Hey, I bought QQQQ December BL puts at 2 cents and sold them today at 50 cents! But, mostly now I use options, not CFDs, and mostly put options on market indices, sectors and specific companies that are bound to suffer in an economy with broke consumers. My basic view is to look for the truth away from public pronouncements. I think the U.S. unemployment rate is about 3 times the official figures. If you cannot find a job after a few weeks, you are not counted? I made money on Bear, Lehmans, and a bunch of other banks like HBOS, but not just financials. I rode Apple down from 160 to 100. Not in a straight line - I was in and out sometimes within hours. If I had more time and depper funds, I might have risked some of these switchbacks rides with my life's wad, but with lives laying all about here in psycho-anxiety fragments gnawing at dwindling portfolios, I kinda hold back so the other guys in the dealing room don't see me shorting their stocks.
I usually look at the market ex-post, post facto, form an opinion and enter open orders with stops. I also shorted Boeing as there is no new giant orders on the horizon, or anything that would make a difference this quarter. It is beyond me why the stock was up, other than God Save America stoopidity - which is fine with me as I get to fleece the deserving flag-waving sheep. Thursday I read about stocks that will suffer on account of a slowdown in construction and supplies to local builders and contractors. So, Friday I bought puts on Texas Industries for a mere measly few thousand dollars, like ten, and by the end of the day had a profit of $200,295. Not bad for a few hours. I made tons on shorting market indices, and found the QQQQs specially suitable. I also had what we now call BLn puts on the Dow. Old timers used to call them Kamikaze puts. Even the crazy crap shoot BL puts made a heap of money. I also buy the odd call options because if I've committed all my resources and don't have enough left to commit to stocks. Sometimes I am on both sides, such as riding as short-term gold or oil move versus a longer option that will bounce in my direction as soon as the euphoria du jour is over. Currently, I am short Germany and long Russia and Korea. I have a load of Canadian resource stocks that are really in the category of "buy and forget" but there seems to be life in them thar hills, such as First Calgary Even got a German windmill and Vietnamese oil stock - when I was wanting to ease out of anything stateside. When I pick up the next round of funds, I plan to separate pure trading focus from buy and forget and act more decisively. For example, I bought Metchel Steel calls the day before Putin made noises about them - I took it in the shorts on that one and didn't have time to get out because I was analyzing Mittal to short them. Is anyone liking Metchel Steel at these levels? MTL. They are building lots of highways in Russia, more cars on the road, bigger buildings. They just took a big kick in the pants from the Kremlin, and it looks like that is the only kick they are going to get. But, from here out, I see prospects either way. So I said 'what the hell, hold' and they are slowly creeping back tho' I'll prolly still take a hosing on those. I am also taking a monster crap on shipping stocks because I went with near maturities. But despite the bad trades, I was still up over 45% in September. I like agri stocks but it's the wrong time of year unless you are a long term holder - for me long term is 1 month or so. So, I might buy 10,000 or 20,000 shares of something like Vostok or Black Earth and forget about them. I still believe we are headed down sharp until late October before we get a bounce. I've for the longest time predicted first stop for the Dow at 9000 this year - now on the horizon. In 2 - 4 years we'll mebbe see 4,000 unless there's a miracle turnaround?
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