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Strategies & Market Trends : Convertible Hedge investors? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scott Mc who wrote (34)	1/19/1998 7:07:00 PM
From: Ted S	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 107

Hi Scott, Nice to see someone else into Covertible hedges. I just signed on with SI today after accidentally stumbling into the web site. I read Abrams book (Profit Taker) when it first came out (15-20 years ago?). It didn't seem to have much potential, so it didn't pursue. I always like to try out a new strategy by looking at historical data. I couldn't find historical quotes on convertible bonds, so I moved on. Recently I bought Abrams new edition of Profit Taker - pretty much the same as the original - and decided to check out the strategy again. Actually I was deep into Covered call writing. For being a "conservative" strategy, I was losing money. I got whip-sawed by high tech stocks! Anyway since my motto is "get rich slowly", I decided to move on and find a more consistent/reliable strategy. I use a discount broker in Florida (Empire Financial)- very friendly. (I think most discount brokers go to a school on how to be rude to their customers!) I've set up a couple of hedge situations- per Abrams - (Office Depot and Capstone Capital Trust)- but not much action so far. My broker says the convertibles I'm interested in are thinly traded - no "asks" available. So, I've been throwing "bids" into a black hole to see if I get any action. This is ok when setting up the hedge, but I see problems when I want to sell the convertibles on the downside. Since I'm interested in historical quotes, I subscribe to TBSP which offers daily historical options and Canadian stock quotes - something it sounds like you are into. By the way, I'm a Yank from California - more specifically San Jose, home of Sharks hockey team ( I know you Canucks are all in to ice hockey!). Anyway, getting back to convertibles, there seems to be a correlation between low premiums (good),and thinly traded issues (bad). Do you have any thoughts on this dilemma ? Hope to hear from you! Thanks. Ted S