Category: Stock Option Advisory

Prowling bear: A pesky bearish market has been prowling around as of late, and generally, covered call investing positions don’t fair too well in a bearish market. A method of covered call investing in bearish markets is to take a defensive strategy, i.e. selecting covered call positions for defensive stocks.

U.S. Stocks had a six-session losing streak, especially in the stock investing and stock trading areas. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) bounced back from 325-point deficit to end nearly 300 points ahead. Many investors chose to bet on another rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

A new investment strategy is sweeping developing countries, such as China and the Middle East. This investment strategy is the investment of gold. A new class of investors is adding a twist to the market. The rush to invest gold has helped in the increasing prices. This week, gold crossed $900 an ounce. It even went up to $1,000 at some point.

The USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times have all run articles recently on the likely fate of the worldwide housing market. The narrative is fairly similar: Home prices are falling after a decade of double-digit increases in some of the world’s hottest housing markets.

Bill Gates invests through a vehicle called Cascade Investment Holdings. On the blog today, we thought it might be interesting to look at the investment fund’s top held equities and a potential covered call investment strategy involving them.

The Zune’s current market share is around 2.8 percent. This is greater than Apple’s (AAPL) 2.3 percent personal computer market share in 2003 but still described as a pittance by most news outlets. The LA times business section led with an article entitled, “Zunes not likely to get iPod fans to change their tunes.”

Two bits of news caught the PowerOptions‘ blogs attention today: Microsoft (MSFT) releases Halo 3 with over $170 million first day sales and Wal-Mart (WMT) is expanding its $4 generic drug program.

The dollar reached a record low against the 13 nation Euro in trading Monday. Greenspan, while out promoting his new book, and economic experts have expressed worry over both recession and/or runaway inflation. Also, if you haven’t seen Jim Cramer’s Fed-Rate meltdown from earlier this month on youtube, it is an entertaining (if not somewhat disturbing) commentary on the US prime rate. (cramer)

Title companies are engaged in the ethereal business of real estate contracting. A basic description of their function is they insure a homeowner is the rightful owner of a property. This seems like a relatively unnecessary administrative function, but without these companies real estate ownership and transactions would likely be more chaotic and risky.

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.