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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sparkle who wrote (16453)	4/15/1998 12:04:00 AM
From: James F. Hopkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

Sparkel; That strategy has some fancy name , I though for a while I had invented it..<G> But came to find out it's been around for years Mike Burke gave me the history on it after I mentioned it to him. Mostly it's for big players that can trade cheap and get a discount ( interest on their short money ). I just saw the spread this time ( which was more luck than smarts ) Normaly I prefer to keep them simple put/calls but lately have been looking at some straddles , ( with all the volatility they can work )..were you buy both calls and puts, not caring which way it goes just so long as it moves good <G> You can lose one position but make enough on the other that you don't care..but if she goes flat then you lose both ways. It's like mostly good right before earnings on one that has a history of jumping up or down at earnings time. --------------------------- All in all I favor buying calls, over puts and have done much much better with calls. It's simple bottoms are easyer to call than tops..the nature of the beast makes it so. Just think of the premise " A stock can only go down 100% but it can more than double and many do." ...all things equal bottoms have to be easer to call than tops. While you hear of people saying don't catch a falling knife..well calling a top is the inverse of that only worse ---------------------------------- If shorters spent half the time hunting for bottoms as they did for tops they would soon see calling the bottoms is much easer, and often pays off better too. ------------------------------------ As for the last time I bought puts on excit..it was mar 50s on the 4th at 3-7/8 sold early on the 5th at 4-1/4 ..time before that I would have to dig up..but neither one was like a big hit, just a quick scalp..and I don't advise others to try it as you got to be fast..and you will lose a ton of money before you get as fast as I am..you see the real education is most often expensive, and even after you get fairly good it takes some time to get it back too, <G> ------------------------------------------ I don't play near the optins what I use to and I play only almost sure shots any more, grabing the money and runing like hell. Seldom the position is open over 3 days if that long. I pass up a lot of good looking ones ..and that's the trick..it's got to be better than just good looking. My last best call was some leaps on CPQ when she hit 23-1/2 did right nice on them they were deep in the money and in 6 days she was back up and hanging when I sold them. They had gone from 9-5/8 to 11-1/2...I like to have died though; because in my rush when I bought them Jan16s I did not realize they were "split adjusted leaps" and each contract was equal 2.5...when I looked at the bill and saw I was on margin I didn't understand why as I don't go on margin so I called the broker and found out I had bought x 2.5 times what I thougt I had so taht was not to bright..well I had first planed to hold thoes suckers for a while as I could see her making 30 or more easy enoung by next Jan, as it was I could also see a chance she may drop too and put me into a margin call prior to that .. so I said sell , sell sell them suckers...no not half of them sell em all..and I grabed over 8 grand profit and ran like hell. Boght em on the 18th sold on the 25th if you don't count the weekend I had em 4 working days. Almost bought some more Friday but passed. Now I wish I had..she went up nice today. -------------------------------- By and large I do better sitting out when I see a likely dip in the market than I do trying to find some shorts, I use that time to hunt and be ready to garb some good dippers.. it's been a buy the dip market..just find solid stocks you have some faith in..and with calls you can limit your down side risk, I may buy a put or two , but it's not really my bag. Jim PS I do have one eye on the short side with this market so toppy, but I will likely keep it simple if I jump and I'll go into a no load "SHORT FUND" for a few days. But with all the cash sitting in Money Markets I want some better signs than I now see before I even do that.