In a previous post, we noted that we’d seen several examples of high optimal hedging costs presaging poor performance in a stock. This is the most recent example.
Last week, we noted the high optimal hedging cost for Zynga could be a warning:
Steep hedging cost for $ZNGA (compare to last tweet re $QQQ). A [...]

- Gold: sold those GLD puts for a 101.5% gain on Tuesday; reversed polarity and bought a few calls. No strong opinion on gold, just thought I’d try this after seeing Tim Knight’s end-of-day video on Monday, which suggested GLD might have hit a support level at the bottom of a channel (though his video [...]

I just submitted an article about this to Seeking Alpha, so if they publish it, I’ll link to it here [Update: it's been published: "Gold Gets Hammered"]. But in the meantime, here’s a tl;dr version:
I wrote the two articles linked to below last month.  They proved to be good timing. After writing the second one, [...]

I wrote this on August 4th,  “Why you should consider hedging if you own gold“.
And this follow up Monday night (published yesterday), in which I noted that the hedging costs mentioned in the first article had doubled: “Gold goes parabolic, hedging costs rise“. I took that spike in hedging costs as a bearish signal, and [...]

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 [...]

A couple of columns worth reading on the Bin Laden aftermath:
– Victor Davis Hanson: “Bin laden Fallout”
– Christopher Hitchens: “Death of a Madman”

A profile of a manufacturing entrepreneur in Britain, via the FT:
– “A Bastion of British Engineering”.
A couple of brief excerpts:
I started this business in a one-car garage with [...]

A friend who works in the industry had spoken positively about Trubion Pharmaceuticals a few months back, and I added it to my watch list, figuring it I might buy after a significant market correction. After the close today, the company announced it was getting bought out by Emergent BioSolutions. It was up ~50% after [...]