Sang Lucci

Rumors and news from Syria last week and this week are causing a lot of volatility and choppy trading environment, so keep positions light and short, otherwise you're likely to lose your premium very quickly. Light market data this week, so nothing to cause a real broad market move. Traders are...

Markets have been in utter chop, making it relatively difficult for both bulls and bears. Overall under the hood action has not been good at all. Not necessarily bearish, just plenty of indecision. Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN) are all hanging...

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...

Markets have been relatively bullish via the indices posting big earnings and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decision. Bernanke essentially reaffirmed no rate change and actual increase in POMO. The S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) responded very bullish to the news, but to no surprise, the...

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...

Markets have been in an odd state as so many earnings were reported last week. As mentioned in previous posts, it's important to stay ahead of the curve and not with the herd. Playing in front of earnings has shown to be high risk lotto picks at best. Many post earnings movers have been great for...

By: Maximo Cortese Options and their strategies offer many tools to the general investor, but all of the technical jargon can become overwhelming. Let’s look at two of the more helpful strategies, long and short strangles, and break them down for easier consumption. Long Strangles Just like...

As expected from last week, markets continued the bid with the banks catching up, the big winner being Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), which was mentioned before reporting earnings the previous week, roaring over $14. In addition, many were able to play the Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) move via volatility...

Markets have been super bullish pre- and post- FOMC minutes. As mentioned last week, the techs were the names to watch for all time high breakouts including Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), while the rest of the financial complex lagged. Bernanke...

Options for this week have finally started showing sentiment to the long side. We've seen a few big name stock hit new highs such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN). These were mentioned last week for dip buying opportunities once the markets started...

S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) has retraced a good amount since topping at 169.07, currently sitting around the 160.40 territory. Volatility traders have been doing the best in this environment, and with all this chop, it's very hard to find any type of daily follow-through with the gap-and-go, gap-and-...

Markets continue their move up in a slow trudging manner. Unlike our typical bull rallies where everything across the board is breaking out. We have slow movements along with historically low volatility environments. This combination makes the risk favorable for those that are long options, but...