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Which is the the best ETF for Emerging Markets?

This one caught my eye...

VWO

I have some money in ATVI (Activision Blizzard - developers/publishers of Call of Duty and Warcraft games)

I bought at 9.87 in March 2009 and another sum at 10.96 in September.

The stock's been going kind of wonky this year and I almost sold last week, but I'll see how it plays out a little while longer.

I don't do a lot of trading in my PA but today I locked in a nice 40% profit on a gold stock I bought in December (when gold was peaking, so this has been a good pick). Whee.

Debating what to buy next.

Interesting thing that happened last week was that some people who use stop-loss orders got burned.

During that very fast melt-down their stops were triggered, their stocks got sold and then the stocks quickly bounced back up. Many people did not have time to buy back in, so if they buy back now it's going to cost them a fair amount more than they received.

Some trades during the dip were later cancelled by NASDAQ, but not all.

I guess using a protective PUT option would have been better last week, but even with PUTs the trader would need to be very fast and monitoring the situation closely, or have carefully preplanned their PUT strategy.

Personally I don't use either stop-loss orders or protective PUTs, although I think they would have helped me several times in the past in more "normal" down-moves.

quote:

Originally posted by tvmann I guess using a protective PUT option would have been better last week, but even with PUTs the trader would need to be very fast and monitoring the situation closely, or have carefully preplanned their PUT strategy.

Why would the trader have to be very fast? I had a few puts and collars and didn't have to do a damn thing (other than laugh at the absurdity all the way through the meltdown).

Sure, I could have made a few extra bucks selling those puts at the ridiculous low, but then it becomes a speculative put, not a protective one.

Protective puts/collars/spreads aren't really "trades" at all, they're expected to either expire worthless or be sold ITM on expiration date.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut Why would the trader have to be very fast? I had a few puts and collars and didn't have to do a damn thing (other than laugh at the absurdity all the way through the meltdown). Sure, I could have made a few extra bucks selling those puts at the ridiculous low, but then it becomes a speculative put, not a protective one. Protective puts/collars/spreads aren't really "trades" at all, they're expected to either expire worthless or be sold ITM on expiration date.

Well I'm no options trader so I'm not up to speed on this stuff, but I was thinking of the probably typical situation where someone has big gains in a stock (say 100%) and wants to try to protect the gains by having some PUTs, just a simple "insurance" strategy, as an alternative to stop-loss orders that burned people who sold low in the 1 hour melt-down.

If the whole market and the stock takes a big dive like recently, the trader needs to make a couple of decisions, assuming no pre-entered orders to sell or execute the PUTs were placed. Now, do the decisions need to made quickly, hmmmm maybe not, I'm undecided on this, you might be right, anyway the decisions to be made:
1 - decide whether the dive is going to continue and last a long time as in a double-dip recession, a repeat of the mess of 2008/2009 (Dow Jones 6600), or is it just a short-term panic situation. At the bottom, nobody knows if it's the bottom. If the Euro-Greece bailout plan didn't get announced I think the recent melt-down would have continued.
2 - decide whether to execute the PUTs (selling the stock at the exercise price) possibly resulting in a big capital gain (and maybe big tax). The advantage is the trader then has the cash to buy the stock back later, maybe lower if the downdraft continues.
2b - OR decide to sell the PUTs ITM (in-the-money) as you say, that would produce a capital gain but probably lots less than from selling a stock that was up 100%. Yes if the stock jumps back up the selling of the option was sort of a speculative gain but if the stock stays down or drops more then the proceeds from the PUTs is a nice "insurance payout" that reduces the pain (at least partially).
2c - OR just wait to see what happens, and do nothing

Seems to me it wouldn't be an easy decision to make during a melt-down, and whichever way the trader went, it could easily be the wrong decision, or less than optimal.

My thinking is that when you own stocks, there is no really good way to protect yourself other than to watch them very closely and act accordingly. Any protection strategy seems iffy and some like stop-loss could backfire.

quote:

Originally posted by tvmann Well I'm no options trader so I'm not up to speed on this stuff, but I was thinking of the probably typical situation where someone has big gains in a stock (say 100%) and wants to try to protect the gains by having some PUTs, just a simple "insurance" strategy, as an alternative to stop-loss orders that burned people who sold low in the 1 hour melt-down.

I rarely say this when it comes to options, but you're kind of overanalyzing.

Option costs are composed of an intrinsic value (how deep in the money) and a time value (premium). When you buy protective puts, you treat the premium as a sunk cost. It's insurance.

For example, I've owned a bunch of PCX shares for several months now. After last month's options expiration, I bought $20 puts (when the PPS was $22). I paid "something" for each contract - a very small amount compared to the cost of 100 shares - it doesn't really matter what.

Now, when I bought those options, the PPS was at about $22. Holding the puts capped my maximum loss at $2 per share. The PPS is now below $20, but the puts give me the ability to sell them at $20 regardless. At this point, it does not matter whether the price holds at $19 or falls to $10. My shares have a delta of 1, the puts have a delta of approximately 1 (because they are ITM), so no matter where the price swings between $0 and $20, I don't lose or gain any value on the combined position of the shares + puts.

You don't sell or execute a "protective" put unless you want to exit the position or you are rolling over to the next month's contract. Otherwise it's not a hedge anymore, it's speculation, and you might as well just acquire more shares or buy calls, treat it as a new position. It's like I said, I could have made money by selling the puts at the Thursday low, but then I'd have an unprotected position and that would run counter to the overall strategy.

In my case, I also sold a covered call when I bought the put, so the put was essentially free. Therefore, there really was no "decision" to make. It's a no-brainer, conservative trading strategy. Technically I could dispense with the long position entirely and just have an option spread, but I don't do collars every month, I just did this month because I saw the market as overvalued. In either case, the put is there to protect against sudden and unexpected downturns, like the one last week; it's expected to expire worthless, not be sold for a profit. If it's about to expire in the money, then you sell it and either roll over or sell the underlying stock.

So hopefully you see that there's not really much thinking involved with this. There are a lot of option strategies that do require a lot of thought and imply a high degree of risk; collars and protective puts aren't one of them. It's fire-and-forget, repeat once a month or once every few months if you expect low volatility.

13-05-10: Long on GCE @ $6.10.

ahhh good ol gce, i remember successfully shorting it at 3 dollars for some gains. Undervalued even at 6 dollars though.. its a good long hold and better valuation then wtn right now.

contango is officially over for hou.to if you want to make some speculative plays on crude.

I would suggest waiting for a solid support for the july contract and try to ride it up to 85 or even 90 dollars. I've been watching the oil inventories and if the trend follows, next week we should have a deficit inventory with respect to this week. This should be a nice push to rally prices higher. Plus you always have sesonality as a hedge if prices drop a bit. I would wait for a solid support. we may see july adjust to 75 or so, but i don't really see it going lower then that.

Does anyone else play comodities with etfs?

There's so much market manipulation in the commodities markets...

quote:

Originally posted by Dr. Z There's so much market manipulation in the commodities markets...

i completely agree. last week we were heading to 90 a barrel oil now we are looking to break 70 downwards.


crazy stuff. Wish i shorted it or played inverse

Now everything shits. Damnit.

quote:

Originally posted by rabbitjoker Now everything shits. Damnit.

Pretty much.

Only thing in the green today was some resource stocks like ABX and one financial company POW

I hope next week is not a repeat of last week.

Definitely time to do some shopping. A few things are coming into price points that I'm comfortable with.

quote:

Originally posted by rabbitjoker 13-05-10: Long on GCE @ $6.10.

Hah, I just sold that last week. Still holding WTN, it's been outperforming GCE (for once) and an upward correction seems due soon.

quote:

Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit contango is officially over for hou.to if you want to make some speculative plays on crude.

I picked up some of this today. Sub-$7 seems like a bargain to me.

I want to buy a stock. I've been investing for almost 2 years. But I am still a beginner. I've been out of touch with the market for the past 6 months.

what do you guys think of Agrium(AGU)? or the firtilizer sector in general?

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut I picked up some of this today. Sub-$7 seems like a bargain to me.

i think you should be alright. The july price may decrease a bit to try and match previous prices of the june contract (since it will be the primary contract traded soon as delivery june is comming up), i don't see it going below 74. I will wait til monday or tuesday to get my third position. The eia storage report comes out wednesday at 10:30 am, you should keep an eye out for that. Although its not a casino like the eia report for natural gas on thursday, it does have some effects if there is a storage deficit or surplus from the week before.

you can see the report here (you'll have a countdown to this weeks storage numbers on wednesday morning):

http://ir.eia.gov/wpsr/wpsr.txt




and just browse the eia website to see historicals. It seems like we are trending down in storage and may begin to have draws which should drive prices up. Im betting my third position that this week will bring a draw.


You can track crude futures here:

http://datasuite.cmegroup.com/dataS...cted_tab=energy

our net asset value per share is fully tracking july now (HOU.TO). This is realtime so you can match it up with your brokerage to see immediate leveraged results on your etf.


Lets just hope the market picks up again, the US dollar weakens and euro strengthens. This always seems to give oil a boost.

Monday morning going to be a nightmare

COS-UN.TO is something i've had great faith in. However, i haven't seen much of that faith come to fruition lately. Their +$.15 to $.50 dividend is coming up at the end of the month. So hopefully we'll see a swing in the price by then from people buying for that raised dividend. However, the price of oil has really affected it's upward movement.

What are other people's thoughts?

quote:

Originally posted by jester Monday morning going to be a nightmare

yes just look at the hang seng's dismal 400 point drop lol


the red sea of asia.

Holy market slide.

I just put some dough in my itrade account and am wondering, is this a guying opportunity or should I just stay on the sidelines? Right now my "play account" (ie the small account I trade in, the rest is all mutual funds) is uber heavy on golds and I'm kind of thinking I should keep with that theme.

quote:

Originally posted by Skipper Holy market slide. I just put some dough in my itrade account and am wondering, is this a guying opportunity or should I just stay on the sidelines? Right now my "play account" (ie the small account I trade in, the rest is all mutual funds) is uber heavy on golds and I'm kind of thinking I should keep with that theme.

I'm itching to play my next positions. so far i'm down 30 or so % on my oil etfs. (a 17 dollar drop in oil price, 21 or more if you take contango into consideration) didn't help.

i have 2 more positions before i stop out at loss. Personally i would wait on the sidelines until some sort of bottom forms in the market in general. Check the asian markets as they are good indicators of whats to come. The past couple of market days people could have made big watching the hang seng performance then buying inverse index funds come our market open. If the hang seng tanks tomorrow, i think i will do this, capitalize on our falling markets.

Personally that's not really my style of investing, I am mostly familiar with equities and would prefer to stick with them for now. Buying inverse/market shorts on the basis of overnight performance in asia is just not something I feel comfortable with...plus they are not always as correlated as you suggest.

The rules/regulations/approvals I need to do quick trading is also a pain in the ass, but it forces me to think through things at least!

quote:

Originally posted by Skipper Personally that's not really my style of investing, I am mostly familiar with equities and would prefer to stick with them for now. Buying inverse/market shorts on the basis of overnight performance in asia is just not something I feel comfortable with...plus they are not always as correlated as you suggest. The rules/regulations/approvals I need to do quick trading is also a pain in the ass, but it forces me to think through things at least!

ah thats right, the rules and regulations working with brokerages and in the industry. I would simply wait of a steady bottom before getting into anything. There are alot of good valuation plays out there now though.

keep an eye on the coal companies, They've been running wild for a while and have started to make real corrections.


WTN and GCE, two great valuation plays.

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