Recent content by Profitaker

Take yourpick Omni; Designated Brokers Then there's the spread betting Co's that host options trading. Good luck and any further options related Q's please post up in the Options section, should get more attention there.

Correct. But just how precise an observation is needed to prove a principle beyond reasonable doubt ? If an absolute observation is necessary, many (otherwise valid) principles would be blown away.

I disagree :) I think you're alluding to asset price bubbles (?) and I would say that buyers are driven by the "bigger fool" mentality but shareholders rarely cash-out paper profits at the top. Taken in isolation, such bubbles may not be zero-sum. But in the grand scheme of things they are. A...

Options are zero-sum, period. This has been clearly explained on this thread and should not be difficult to grasp. Stock markets however, are very close to zero-sum and needs a little more thought..... If Widget Plc went from selling 50 widgets/week to selling 150 then this will be offset by...

Try IG. Not bad spreads as far as spreadbetting outfits go.

The NRK business was no longer a viable entity last August, when LIBOR spreads exploded to unprecedented levels. That was always a fundamental risk of their business model. Far beit for me to defend this government, but I would point out that if it wasn't for the BOE bail-out 6 months ago, NRK...

Fascinating.

Perhaps I should have used the word value as opposed to price, so I will concede your point on semantics. Let me try another angle. If everybody in the world agreed that Vodaphone shares were worth £ 1.71, do you think the price would change on Monday ?

There is a subtle, but significant difference, between randomness and predictability. Very few events are truly random, but that doesn't mean all non-random events are predictable. As far as markets go, if future prices were predictable, there wouldn't be a market. It is the constant...

Grant Think of it this way - it's no different to shorting shares and then buying to close the position at a later date, which is also a capital gain/loss. "But options can expire worthless" I hear you say. True, but so can shares become worthless if the company goes bankrupt. The principle is...

Welcome back Mr. Pitscum ! Happy New Year to you sir.

Grant I beg to differ. In my experience HMRC apply the same rules to short premium as they do long premium. And why not (?) because STO followed by BTC is exactly the same as BTO followed by STC, only the order is reversed. Normally I'd find a tax manual reference, but hey, it is new years eve...

mbbcat It is treated as a capital gain/loss.

The chances would depend entirely on the volatility figure that you use to calculate a probability. If, IF the spreadbetters do exhibit any directional bias (due to the loading of their book) we are all free to buy what they offer cheap, and sell what they bid expensive. This applies not only to...

Yes, different expiry dates. Also the "Q"'s are serial monthly, whereas the "U"'s are tri-monthly, so I would think they are also traded on different exchanges. Maybe one of our American friends can tell us which exchange codes these are ? My guess is that the "Q"'s are Nasdaq listed, but the...