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Options
Suddenly Another Global Name Is Moving

Suddenly Another Global Name Is Moving

Attention has focused heavily on China, Italy and NAFTA. But suddenly today another part of the world is in play. The iShares Brazil ETF (EWZ) rallied 6 percent today and has gained 8 percent in the last week. That places it well ahead of the S&P 500 and other...

Master Options at Our Power Session This Month

Master Options at Our Power Session This Month

Are you getting everything you should out of the stock market? If you don't trade options, the answer is probably "no." Everyone has excuses: "Options are too complicated." "They have confusing Greek letters." "They have time decay and may expire worthless." We've...

Options Are Moving in This Forgotten Space

Options Are Moving in This Forgotten Space

Biotechnology's quietly coming to life, and options traders are flocking to one of the biggest names in the space. Want to learn more about options? Sign up for our "Options Stars 2018" symposium in Chicago this month. Call volume is spiking in Gilead Sciences (GILD)...

Traders Try to Catch a Falling Knife: Options Recap

Traders Try to Catch a Falling Knife: Options Recap

Someone's trying to call a bottom in one of the market's worst-performing stocks. General Electric (GE) has lost more than half its value in the last two years, landing it at the bottom of the S&P 500's rankings over that time frame. It would also be the top loser...

Options 101: Hedging With Ratio Spreads

Options 101: Hedging With Ratio Spreads

This post is part of an educational series on equity derivatives. Want to learn more? Sign up for our Options Stars 2018 symposium in Chicago next month. Sometimes I love trading options so much I forget they were invented to be used in tandem with stocks. This post...

Options Light Up as Cannabis Craze Sweeps Market

Options Light Up as Cannabis Craze Sweeps Market

Marijuana's supposed to calm people down, but that didn't happen in the stock market yesterday. Frenzied with Canada's legalization on October 17, traders streamed in and out of a trio of high-profile weed stocks. The moves were epic for companies many clients had...

Good Tech, Bad Tech: Options Activity Recap

Good Tech, Bad Tech: Options Activity Recap

Call volume spiked noticeably in two different technology stocks yesterday, with two very different meanings. Just look at Broadcom (AVGO). The chip maker went from a darling to a pariah two months ago by purchasing software maker CA (CA). Investors, confused by the...

Options 101: Going ‘In the Money’

Options 101: Going ‘In the Money’

One of the confusing things about options is, quite simply, all the options. Every underlier has dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of related contracts. Where on earth to begin? There are many ways to approach this question, so today we'll consider options...

Someone’s Digging for Gold in the Options Market

Someone’s Digging for Gold in the Options Market

Precious metals are bouncing today, and someone's trying to leverage the move with options. Approximately 27,000 October 11 calls were purchased this morning in Goldcorp (GG). The initial blocks fetched $0.15, before the demand lifted premiums as high as $0.23. Calls...