Recent: JNKmonthly.jpg

JNKmonthly.jpg

Here’s an easy play for those who have never cashed a winning ticket trading put or call options. Specifically, I am going to tell you how to bet on a junk-bond crash without risking your shirt — even if junk bonds continue to defy gravity indefinitely. First, let me assert that straight-up directional plays with stock options almost never win. Your odds are better trying to predict precisely when a shooting star will flash across the night sky. Similarly, if you buy call options with the expectation that a stock is about to surge, your timing had better be perfect, since the options you’ll be buying will be priced to discount any such event. Indeed, to make money on the calls, the move in the underlying vehicle would need to be so steep as to lie well outside the stock’s historical behavior. Moreover, as implied above, you would need to initiate the trade just before the rally takes off, since, if you get in early, time decay will sap the value of your calls quickly. And you can forget about getting aboard

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