Pairs trading is a market neutral strategy that focuses on the correlation of two instruments rather than pure direction. For example, you may want to be long $GOOGL and use a short $QQQ position to offset your systemic risk. Or you may see the relative weakness of $IWM and look to trade it long against a short $QQQ position for … Read More
How to Buy a Stock that Already Went Up 20% in 4 Days
Early today we posted the awesome setup in AMBA. Here’s another trade that Steve Spencer talked about before the market opened. ACAD has been a high flyer lately. Many developing traders run into a psychological barrier when it comes to long ideas on stocks that have already risen 20% in a few days. Here was Steve’s take pre-market End result… … Read More
Live Example of How to Find the Best Trading Opportunities Each Day
Each day our firm broadcasts an AM meeting to cover the best opportunities that we see in the market. This meeting occurs in the minutes prior to the opening bell. What you don’t see in this meeting are the countless hours of preparation from earlier that morning and the night before. The traders at our firm work tirelessly each day … Read More
The Negative Drift of VXX
VXX has been a hot topic on the desk at SMB during the recent increase in market volatility. If you aren’t aware, the VXX is an exchange traded note (ETN) issued by Barclays that has the objective of following the cost of owning implied volatility. The biggest challenge with owning implied volatility is that implied volatility has a limited shelf … Read More
Decoding the Secrets: What Do Options Traders Know That Others Don’t?
Options traders like you have been telling us for years what they want to achieve in their trading. Strangely enough, they don’t ask us to show them trades that make bigger profits. Nor do they ask for risk-free trades. The word we hear most from options traders is consistency. Who wouldn’t want to be more consistent, right? However, we believe … Read More
Enhancing Probability: A Guide to Index Mean Reversion Pairs Trade
With RUT accelerating to new highs and the SPX lagging — is there an opportunity for a mean reversion pairs trade? I believe so. The probabilities are high for mean reversion. But, the danger of a mean reversion trade is the possibility of being too early. That is where options can give us additional edges. With options we can “lean” one way … Read More
3 Ways to Generate Better Trading Ideas In Less Time So You Can Focus on Executing Your Best Opportunities
Do you struggle to find good trade setups? Or maybe you have more ideas than you know what to do with? In this free video series, we’ll take a look at 3 ways to get better at generating good ideas.
A Safer Way to Be Long at the “Top”
When I start getting signals to be long at the upper end of the range, it can be a psychological challenge. Traders don’t want to be “late”. It may seem like the move already happened and the risk/reward is not favorable to have a long bias. Here’s the reality. Market neutral, positive Theta options traders don’t have to make that distinction. … Read More