PowerOptions WeBlog

Recently a shirtless and Siberian-vacationing Putin has been making headlines; partly because he has been running around shirtless in a land known more for its mosquitoes than for its sunshine and partly for resuscitating the cold war.

A stock picked using a value investing technique is a way a lot of investors find stocks they like for the long term. There are other favored techniques such as technical signals and trends, but investors often favor the valuation method as a way to get a dime stock for a nickel.

A report by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) organization entitled, “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2007″, recently observed Americans in 31 states continue to exhibit higher rates of obesity as reported from the previous year. Mississippi clocked in with the highest obesity rate for the third year in [...]

In the article, “CME Buying CBOT”, we analyzed Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) purchase of CBOT with an eye for a bullish strategy for CME. We continued the CME bull put credit spreads saga and for the month of August the strategy experienced a very nice +8.7% return. This strategy has returned over 82% in only [...]

There has recently been a spate of media reports detailing the danger of chasing Jim Cramer recommendations. Ignoring this potentially sage advice to stay away, we dive headlong into the sometimes-erroneous hyperkinetic world of Jim Cramer to look at potential covered call trades on stocks he has recently plugged. (Note: Jim Cramer does not endorse [...]

In the course of writing the PowerOptions blog we often find ourselves discussing news events and signals indicating a stock will move up or down. Rarely have we focused on the best way to exploit a position once we have a strong hunch on which way the underlying equity will go.

Shares of large biotechnology companies posted only slight gains Friday, despite large gains in the market overall. Biotechs have been calm all week, experiencing on average only half the losses seen in the wider market, according to the American Stock Exchange’s Biotechnology Index.

In our June 6th article entitled, “What do Health Food Supermarkets and Satellite Radio Have in Common? The FTC, Mergers, and Option Investing Opportunities”, we reported on the potential deal between Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats. Now the stock of both companies has risen around 5% since then and the merger looks likely to [...]

News reports on Thursday stated mortgage lender Countrywide Financial (CFC) has siphoned off an $11.5 billion credit facility to fund its operations as they are having an increasingly hard time raising money. This news prompted Fitch (a stock rating agency) to lower Countrywide’s long-term default rating from A to BBB+.

Car buyers are more satisfied with American made cars than their traditionally technically superior Asian rivals. Many thought America’s rusted auto manufacturing sector was unlikely to ever catch Toyota and the other Japanese car-makers in customer satisfaction, but apparently it has happened according to a survey released Tuesday by the University of Michigan.