PowerOptions WeBlog

On Friday, February 26, 2010 an article in the “Making Money - Investors Corner” section of Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) written by Paul Whitfield, caught my attention. The article was about breakaway gaps as a bullish form of action. Whitfield illustrated several examples where stocks with price surges of 10% in a day often had very nice price appreciation gains several months in the future. The concept used in this type of stock selection depends on the positive event having some lasting power and traction. It uses the concept of buying high on positive news and selling higher. Articles in IBD often advocate this technique. This is the opposite of the buy low / sell high approach so often talked about by swing traders and other technical analyst.
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Double Diagonal - Neutral Strategy

The Double Diagonal is a neutral stock options strategy. The Double Diagonal strategy is similar to an Iron Condor and can be considered a combination of a Calendar Call spread and a Calendar Put spread.

The Calendar Put spread portion of the Double Diagonal is entered by selling an out-of-the-money put option and purchasing a further out-of-the-money put option having an option expiration further out in time.
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Transocean Option Volume

Transocean’s (RIG) stock option volume was off-the-chart yesterday. Transocean is in the offshore oil and gas service business. Transocean operates deepwater rigs for drilling oil and gas wells.
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GDP…

The U.S. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was announced as 5.7% for the fourth quarter of 2009 and the stock market immediately celebrated the good news by jumping up and then back down.
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We’ve been getting quite lot of questions related to PowerOptionsApplied lately, so we’re going to address some of them.
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Option symbols are going away…
That’s right, stock options symbols as we’ve known them are going away. Beginning on February 12, 2010 the current option symbols will be replaced with new stock option symbols. The change is nothing to be scared about — not nearly as scary as Dorothy’s lions and tigers and bears.
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Simple Tech’s stock price and its stock option volumes have been very erratic over the last several months. Simple Tech’s stock price took a significant hit in the middle of September and also around the first of November, but since the middle of December it’s stock price been on the upswing.

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There’s been a lot of banter lately about health insurance and this article is NOT about health insurance, at least not the kind related to doctors, hospitals, Congress, etc.

Individual or Group?

We will examine whether it is better to insure stocks individually or as a group. In an article published several years ago, we explained how to insure a group stocks with index stock options: Portfolio Management: Stock Insurance.
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Fuel System’s (FSYS) stock option volume was up yesterday while its stock was down almost 10%.

If you’re looking to purchase a car or convert a car to operate on natural gas, then Fuel Systems is for you. Fuel Systems provides components for alternative energy in the transportation segment. Fuel Systems IMPCO subsidiary provides products in the industrial and power generation market segment and it’s BRC subsidiary provides products for the alternative fuels transportation market segment. Fuel Systems derives a large part of its revenues from selling its products in Italy. Italy provides a subsidy or support for natural gas through a reduced Value Added Tax [VAT].
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Nobel Drilling’s (NE) stock options volume is significantly up today and its stock price is down about 6%.

Noble Drilling is in the business of providing drilling services for the oil and gas industry. Noble has over 60 offshore drilling rigs including semi-submersibles, drillships, jackups and submersibles.

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