I need a new back!
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Waiting for your pick buddy boy!
Damn, if Dallas lost that would wipe out most of the board.
Carolina -7.5 over Atlanta? Too much to cover let alone win straight up? Money line maybe.
New Orleans doesn't play well on grass.
Slim pickings.
New Orleans
Atlanta
Kansas City. Is this rivalry what it used to be many years ago?
I hope KC does not come up "flat" for this game.
Green Bay
Denver
Seattle
Trade Station. A little expensive. But if you trade 50 contracts per month the month is a no charge in regards to the trading platform. It is a direct access broker.
http://www.bankrate.com/
This indicates that lenders think that if they get 3.25% return in a year, they are somehow beating inflation, and making a wise investment. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Not really, because the lending market is rigged. It really indicates that the Federal Reserve is trying to hold the economy together by pushing cheap money into the economy through Federal Housing lenders who are trying to re-inflate the housing bubble to keep home prices high. Again, future generations would read that sentence and probably not understand why the government would have such a disastrous policy.
Regardless, the point is that if we were in a stable economy, with a stable price environment, with sound money, even allowing the gold and silver prices to trade freely, the silver and gold prices should move up no more than the standard interest rate, or about that 3.25% per year.
After all, if silver moved up at clearly defined constant rates more than the lending rate, say, at 5% per year, then any moron or nincompoop or fool after a few short years could otherwise see that buying silver would be a far better move than keeping savings in the bank or buying government bonds. And if people did that, well, paper money values might collapse even faster, driving up silver values even faster, and there could be runaway inflation, and paper money could just collapse to zero as everyone headed for the safe havens of silver and gold.
Clearly, they can't allow that.
(And actually, since 2004, silver has moved up from $4.15/oz. to $21.38/oz., over the last nine years, which is a compounded average annual gain of 20%!!)
So, to let paper money exist, they must keep a lid on letting silver and gold prices rise, and they do. Or, they need to hide the steady average annual gains, behind wild price changes.
So, with artificially low prices, eventually the pressure builds, like today, which is why we have had a runaway bull market in silver and gold for the past nine to ten years now.
But what would happen if half of the $18 trillion tried to buy 300 million ounces of silver within a year?
It's easy math. A trillion is a million million. So, cancel the millions.
It would allocate out to $180 million / 300, or $600,000/oz. for silver, if half the money in the banks tried to buy the remaining silver in a year, which is the price that would be crossed as paper money dies and goes to zero value.
Clearly, the people who print paper money at rates of $85 billion per month don't want to lose the right to print that paper money. Clearly, the people who print paper money at rates of $85 billion per month have not yet bought a lot of silver for themselves to hoard, since $85 billion / 300 million ounces would be $85,000/300, or $283 per ounce.
But what would silver moving up at 5% per year, with a steady increase per day, with no price fluctuations look like? A compound interest rate calculator shows.
If silver gained only 5% per year, that would be a price change of 0.02% per day, over 250 trading days, which would create a gain of 5% per year.
See that? Silver is supposed to move up by LESS than 0.02% per day in a stable financial system, not 5% moves in a day, which are 250 times higher, or lower, than what might be expected!
Therefore, what do the 5% price moves per day, up and down, mean, when the interest rate should suggest price moves of less than 0.02% per day, or less than 5% per year?
Now, before I get to that, let me address the potential nay sayers who may claim that it's "Normal" for silver to move that much, because that's what we see. Well, why doesn't the interest rate fluctuate that much? It doesn't, because it's "fixed" by the Federal Reserve, because we live in a financial system of "fixed" prices. If they fixed prices for silver like they do for the interest rate for money, they might make silver as stable as the interest rate.
So, I can guess now what the wild price changes in silver actually mean.
First, I think it indicates that the price is a lie. A manipulation. A false report. A bogus claim.
The way that prices are "quoted" has nothing to do with actual silver being traded, and yet, actual traders of real silver look at those quoted prices, and often trade accordingly.
The quoted price is called the "spot" price, and it is a ticker tape of paper futures market trades in lots of 5000 oz. at a time. Each lot is one contract, and thousands of contracts trade in a day. Most of these paper contracts do not result in any delivery of silver, since they are for delivery "in the future" on the futures markets.
The futures price is pushed around by electronic and pit traders who trade both futures and options and puts.
We are able to base our prices at jhmint.com based around those prices, because we can re-order silver from wholesalers who do the same, because there are billionaire wholesalers who do the same.
But it's those who have the net worth exceeding $100 billion, that push the price around, illegally, with no criminal prosecution, because they are probably doing it on behalf of the Federal Government, with the specific intent to keep people in paper money, and out of silver.
See, I feel and believe that the government is attempting to make silver look "volatile" and shaky and unpredictable, but the truth is that paper money is what is truly volatile and shaky.
See, if paper money were stable, and if paper money were not threatened by silver, then there would be no need for silver to move anywhere more than about that 0.02% or less per day.
See, silver does not come due in a large harvest season. Mine output and refinery output is rather stable in comparison to harvesting crops, and should have much more stable prices, day after day, month after month.
The wild price changes are also reflective of the truth that the silver market is extraordinarily tiny, and the paper money market is beyond massively huge. Huge paper money trades moving into and out of silver push the price around far more than it should otherwise trade if the financial system were sound, and soundly backed by silver and gold, and if there were no excesses of paper money.
In other words, the major price swings in the silver price are actually a forecast for a large price rise in my opinion.
Houston
Let's give San Fran a go for week one.
Thanks John!
Hey John! Yes I am in this year.
Pick will be posted Sat. or Sun.
Thanks for all your hard work.
ukie
The Current Situation
When we look to the DJIA chart, we see the first white candle in weeks.
But, will it stay white?
Most of Tuesday morning’s upside came from the White House’s decision to seek Congressional approval before dropping cruise missiles on Syria. Also note that oil and gold both backed off a tad after opening up on Tuesday.
Frankly, we still don’t credit “Syrian relief” as a genuine long-term catalyst. The market began its tumble long before the words “Sarin Gas” hit the headlines.
And this “relief” comes and goes almost hourly, as Washington attempts to craft legal cover for this unique police action. In fact, the situation is so fluid I’ve already had to correct these paragraphs twice — just while I was writing them.
Goodness knows what’ll happen over the next few hours.
While the folks in the bleachers are watching the Syrian circus, senior traders are paying closer attention to Richmond Fed President Jeffery Lacker’s threat that the Fed might cut its portfolio of mortgage-backed bonds at the same time (or even before) they back out of the Treasury market.
Lacker’s Targeted Scalpel is Wall Street’s Chainsaw
Lacker claims that “I don’t view tapering as cutting back on stimulus.”
The Fed is merely “reducing the pace at which we are adding stimulus... The Federal Open Market Committee is considering whether the U.S. labor market has improved enough to warrant scaling back the monthly purchase of $45 billion in Treasuries and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. It should dial down its buying of mortgage bonds before Treasuries so as not to favor a specific part of the economy... If we begin reducing purchases, all the reduction should come out of the MBS. I just don’t think it’s appropriate for us to be channeling credit to one particular market.”
But wait, it gets even better! Lacker speculated that the U.S. economy would grow at a mere 2% over the next 12 months – barely above “recessionary stall speed” – but didn’t see this as a reason to forestall any of these moves. No wonder Wall Street’s senior managers are looking to back out of the market!
Looking back to the DJIA chart, we note that Tuesday’s action did not break out of the falling trend. And when we look down through the corollary indicators, we still see sell signals across the board.
Without stronger upside signs, we’re standing by our initial target of Dow 14,431.
For weeks now, the absence of vacationing senior traders has been haunting the stock market. It’s amazing what a few fellows can do when the grey-beards of the trading desks are away. Prices can jump and tumble for little reason – all as the young turks try to make a few quick trades to impress the elders before they return to the trading pits.
But now, volume is finally returning. To give you a sense of scale, the Dow Jones Industrials (DJIA) first half hour last Friday saw a mere 11.0 million shares traded. Tuesday morning saw 27.7 million shares move through the pits.
Questions remain, however, as to whether returning senior traders will see a buying opportunity this week – or an opportunity to lock in a good year’s gains.
Sell on news?
Another company with exciting growth prospects is Pepsico. There are rumors that Pepsico is considering a buyout of SodaStream International (NASDAQ: SODA), the maker of DIY soda machines and syrups. Taking over a company famous for turning tap water into fizzy drinks appears to be a logical decision for the beverage and snack food products company and with $6.7 billion in cash it has the means to do so.
An acquisition would allow PepsiCo to diversify its operations and drive growth in a market that appears to be flourishing. SodaStream has achieved 33 percent annual revenue gain in the past five years and is projecting a $1 billion revenue target in 2016. With SodaStream machines in 6.5 billion households around the world, this appears to be a sustainable trend that will drive growth for PEP.
272 Thanks
Hey dc, here we go!
Tiger Woods
Lee Westwood
Graeme McDowell
Phil Mickelson
Brad Snedeker
Thanks!
For newbies: Delta explained for options.
Options 101: The Bare Bone Basics...
Presented by Ian L. Cooper
Some of you have requested a primer on the ins and outs of options basics, as well as a list of options trading sites to use.
Let's start with the sites...
One of my favorite trading sites is OptionsHouse.com. There's even TradeKing.com and InteractiveBrokers.com. I've heard good things about ThinkorSwim.com, too.
You just need a basic options trading account. We trade basic puts and calls in addition to sporadic use of straddles and strangle hedges. Nothing fancy...
We like to make money and move on...
As for options basics, I'm prepping a series of articles for those of you still skittish on options trading. Let me first say that options trading becomes easier the more you do it.
Let's go over the basics of investing in options today...
An option is a contract that gives an investor the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a stock at a specific price on or before a specific date, or the expiration date.?Just like stocks, investors can buy and sell options, including call options and put options.
Call Options give the buyers the right to buy an underlying security at a specific price on or before a specific date of expiration.?
Put Options give the buyers the right to sell an underlying security at a specific price on or before a specific date of expiration.
When you place options trades, you'll need to concern yourself with "Buy to Open" and "Sell to Close."
Buy to Open allows you to open a long position in an option trade. Sell to Close allows you to close that long position in an option trade.
But don't get hung up on "Sell to Open" or "Buy to Close" at this stage of the game.
Investing in Options Primer
You may already know that a call option, for example, may show a price of $3, but you'd pay $300 (price x 100 shares).
A strike price is the price at which the underlying stock can be bought or sold, as detailed in the option contract. Options are identified by month of expiration, whether they are a put or call, and by a strike price (or the price you believe the underlying stock will reach).
For example, an ABC January 2014 25 call would refer to a call option on ABC with a strike price of $25 that expires on the third Friday of January 2014.
Options have limited lifetimes. At expiration, options cease to exist. If you buy an option, you either exercise it (buy or sell the underlying security) or it will expire worthless.
In the Money... Out of the Money...
This is very simple.
If the price of the underlying stock is at or above your strike price, the call is considered in the money. Say you bought a call with a 40 strike. If the underlying stock trades at 40 or above, too, your call is in the money. It would be considered out of the money if the underlying stock were below 40.
You must also pay attention to the delta.
Delta: Not just an Airline
Let's start with the difficult explanation first.
Delta is based on the underlying security value. Delta is the amount by which an option's price will change for a one-point change in the price of the underlying asset. Call options have positive deltas, while put options have negative deltas.
A 0.50 delta means that for every $1 gain in the stock, a call option gains 50 cents in premium. A -0.50 delta means that for every $1 loss in the stock, a put option gains 50 cents in premium.
For example, say you buy a call option on ABC and it has a delta of 0.50.
Now, every time the underlying ABC stock moves up just $1, your call option will appreciate in value by 50 cents.
There are other Greek symbols involved with options but this is one of the big ones to know. You, as a reader, don't have to worry about these. We do. I just wanted you to be familiar with another basic.
Those are some of the bare bone basics. We are working on more reports as we speak.
Oh, and if you have any questions that you'd like me to add to these “basics” reports, please send them in. We'll be happy to answer anything and everything.
Fracking is Safe: What You Must Know...
Presented by Ian L. Cooper
Fast Money Trader
"What good is cheap energy if its extraction ends up costing more," writes The Baltimore Sun.
"We all want a robust economy, and the oil and gas resources in the vast shale deposits are a resource that begs to be tapped - safely. When the fracking boom ends (granted, it may be a century or two from now) it will have left a depleted and despoiled landscape behind and have created billions of tons of greenhouse gases."
"Shouldn't we be promoting a full-scale effort to instead generate sustainable and clean energy resources through more efficient appliances, homes and manufacturing, green construction, as well as solar, wind, geothermal and tide energy production?"
Then, there's this.
According to the Upworthy blog, "A Seriously Scary Thing is Scheduled to Happen to New York City in November."
"This stuff sounded so insane that I had our professional fact-checkers comb through the whole thing. What's really crazy? Everything in this video is factual and true. And if New Yorkers can't stop this, what's the rest of the country going to do," asked the editors of the blog.
The video - making its rounds to those easily manipulated and scared - would have viewers believe there will be an explosion in the West Village if fracked gas is used.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity.
First, there won't be an explosion. Two, there are other natural gas pipelines already in place under the streets of New York, including the 1,100 mile Algonquin Gas Transmission system, the 182-mile Millennium Pipeline, and the Iroquois Gas Transmission system.
Fracking has been revolutionizing US energy production for decades, as green initiatives have been disgraceful, bankrupt failures.
The Baltimore Sun's claim that fracking will have "created billions of tons of greenhouse gases" is false, too. In fact, according to Jeffrey Frankel, a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and former member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers:
"Against all expectations, US emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since peaking in 2007, have fallen by 12% as of 2012, back to 1995 levels. The primary reason, in a word, is "fracking." Or, in 11 words: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to recover deposits of shale gas."
The misinformation paraded by fools is laughable. Most of their claims have been disproven. They still fail to understand that fracking fuels our energy independence from international hotspots. They fail to understand that fracking is safe, according to environmentalists.
But why let facts get in the way.
Wait until Bernanke pulls the $85 billion he has been pouring in
every month. Down she goes. Then we could talk about volatility.
Might as well get it when the getting is good!
Nice job. A profit is a profit!
You have to put both orders in together.
Sure you could:
Definition of 'Straddle'
An options strategy with which the investor holds a position in both a call and put with the same strike price and expiration date.
Investopedia explains 'Straddle'
Straddles are a good strategy to pursue if an investor believes that a stock's price will move significantly, but is unsure as to which direction. The stock price must move significantly if the investor is to make a profit. As shown in the diagram above, should only a small movement in price occur in either direction, the investor will experience a loss. As a result, a straddle is extremely risky to perform. Additionally, on stocks that are expected to jump, the market tends to price options at a higher premium, which ultimately reduces the expected payoff should the stock move significantly.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/straddle.asp
Definition of 'Strangle'
An options strategy where the investor holds a position in both a call and put with different strike prices but with the same maturity and underlying asset. This option strategy is profitable only if there are large movements in the price of the underlying asset.
This is a good strategy if you think there will be a large price movement in the near future but are unsure of which way that price movement will be.
Investopedia explains 'Strangle'
The strategy involves buying an out-of-the-money call and an out-of-the-money put option. A strangle is generally less expensive than a straddle as the contracts are purchased out of the money.
For example, imagine a stock currently trading at $50 a share. To employ the strangle option strategy a trader enters into two option positions, one call and one put. Say the call is for $55 and costs $300 ($3.00 per option x 100 shares) and the put is for $45 and costs $285 ($2.85 per option x 100 shares). If the price of the stock stays between $45 and $55 over the life of the option the loss to the trader will be $585 (total cost of the two option contracts). The trader will make money if the price of the stock starts to move outside of the range. Say that the price of the stock ends up at $35. The call option will expire worthless and the loss will be $300 to the trader. The put option however has gained considerable value, it is worth $715 ($1,000 less the initial option value of $285). So the total gain the trader has made is $415.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/strangle.asp
Great job on this board. The time & patience you have to
mentor some of these traders just shows that there are
people willing to take the time to help others. I have a quote
on the bottom of my page & it certainly applies to you, a compliment:
"If you insist on measuring yourself, put the tape around your heart rather than your head".
Carol Trabelle
Careful. There are times I wait for trades to turn around & it
causes more damage. Glad it worked out for you.
I deserve last. Like making it to the betting window without
looking @ the racing form. Pure guesses.
since I am so late I will give you an unrealistic tie breaker
of 259. My picks were off the board just to see if I could get into the competition & I will do the same with the tie breaker.
Thanks dc.
Won't happen again. Or by chance if a tie breaker has to be used
give it to the person who spent the time to do it correctly & properly.
dc, if I could sneek in off this list let me know.
I'll be more diligent next tourney.
Donald
Dufner
Piercy
Brown
Overton
If I miss the cut off time, no problem.
My service, just an example from a few weeks ago....
Speculators: Lightly Add BWLD Puts
Earnings After the Close Tomorrow
Monday, February 11, 2013 11:31 A
SPECULATIVE PLAY: Buy the BWLD March 75 Puts (O:BWLD 13O75.00) at or under $3.20 (or best price) good for the day. Place a protective stop limit at $1.50 and a sniper sell at $7.50.
Dear Member,
Tomorrow after the close, shares of Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD – NASDAQ) will report earnings. And as you can see from the chart, BWLD is setting up for an interesting move. With resistance at $78.00, a weak report could send shares lower. In fact, the current set-up could be a Head and Shoulders formation.
Some analysts are bullish on BWLD, saying that the Super Bowl catalyst (plus the 40-minute power outage) kept customers in their restaurants longer. But what concerns me is the fact that McDonalds is now testing the idea of adding chicken wings to their menu. If this test is successful, and MCD rolls out wings, BWLD will have massive pricing pressures on wing prices – not to mention some new competition at McDonald’s 34,000 restaurants on every street corner. As a speculative play, let’s lightly add March puts and be positioned for a BWLD sell-off. Here’s the play:
SPECULATIVE PLAY: Buy the BWLD March 75 Puts (O:BWLD 13O75.00) at or under $3.20 (or best price) good for the day. Place a protective stop limit at $1.50 and a sniper sell at $7.50.
And as always…
Dee, don't misunderstand me. I wish you much success in your endeavor & sincerely hope it works out for you. Good luck!
Your comment just caught me a little off guard.
Dee, just curious. How could you judge if a trade is ready to go exactly between 12 & 1pm? There are trades ready to go every minute of the day. If you lock yourself to a one hour window there could be better opportunities before & after your one hour window. Just curious.
My service loads trades before the bell, throughout the day & weekend write ups.
OT: Off topic.
OT: do you know of any software that could replace "JAVA"?
Too many security issues with Java. Oracle had over a year to fix it & as of two weeks ago they still didn't have a patch ready.
Anything you could recommend.
Still bad. I should of cut off the 57.5's yesterday.
Now I'll be happy to break even.
The 52.5's looking good.
both. Down on the 57.5 April monthlies but up on the 52.5 monthlies.
KORS high of day 55.01. Flirting with days resistance.
Break thru baby & keep pushing.
Going to do a little research on retail.
Starting with Seeking Alpha & moving on from there.
Been out for a few days and noticed that KORS took
a pretty good hit. Any ideas why off so hard?
Inquiring minds want to know.
nice call man