Jonflyfish wrote:Barry has some pretty darn smart ideas. Not sure why some folks battle the financial trades instead of being open and thoughtful to such workable ideas. In fact, I'm surprised the "silver is my religion" folks here don't sell puts over and over and over and over and over.....
Cheers!
respectfully, it all depends on your "game". if your vocation is active trading, speculation, sitting in front of a battery of screens, writing puts, or as you put it, selling puts is okay, you dont MIND the risk factor, and thats fine. Such speculation is how you play your hand.
i been down at ground zero, i been in the trading pits, when they were still active, and either, you're just killing the market OR you're getting killed. Anybody can have a winning day, or days, weeks, there's no greater feeling. Conversely, getting killed speculating is a nightmare, whether you're trading in the pits or you're trading off floor. You cant panic, even though everything inside you, is screaming "panic", you have to maintain, and "backdoor" a losing position. In short, speculation is an art, and in its way, its combat.
and some of the traders i saw when i was younger, these guys were beasts, they knew everyway to skin a cat, you wouldnt believe some of the stuff they'd do, legal, quasi-legal and blatantly illegal, but in the end, every "big swinging dick", at sometime, would "bust-out", then they'd scrape together equity and go at it again, this is the period in the 80's/early 90's i'm speaking of.
i knew a trader that could spread options like a whiz...never saw him "bust out", but then again, he had family money behind him, so you never really knew.
there was a day, and this was still in the early 90's, when you COULD open an acct for 5k...OFF floor, and what i would do is, spread grains, buy old crop grain and sell new crop against it, or buy minneapolis wheat (higher protein) and sell chicago wheat (lower protein) against it...made real good money this way, because i could stand the risk. You could "marry" tech analysis with fundamental analysis, and usually trade to the fair. If not, the market would tell you, you're wrong, but you'd have to ears to hear that.
There's no such thing as a "sure thing", but the closet thing i've seen LATELY (post 9/11) is the game, bank prop trading desks got going in silver. For years, it been like an ATM machine for them...arrayed against them are a multitide of those you refer to as the "silver as religion" crowd, they had the capacity to buy anywhere from a one to ten lot of comex silver.........and these were perma-bulls, they're what we would call "weak hands"...arrayed on the other side, with vast resources, bank trading desks, who could just POUND the futures, dumping thousands of cars onto the market, blowing out stops from these 1 to 10 car lil spec's.
(i saw the same thing happen in the belly's in the early 80's, the Japanese for some reason, LOVED trading pork bellys, volatile market, nice liquidity, and guys in the pit would just prey on them. The japs would all be looking at the same charts, and if the market would start to go against them, they would "prudently" put their 'stop loss' orders in, and since these orders were on paper, the guys that held these orders, called "decks", would tip off five to six 'raptors', large floor traders, exactly WHERE the stop loss orders were at, and then the raptors would take the Japs OUT. i seen days, we would open limit bid, which was 2.00 above the previous close, maybe 500 cars bid at the limit, which would be sold, and then the frenzy would start, the market would scream down 4.00 lower to limit OFFER, maybe another 500 cars offered to sell, a lil pause, somebody or somebodies would buy the 500 and another frenzy, and we'd wind up closing a 1.00 higher....the guys would be giggling and laughing at the close, cause they were all in on it, BIG MONEY...and it was ALL legal...sort of. They werent laughing in Tokyo, but the attitude was "F### 'em"...so the Japs left, and then they got to preying on another, and voila.....no more belly market)
my whole point is this, i feel the world changed at two points, 9/11...that was the first quake, and now when MF Global cratered, because Corzine and crew did something that violated the "holy of holies", which are customer segregated funds. IF a trading house was foolish enough to screw with cust seg funds, its imperative for the exchange itself, to make every customer good 100 cents on the dollar, period, end of sentence. Sure i hear, 'they're good 72 cents on the dollar"...now its "92 cents on the dollar"...MAYBE.
that implicit trust, where i could call up the clearing house, or the IB and tell them, cut me a check for 20 grand....thats over, and that means game over. oh sure, things sputter along.....you could have an acct at XYZ, and they're still "okay".........BUT, always in the back of your mind, you're asking, "when's their "corzine moment" going to happen?"
Now, if you have a good risk tolerance to speculate, great! Personally, i have no more trust in any exchange, no appettite for risk, and i dont regard silver as an investment, a trade or a religion, to me, holding physical silver is currency insurance, simply put. Much the same way, one insures a car, or your house. .....and if your kicking tail by writing puts....may you prosper. neil
...but then I'd need the money to be able to RoI haha
