Strategies

What's the best strategy in maximizing profits and staying safe?

I think you need differing strategies depending on what your view of the situation is.

In the beginning, you should start loading up your positions, quickly. Which ones?

I think it's good to dig in with a fair amount of short positions, and some OTM puts. This way if the stock only tanks a little you still have the short profit.

Unloading? At the end, starting from the middle. The goal should be to unload most of your positions at the end.

What to do in an upmarket? well, any time you fear something might be coming, buy some OTM puts. When stocks start to rise, my natural tendency will be to ADD puts. When you add puts on a rise, the amount of ITMness should be reflected in what you're allowed to buy.

When should I sell puts? Well, first let's set a limit on how much you can reload on puts. Once is the only acceptable number. You can break it down into 2 smaller positions. 100 + 100 or 50+50.

Twice, that's IT.

Once you've bought the second put, on further rises you should clear shorts.

Protection

When you're not sure which way the market will go, short defensively and buy some way OTM calls. This way if you're wrong, you'll still have calls. normal this could be done at the bottom of a bear run, but you can also do this when the trend is in the middle and you're not sure which way it will go.

How to short defensively? I would say you should not add any positions while it goes down, and start taking profits on each 5% rise.

Game Plan 2/13

Start getting into HB puts, and SRS puts.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/11/point-of-no-return.html

http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=22625#280298

http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=27640#272483

http://boombustblog.com/

How confident are you?

when ending the day, think about your level of confidence in the stock's drop tomorrow. bet that much money.

Game Plan 2/12

Looked at charts. CTX is "look out below". So is AMD. Blah blah. Look at the damn charts in the morning.

The point of this is actually for strategy. It looks like some tech stocks like Goog are going cyclical in opposite to finance and RE. It might be time to start easing into GOOG or others like it. Watch Goog like a hawk. Starting picking up some shorts or puts. Find other tech short candidates.

Ease into CVLT.

Add to SRS.

2/8 Game Plan

WM Bounced off its 20 EMA hard today. If tomorrow doesn't bring a significant drop past, or to the EMA, (17.02) go ALL OUT.

CTX looks safe, and may even be worth adding to. It dropped past all the MAs yesterday, today it bounced down from its 20 EMA and settled comfortably below all MAs. Reasonable confidence in CTX if it does not restest any of the MA's. But if it fails from here and the 20 EMA crosses, it's BIG TUMBLE time - perhaps I should cash out some WM for CTX.
Note: KD feels this is in a weird spot so watch it closely.

LEN is in a weird place - sort of where CTX was about a week ago. Watch it closely tomorrow. It's also pretty overbought.

AMD is well below all significant MAs and is relatively overbought. May be a good time to start adding some shorts. They're also having some process problems so I think you can confidently short from here. Add 5% going down.

CFC just had a couple of weird days where it tested its 20 EMA. Yesterday it bounced down from it, and today it rallied above it and then settled slightly above. Watch it tomorrow and if there's any sign of weakness, short the crap out of it.

2/6 Game Plan

Today's objective is to get my holdings down to acceptable levels.

The basic strategy is as follows:

Short 10k.
Unload 10k of puts.

(And on and on)

Alternate game plan - BUY into rally, then sell puts, at the highest price first.

Also,

Start tracking SRS and FXP. Start edging into either. Buy FXP at night.

It might not be too late to short RVBD. Start watching it.