Once again, a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and an overall happy holiday to all. We at Trading Advantage are hoping that all is well and are looking forward to the New Year. After all, 2015 is right around the corner.
In the meantime, the government is still running up a tab on us, our children, our grandchildren...and forever more.... Since that never ceases during any holiday season, I particularly liked the following cartoon. Despite some of your protestations, I have no dog in the left vs. right fight so please save your email; they both stink to the heavens. Nevertheless, the fella below is the president so today he OWNS it...
With only a half day of trading due to the holidays, the markets were very quiet and the results showed. The DJI and COMP finished in the green, while the SPX just finished in negative territory. The volume was non existent and there was no conviction, yet the Santa Clause rally is still trying to make up for lost time. We should see a continuation of that today. I will caution everyone that we should see the holiday trading spill over today. Meaning I don't anticipate seeing anything crazy happening today. Now anything can happen, but with one day of trading sandwiched between the holidays and the weekend, it is more likely the session is flat than volatile. It might be best for the short term trader to take an extended holiday, while the intermediate play should continue this late year rally. Enjoy the leftovers and your new gifts, because that might be more enjoyable than trading today.
Leverage. It's one of the biggest pluses to trading options. I would argue that if you don't maximize your leverage, you should not be trading options. It's like using a Ferrari as a paperweight. Sure it does the job but there are a lot more efficient ways to get the job done and you are probably wasting your capital by doing it that way. Let's take a look at a bullish play in Marriott. Let's just say we are bullish and our time horizon is February expiration. Using the implied volatility (no technical resistance above all time highs), we are targeting the $85.00 price point. We can do a few things. We can sell a put spread. We threw this out due to the poor reward to risk ratio. So, given the strikes available, we have three "options" available to us. All using February expiration, we can do the 80/85 call spread, the 82.5/85 call spread or simply buy the 80 call. For simplicity's sake, let's say we were right on and at expiration we were trading $85.00. Great! What would have been the best trade to do?
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