Trades
6 Looks at Energy Stocks
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Crude oil prices of more than $100 a barrel are boosting stock prices in the petroleum sector, but the effect on the S&P 500 is limited because the commodity accounts for fewer than 5% of the companies in the index.
Many portfolios are heavily invested in the S&P 500, so a lot of traders have very little exposure to the energy sector. Where should traders start if they want to gain more exposure to energies?
Here’s the lay of the land.
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Cherry Picks
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Volatility is Waning, Again
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Naked Puts for the Risk Averse
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Diversification & Correlations
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The High Probability of Low Standard Deviation Option Strategies
|We wanted to see where the most theoretical opportunity for short-premium based strategies on the historical percentage of time that the stocks went “outside of the 1, 2 or 3… -
Is fear dead?
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Cherry-picking Inflation
|Inflation is in the news a lot lately. Check out the Google Search spikes. Google Trend searches are measured 0-100 with 100 being the peak of searches for the measured… -
Summer Doldrums? There is a Trade For That
|Volatility tends to be low in the summer! May, June and July tend to have the lowest monthly VIX average prices. Traders and business tend to slow down in the… -
Hey Volatility, What are you implying?
|Implied Volatility readings across various liquid asset classes continue to deflate, generating much the same assumption that seems to be applied to the S&P 500-based VIX: ’“perhaps the summer doldrums… -
Playful Summer Stocks
|Last week we included a sweet graphic. May, June, and July tend to have the lowest monthly VIX average prices. Everything tends to shut down during the summer, but recreational… -
Crypto Scalping
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Retail Options
|The list of retailers, right, is sorted from high to low with respect to volatility. Etsy has the highest volatility among the group, while Costco has the lowest. So how… -
For Moonshots, Avoid ETFs
|Sometimes traders strain to achieve a “moonshot.” They dream of picking a single stock that quickly moves from $1,000 to $100,000. But they shouldn’t expect that to happen with a… -
Options With Futures
|Why trade E-mini S&P 500 futures when Micro E-mini S&P 500 futures is also liquid and more appropriate for smaller accounts? Trading the /ES on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME… -
Volatility “Sweet Spot”
|Securities are ranked on this page according to their forward-looking volatility from last year. Traders seeking safer investments—at least those expected to move less—might lean toward the exchange-traded funds (ETFs)… -
More Bang for Your Buck
|As a trading vehicle, nothing beats futures in terms of cost efficiency, liquidity and, for some, tax treatment. Take a look below. First, note the “Futures USD Notional,” which… -
All Your Options
|Have a directional assumption about a stock? With options, traders have a much larger range of possibilities than with stocks. Instead of being just “bullish” or “bearish,” options provide ways… -
Futures: Ticked Off
|Differing tick sizes and varying dollars per tick can make futures trading confusing. This handy crib sheet can help. Keep an eye on the “Median Day-to-Day Movement” column, and don’t… -
Digging Gold
|When the markets are in turmoil, money tends to flow out of stocks and into “safer” investments. The market’s definition of “safe” changes, but when stocks declined in March, money…