Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
One of the very few bright spots this week was on Wednesday morning, when my Sherwin Williams (SHW) put options went up over 80% in value. I wound up selling them that morning, and over the past couple of days, SHW has roared back toward its gap. So I’ve bought my January puts back, cheaper this time!
Wall Street analysts, paid millions a year, and wrong every time. Honestly, just how much skill is involved to issue a BUY RATING for every single financial instrument that has a ticker symbol?
Over the many years that I’ve been building and running the Slope of Hope, one of the most frequently-asked questions is, in one form or another, what my style of trading is. I’ve emailed bespoke answers to this question for years, but I figure it’s high time to put something permanent on the site to clear the air and also save myself the time of answering the question any more. I’m going to take a somewhat lazy style of writing and construct this as a series of questions and answers, which might make it more efficient for those who are only interested in certain aspects of how I trade.
When you place options trades, do you do straddles, butterflies, calendar spreads, or………?
None of the above. I have made a deliberate point of being a surprisingly unsophisticated trader. I sometimes tell the viewers on my tastytrade program that they are almost all more sophisticated traders than me. I tend to simply buy options (puts, usually) which are (1) at least a few months out in the future (2) in the money (3) liquid enough to have a reasonable bid/ask spread. When people ask me questions about options greeks and what my delta is, my eyes just glaze over.
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