Recent content by fildi101

a good one though, and possibly one that will fit better with my plans for the money on completion anyway (allocating across a few currencies , gbp, eur, usd, chf ). I'll ponder this a little more. DO you happen to know where on the the web I can get free forex options prices (preferable...

Tom, No, the idea is I would only be exposed to a fall in sterling (or sterling remaining level). I'd pay a premium , like insurance, that I'd expect to lose. GJ, Cheers! that's just the sort of thing I was after. I bit more expensive than I had hoped and wont quite go to 30% (max 22% drop...

Hi all, I'm in the process of selling a property, and would like to be able to hedge against a dramatic (30% or greater) fall in sterling against the euro and/or the dollar. I need essentially to be able to protect the value of the equity in the flat, in between the signing of the contract and...

Profitaker, I wasn't refering to max pain really, but yes, I see your point. I guess time will tell.. the market's always evolving anyway..

I've been trading options for a couple of years, and to be honest I'd always assumed hedgefunds were the main players anyway! As an option seller myself, I don't really see it as a bad thing. yes, premiums might reduce slightly, but then again there will be more money at work trying to keep...

nothing wrong. Stop was tight, you didn't lose much (I presume) so it was a good trade. In hindsight, maybe you could have been better prepared to re-enter the trade, possibly catching the next bottom, rather than dwelling on the loss you just took. Sometimes the best entry is very soon...

I write both calls and puts, so one partially hedges the other. I occasionally hedge by buying/selling the underlying to cover.Sometimes I use stops if I'm not going to be in front of my screen. In the event of very low volatilty whilst I'm in a short options postition, I might buy the next...

I use interactive brokers. very cheap, full access from the start.. just answer a few questions. I mainly write options conservatively for income through the year, then once or twice a year, on obvious tops or capitiulations, I buy options 6-12 months out to take advantage of the rebound. I...

1. put the odds in your favour, in the long run. 2. bet small enough to survive for the long run.

I haven't quantified it personally, though I suppose an easy way would be to measure the stock closing price at options expiry with the Max Pain figure (the theoretic price that most options expire worthless). From my own observations, the stock tends to close higher than max pain, which I...

cheers rhody.. I guess that would be the best way to go.. I suppose I dilema is that since my holding vary so much matching the exposure is the issue. I want ot make sure I'm hedging, rather than speculating..(though some would say there's no difference) and I don't want to disort my...

yes.. thats right.Actually it can get up to 350% (within my 4.1 IB margin), but it tends to be somewhere between 100 and 200%. Most of the time it's a fairly even mix of long a short positions, but sometimes it skews one way or another. with this particualar system, trading the nas 100 stocks...

An alternative to scaling in and out of a position is be to trade an instrument with multiple "independent" positions... something I'm papertrading/testing right now. I generate my signals each night from the daily charts, based on a couple of basic indicators.. normally one per stock on my...

Put selling, I'd say, can give you an edge. Buyers of puts often would like to see them expire worthless, since it means their stock position is safe. US investors will buy puts instead of using stops so as to hold on to the security to get a better capital gain rate. This skews the price of...

FWIW I swing trade using IB, and I've found when opening a new account or trading a new system, 27k is about the minimum for my style.. I trade lots of small positions, with a maximum loss R of around 80-90 dollars, and an average losing trade of 50 dollars. I take positions worth 5% of NLV...