but are now being used to export to Japan

Cabot Oil and Gas contracted with Sumitomo corp and Tokyo Gas

selling 350,000 million British thermal units of shale gas per day for 20 years

@Deleted User What’s the ticker symbol?

D

Thanks!

@here Just a generic but friendly reminder not to risk money you can't lose

@Zyzz The SSO prospectus states its investment objective is to have 2x the daily % movement each day. How does that translate to a longer term investment over 2018? Also, any thoughts on using options on SPY to get leverage as opposed to a 2x ETF?

@ThisIsChris my theory is the s&p will go up in 2018 rather than down(reasons stated above). the ETF magnifies the % gain of the S&P. If you have good conviction the market will go up rather than down why not magnify your return if you are willing to take the risk?

in regards to options...

you can purchase a LEAP with an expiration of Jan 2019/Dec 2018. I do not have much insight to those strategies so really can provide much color

@Zyzz Thanks. Yeah just wondering.

There are many ETFs available that are set up to track S&P500 at various levels of leverage. No need to spend the fees on options, these ETFs utilize economies of scale of thousands of people wanting S&P leverage and do the options trades from a centralized role.

I’m concerned that they could manipulate the interest rate to take the wind out of Trump’s sails.

We’re 10 years out from the last recession, there’s been a lot of money printing, I’m expecting another recession before Trump’s first term is over.

People are euphoric about the economy, housing index and equities are at all-time highs. The tax breaks are great for business, but we’re also very inflated from money-printing that dug us out of the last recession and that check always comes due. It’s what causes the boom-bust cycle, “stimulating” the economy with tomorrow’s dollars today, over and over, until the distortions get out of control.

@Tanner - SC i have a lot of the same concerns as you in regards to the easy money policies. it will be interesting to see at what pace the fed raises interest rates. i do think trump will be successful with actually getting some inflation. i suppose this could prompt the fed to raise rates although i'd rather see them sell off their MBS portfolio which will steepen the yield curve. we are absolutely in a bubble. current valuations from everything from stocks to hard assets has gotten out of control and is certainly in excess of intrinsic value. asset prices are being kept up by easy money and low interest rates. the only question is what will cause the bubble to pop and when

One attack avenue is simply raising the interest rates quickly. Easy onset of volatility, popping the bubble, and it can still be blamed on Trump.

yes we will have to watch for the cadence of rate increases

And even though there are reasons for growth, I have a hard time going long S&P500. It feels like betting on the greater fool. If it’s fundamentally over-valued, it shouldn’t be bought, even if you think you can sell to a greater fool in 6 months. Because the underlying fundamentals are a vacuum that could suck the price down at any moment. Though I suppose you could put in a stop loss, but ... eh.

I’m always reminded of my favorite quote, “there are no markets anymore, only manipulations.”

I do feel lonely being the only one trading options here

If you like thinking about volatility and time value then they are very interesting.

@ThisIsChris I think @Deleted User does as well

@ThisIsChris in terms of option strategies I only utilize them in one way. If I see a company that is going into earning where expectations are low (perhaps the stock has sold off quite dramatically prior to earnings). I will buy at the money calls for the front month contract (earnings date is in Jan. 2018, I will buy option contract with expiration in Jan 2018 assuming it does not expire prior to the earnings date). My plan is always to exit the position the day of earnings whether I am right or wrong. My goal being to take advantage of any volatility that was present itself. Time decay is not on my side here so i try to minimize that risk.

I did this with GIII prior to their recent earnings and made out well

What strategies do you use?

@Zyzz Nice, I like to use options during earnings season too, though I will usually get ones expiring a few days or maybe a week max after the earnings report comes out since they respond more sharply to the movement of the stock.
Outside earnings season, I still like to use options for all sorts of things. For a while I was using OTM "protective" puts as insurance on an ETF I was holding (This was USO for the first six months of 2015). Sometimes I buy naked puts deep ITM as a way to short a stock, which I did with SPY in the 3rd quarter 2014 and turned my first profit. More recently I've been selling OTM covered calls on SPY as a way to get extra money out of holding that stock. During earnings season I will usually use vertical spreads as a way to cap the cost of the options I buy and as a way to more easily quantify my risk/reward ratio (vertical spreads, especially with very close strikes, act a lot like binary options). Those are the main strategies I use. Sometimes if I have an opinion about something long term but I don't think it will happen short term, (like if I think SPY will go up in the next 3 months, but not in the next week) then I might buy a calendar spread where I buy longterm OTM and sell short term OTM. I also played with selling an Iron Condor once and I might a few bucks. The covered calls and the Iron Condors I used for safer bets that net me just a few bucks, and they're always near-term expiry.

what are good resources (preferably free) to learn about options and how to use them>

?*

I gave a talk on here a few weeks ago. I can do it again.

If you get one or two more people to join that would be even better @Deleted User

@ThisIsChris Options are a lot of fun. I usually buy puts on stocks I think will bomb on earnings.

Here's a leverage story you might like:

in early summer 2015, I read an article about how Chinese peasants were double-mortgaging their properties to buy into the stock market

there were makeshift "stock cafes" being set up where they could come in and buy stock.

I saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make an obvious play

There's an ETF called YANG

it's a 3x leveraged bear fund for the broad Chinese stock market

Oh yeah YING and YANG lol

so if the chinese market goes down 1%, it's engineered to increase 3%

yeah, exactly

So I bought a couple thousand worth of OOM call options on it

oh god, 3x ETF, in an options story...

😃

worked out pretty well

Wow, I have to call no homo and no schlomo, but that's really awesome

I could have held on a few more weeks, but I was very happy with the return

opportunities like that don't come around very often .I was lucky enough to read the right news article

I was lucky it tanked so quickly too. If I had been off on my timing it would have been a washout

sometimes things work out!

Yeah good job dude putting that into action!

I love those complex strategies though

it's fun to see them mapped out in thinkorswim

I haven't seen a good opportunity for one yet. I usually keep it simple-minded.

Yeah I love looking at charts showing payoffs evolve in time, and how they start off in these weird smooth shapes that slowly converge to rigid slopes

Yes!

Can you tag me if you're making an interesting trade? I'd at least like to follow along. I might jump in too if I understand it enough to make an informed decision.

Yeah dude I definitely will, please do likewise!

I understand the fundamentals, but I don't spend enough time digging into opportunities

you bet!

Yeah that's a New Years Resolution of mine is to research opportunities. Past year I've just been doing things around earning season on FAAAMNNG or covered calls on SPY. I had more time to research this stuff a few years ago and looking to get back into it more

The YANG trade I mentioned earlier ^^^

dude that's so awesome

Covered calls are fun

Great way to make your blue chips do a little extra work

Yeah I usually sell slightly OTM SPY calls expiring the next wednesday or Friday

I only have enough shares to sell one, so it's basically me picking pennies off the floor

So it's still worth it even after the transaction fees?

Yeah I can usually get 30-40 bucks out of it after commissions, per trade

not bad

over a month adds up to about 120-150. Really small considering what I have to put down to cover it, but I was burned during Q3 earnings season and I wanted to do something calm

My broker has an API, but they only open it up if your account is freakin' huge. I would love to automate something like what you just said

Which Broker is that?

Ameritrade

Hmm I've heard of it but never used it

Interactive Brokers has an API, they require a minimum of 10k

oh wow

Ameritrade is 400K

holy cow

yeah Interactive Brokers is only one dollar trades too

plus something per contract I think

Ameritrade is damn expensive: $9.99

plus fees for options also

Yeah the cheap commissions plus API is it's selling point, though I don't have an account there

Wow man yeah that is pretty expensive

Are their preipheral services good or something?

eh, they're okay. Good with tracking for tax purposes

good customer service

and I don't make any trades

if I did more day trading I would probably open a second account

Interactive Brokers provides absolutely no frills lol. Not even stock quotes, you would have to look that up on Yahoo. Though they will supply you with data for extra subscription fees

I see

I'm talking about them because I researched them, but i don't actually use them. I use Schwab

quoting through pleb-tier finance sites is almost real-time now, so that's a decent trade-off

Schwab is like 8 dollars an option trade plus .65 per contract, and they only allow two legs per trade, so building something like an iron condor costs quite a lot which is why I don't bother most of the time

On the Iron Condor I sold there, I think I paid like 30 bucks in fees

Ouch