Stock Option Investment Advice

Gilead (GILD) War Story: I Learned A Trading Lesson On This One

Several months ago I purchased Gilead Sciences (GILD) in my married put Fusion account. This is an investor war story about this position and some lessons I’ve learned as a result of doing a regular quarterly review of my holdings. But before I get into the lessons learned, I need to share some background information that led up to the purchase in the first place. During the December 2015 to January 2016 time period the entire Biotechnology sector was under pressure and most stocks in the sector declined. But February 2016 brought some stability and consolidation. During the February to March period, volatility declined, Bollinger Bands narrowed, and MACD turned positive. I thought, It was clearly time to consider

Stock Option Investment Advice

A Balanced Approach for Portfolio Success

The Conservative Barbell Strategy: We recently reviewed a book written by Nassim Taleb called “The Black Swan”. In it, the author suggests an approach for investing called the Barbell Strategy. The approach is based on the concern that unexpected market events can happen with devastating impact to our portfolios. The Black Swan is about such events that are generally unknown, unpredictable, and cannot be planned against to mitigate losses. Because they are unpredictable they cannot be avoided, we need a way to protect assets as best we can against these unforeseen events. The Barbell strategy uses the two extremes: Ultra conservative positions at one end and highly leveraged, speculative positions at the other end of the risk range. The strategy advocates having most assets in very safe securities like treasury bills or conservative options and a small portion in high risk – high reward securities like long put or call…