A Bloomberg item out this morning wonders whether long-term Treasury yields have moved too far, too fast:
The CHART OF THE DAY shows the difference between the yields on 10-year Treasuries and the year-over-year consumer price index, known as real yields, over the last 20 years. The gap approached 5 percent yesterday, the most since it was above 5 percent in December 1994, signaling bond investors concerned about inflation have pushed yields too high too quickly, according to Michael Shaoul, chief…
Member D. S. posed the following question:
I’ve been trading SPY iron condors for some time now and I have been opening them at very similar levels to yourselves. However I have been using much wider spreads, so whereas you use a $2 spread I would use as much as a $10 dollar spread. What in your view is the value in only using smaller spreads? My reasoning on the larger spreads is as follows: 1) You can open the trade…
Some traders are initially attracted to options because of the leverage they provide. But leverage, as anyone who’s followed the fate of the investment banks knows, is just a means for magnifying outcomes. A leveraged risk-taker will experience more glorious wins and more disastrous losses, like a deranged person who shouts both poetry and obscenities (instead of whispering them quietly to himself, like the rest of us).
We use options not for the leverage, but to articulate views that are otherwise…
Reader Peter T. writes in with a very good question:
Then are several places on the site where you mention that you prefer to let the probabilities play out and not adjust condors. I calculated the expectation of the latest IWM trade based on the probabilities. I did some minor rounding to make it easier to read.
There is a 65% probability of making $50 which comes to $32.
There is a 35% probability of losing $150 which comes to $52.
So the net…
Mr. Potter: [to George Bailey] Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world. You once called me “a warped, frustrated, old man!” What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help. No securities, no stocks, no bonds. Nothin’ but a miserable little $500 equity in a life insurance policy.
[Potter chuckles]
Mr. Potter: You’re worth…
Thursday, June 18, 2009
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