27.50, im gonna get some QLD and wait for this shit to hit bottom again. If it goes above 28.00, ill wait til tomorrow. Could go either way here in the last hour of trading.

11/25/2008 2:55:12 PM

Damn, I think I bought mine at that in '01.

11/25/2008 2:59:09 PM

looks like no afternoon fallout today ... over 28.10 on the qqqq

11/25/2008 3:15:11 PM

just got 50 shares of SRS @ 130.20

plz to go back up to 240 again

11/25/2008 3:59:50 PM

Holy crap, I'm loving these triple leveraged ETFs.

I bought FAS today at $24.32 and immediately sold covered calls at $25 next month for $4.80 each. If it sells at $25 in December I'll be making 22% in 4 weeks.

Of course, by posting this, I'm ensuring that the stock will absolutely tank within 3 weeks and be removed from the ticker by 4.

11/25/2008 4:14:38 PM

i'm seriously looking at SRS - omg - what a move in the past few days!

what about QLD ?

[Edited on November 25, 2008 at 5:24 PM. Reason : ]

11/25/2008 5:18:39 PM

I dunno about you guys, but I think this rally has legs. Volume has been light, we've had 3 up days in the Dow/S&P, and for the first time in awhile the three major indexes weren't exactly in lockstep with each other.

I've also been seeing quite a few investors on bloomberg, cnbc, and in my blogs that are turning bullish. I think this thing could go for another 10-15% but in a much more controlled way before it starts to nose over.

I'm going long on some of the 2X bull plays beginning tomorrow.

11/25/2008 8:02:56 PM

I figure we will see some sorta pullback today on the fact some bad news has come out this morning along with the fact I doubt many people wanna hold anything over the thanksgiving holiday. So I suppose later today may be a good time to buy if you are bullish to maximize profit next week if the rally continues.

11/26/2008 8:58:50 AM

Hmmm. Obama announces Volcker. EU announces "bailout like" package. China with 1% rate cut. Jobless claims still really high but feel slightly last week.

Maybe some profit taking happens to close the day out, but even with a low open based on the futures, I think we spend another day mostly in the black.

11/26/2008 9:14:39 AM

Quote :

"The shareholders value has generally already been wiped out. We're talking about a short term trade here. AIG went from 2.05->5 when the first bailout report flew. They were up around 25% in early trading today. I don't have a big account to trade with yet, but I pulled the trigger on 200 shares of GM at 3.29 today with a stop loss set to $2.50. The automakers will hold congress hostage claiming 2 million will be out of a job if they go bankrupt. That number will look huge compared to the 1.4 million that has been lost this entire year. With more than 1 trillion already allocated to the financial sector, surely the Fed comes up with a paltry 50 billion to try and tide the automakers over for a little while longer."

Well, I made a well reasoned stand and then got scared and bailed out in the 2.80 range. I could have cashed out now for a reasonable profit, and I suspect an actual bailout when it happens will push the stock up over 5 or 6.

Thinking about plowing into Ford with some cash, a bailout will float their boat too.

11/26/2008 10:29:22 AM

i'm really not a big erin burnett fan but she is looking pretty saucy today imo

11/26/2008 10:33:56 AM

Just sold my 200 shares of GM, I got in at $3.12...was playing around with that one.

11/26/2008 10:45:37 AM

why in the world are we up again? there is nothing but bad news coming out today. i'm telling you we are not seeing earnings estimates drop fast enough...and while I don't really care about earnings (cash is king), Wall Street does. Just another head fake in a bear market. Dow 7,000 is looming...

11/26/2008 11:29:40 AM

I just sold everything. Not b/c of what you said, but had a feeling. Everybody is going on vacation after today so I thought I'd settle up.

11/26/2008 11:36:37 AM

^^^ yeah, wtf is going on with that today?

11/26/2008 12:18:58 PM

Damn, shoulda held on. Oh well made a little money, just sold when the alert happened.

11/26/2008 12:31:52 PM

bought FSLR long at 118.50 and sold at 120.61. I'm not very good at setting my stops cause I could have sold it at 125 or so. meh, coulda woulda shoulda. I still made money.

11/26/2008 2:43:33 PM

sold that SSO that I bought at $20.50 for $25.29...put a cool $2,250 or so profit in my pocket...as soon as I can figure out how to withdraw funds from my Scottrade acct (I've never actually pulled money from it--I rarely sell, and when I do, I just keep it in the acct to reinvest).

11/26/2008 3:27:28 PM

Pretty sure every thing I've called and acted on has dropped. And everything I have called and haven't acted on has gone up. I dicked around this morning and didn't get to TNA and FAS like I wanted. Now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be on the sidelines for awhile and wait to play the ride on it's way back down.

11/26/2008 3:42:54 PM

yeah looks like i acted a bit early

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 3:56 PM. Reason : got 50 more shares of SRS @ 118.49]

11/26/2008 3:53:30 PM

With scottrade you can deposit with their electronic deposit but cant withdraw, you have to get them to send you a check, I was disappointed to find this out as well

11/26/2008 5:19:39 PM

that's fucking gay. that's what it looked like to me at a glance, but i figured there had to be a way to do it i just wasn't seeing.

well, that sucks...i'm not going to have them mail me a check to iraq just for me to mail it to USAA in Texas for the deposit.

11/26/2008 7:20:44 PM

odd day in today's shortened session.

both SSO and SRS were up a couple of points.

11/28/2008 2:18:31 PM

Looks like we will give back some today, wonder if its just gonna be one of those days or if the fall back to the 7ks will follow

12/1/2008 9:25:35 AM