options

Last week markets experienced a hard sell off brought upon by serious geopolitical headlines: a downed plane in Ukraine with hundreds dead and a ground invasion in Gaza. On Friday the markets rallied and recouped the losses as if nothing happened. The motto of 2014 remains true: Much has...

News-heavy last week fueled the bulls. This coming week should be more truthful about traders' willingness to buy since not much news is scheduled and none very heavy. In addition, the earnings season starts. A few things of note from Friday: The VIX was down more than anticipated; -4...

Friday was bullish, lacking red in important names like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Priceline (NASDAQ: PCLN), etc. Also the VIX was green by 1.4 percent. Headlines aside, uncertainties are still abuzz but the ranges are stable and somewhat...

Last Week's Takeaway Friday the bears did just enough to remind bulls that this is not 2013 where every run is to the moon. The week was full of action and market confusion was the only sure thing. For months markets have had an inverse trading relationship between the TLT and yen on one side...

Recap The week ended on a bullish note. All markets were in the green. Impressively the markets rose in the face of a falling TNX and rising TLT. For the past few weeks, this situation in the TNX and TLT would have caused a market sell off. Absent any negative headline from the Ukraine...

A bullish week  Traders ended the week on several positive notes.  Friday was another bullish day but in disguise. While Friday wasn't a plus-one-percent it was even more impressive. Why? Because it had the potential to be a disaster but it wasn't. The VIX agrees...

OptionsHouse's Chief Investment Strategist Steve Claussen dropped by for a chat on the Benzinga PreMarket Prep show on Wednesday, March 26. Claussen is always eager to share his knowledge of the market that is backed up by his career spanning over 25 years. When asked if a retail investor...

Traders who like to write iron condors -- the options strategies where, as Investopedia puts it,  you buy and hold four different options with different strike prices -- should be on the lookout for different ways to setup these types of trades. Whenever I see a widening of the...

Markets have held up well through the short Thanksgiving week. Given the strength of the banks and the light volume all around, markets most likely will just expand range into the last bit of the year here. It is very unlikely that the big boys will be shifting positions into the end of the year...

Markets remain bullish as we near the end of the year here and busy holiday season. Markets have been holding well and treating dip buyers (as shallow dips as they are) very well. Many of the high flyers seem to have run out of juice, including Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)....

Markets have been choppy with some issues involving market makers and exchanges last week. Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) had an issue where they are having the market makers break the $100MM mistake. All the while, NASDAQ went silent for almost an entire day. Look for more questionable market structure...

Markets have been in relative pull back mode. Traders shouldn't expect any serious sell off without a major catalyst. It's become a stock pickers market once again. Much of the short selling has not yielded the best returns, neither has dip buying. This shows that there is literally no momentum in...

Markets have been in major chop under the hood as mentioned last week. The tail end of the week finally gave some inkling that markets are trading towards lower levels here, although shorts have not had an easy time. This action doesn't look like much "smart money" playing, more like sloppy retail...

Monday, August 5, marked the launch of the International Securities Exchange’s secondary marketplace, Gemini. Originally filed with the SEC under the name Topaz, Gemini is now the twelfth U.S. options market and the third launched within the past 12 months (Miami Options Exchange and Nasdaq BX...

Traditionally, professional options traders choose to utilize options because of the advantage provided by volatility. Volatility traders (“vol traders”), those who are always selling options to take advantage of the convergence of volatility and Theta (time) decay, are seen as the smartest guys...