Last month, I emailed the list of questions below to Alloy Steel’s CFO, Barry Woodhouse (disregard the emoticon; that should be the numeral “8″). I told Woodhouse I was planning to write a Seeking Alpha article about the company’s Q3 and was hoping to include answers to those questions in the article. After speaking with [...]
Seeking Alpha published this article of mine yesterday which recaps recent events with Alloy Steel International and offers a forward-looking speculation or two.
Portfolio Armor update
The finance academic who developed Portfolio Armor’s algorithm successfully defended his doctoral thesis and now has his Ph.D. He and I plan to meet later this month to discuss adding the capability to Portfolio Armor to hedge short positions with calls (should be doable) and potentially adding collar capability (will require some preliminary [...]
In a post elsewhere last week (Revisiting a Losing Market-Neutral Trade), I mentioned a market neutral trade where I got stopped out of the short side for a loss. I got stopped out of the short side of a more recent market neutral trade (Short TRGL, Long IMO) for a gain, but I missed an [...]
In a post here in December (“Market Neutral Investing in China’s Fast Food Industry“), I mentioned a market neutral trade I had entered going long Yum! Brands, Inc. (YUM), the largest fast food operator in China, and shorting Country Style Cooking Restaurant Chain, Ltd. (CCSC), a start-up fast food chain in China. I figured the [...]
In previous posts elsewhere, I’ve mentioned a few guidelines I’ve been keeping in mind when making speculative options buys (the first three of which are mentioned in Tim Knight’s book, Chart Your Way to Profits):
Start small (since options often expire worthless).
Avoid out-of-the-money-options (instead, try to get ones with some intrinsic value).
Avoid nearby expiration dates (to [...]
– Thursday was a good day for new Portfolio Armor subscriptions. It may also be a good time to consider hedging, since volatility (as measured by the VIX) is near its 2-year lows. That’s a point I made in a couple of Seeking Alpha articles this week, Hedging the Dow: An Update, and Another [...]