Slope of Hope Blog Posts

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Two Vital and Idiotic Insights

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It isn’t that often that I have anything meaningful to say that isn’t tethered to a chart, but I’d like to offer a couple of items today. These sound silly, but they are meant as a serious attempt to be helpful. Here goes…….

Quantity Counts

Fifty options contracts is better than ten. Ten is better than five. And five is way better than one.

Seems obvious, right? But my point is that I’ve often found myself with very conservative positions (many months until expiration, very deeply in the money) and thus will wind up with a small quantity of contracts. They may do all right, but no matter how big the move, they’re not going to move the dial that much.

What I realized recently – – and I know this is a “duh” moment, but bear with me – – is that a large quantity of shorter-term, less-in-the-money contracts can move the dial in a big way. Of course, this is a two-edged sword, but the whack-on-the-side-of-the-head moment for me has come in the form of my XLU position, which has a very large number of contracts and is really producing great results. So I’m starting to seriously shed my portfolio composition of pee-wee sized quantities.

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