Sounds like our experiences were the same.

No, I didn't notice the "back door," but I never looked either.

I really don't know. There was no way to view the other members. I saw maybe 3 or 4 other people post in the months I was there, and if you looked at the number of people currently on-line, it was rarely above 6 or 7. My guess is somewhere around 15 or so, although I don't think most of them pay as Pokersam lets his friends and family on the site for free from what I understood.

Since there seems to be a fair amount of curiosity concerning Pokersam and his trading pit, let me share my experience there. I was member of his trading pit for about 8 months. I ended my membership earlier this year. I’m a full-time software engineer but do some day-trading in my personal account (with e-mini S&P futures). I also trade my 401K account (mainly using SPX-based ETF’s for that). Anyway, I was intrigued by EW due to the fact that it is a non-lagging, predictive system, and I ended up joining Pokersam’s site to learn more about it.

On the positive side of things, Poker is a purist as far as EW is concerned and knows all the rules inside and out. I did indeed learn a bunch about EW being on his website. My time there actually started out well, and I was initially pleased with the investment of time and money. Pokersam was very friendly and welcomed questions and was forthcoming with answers and explanations of why he came up with the counts he did.

On the negative side, while Pokersam is indeed an expert in EW, he is also a terrible trader who completely lacks any sort of money/risk management scheme. In addition, he has a fairly poor understanding of options although he claims to trade them all the time. He also, as I’m sure doesn’t go unnoticed by anyone except him, has some serious personality issues. Things eventually went downhill for me on his site. I was one of the few people besides him who actually posted in the trading pit. I came to understand why when I started posting alternate wave counts and even some more classic TA opinions. Sometimes these disagreed with Pokersam’s take on the market. He eventually PM’ed me to let me know that I should avoid posting anything that contradicted his count or raised questions about where he said the market was going. I ended up lurking for a few more months after this, mainly to see what would happen with his $10000 account experiment (remember that one that he never mentions anymore) as well as what would happen with his market calls. He also could be a good contrarian indicator at times. He made one good trade with the 10K account and then blew it up on the next trade. He never actually admitted this. He simply stopped talking about it. He had done some serious damage to his personal account being on the wrong side of the August 2011 drop. He made some good and some bad trades after that and eventually went short in the late 2011/early 2012 run-up. When I first joined the site, he would post his trades. After going short, he stopped posting his trades. I PM’ed him to ask if he was still holding his puts after the big run-up. He said no, that he had sold them a long time ago even though he had been posting in the pit for some time that if you weren’t short you should be. Eventually, he said he was going to stop posting his trades as it was too much pressure and too much of a distraction for him. It looked to me more like he had blown up his account.

Anyway, that was my experience in the pit. I find the whole thing fairly sad at this point. Pokersam could be a good teacher of and excellent resource for EW if he wanted. He certainly knows a lot about it. Unfortunately, I can’t see that ever happening.

For me, I don’t use EW at all for my day-trading. I do use some of the EW concepts in my longer term swing trades, somewhat like Cobra does if you follow him, looking for corrective vs. impulsive moves, etc. As far as EW practitioners go, I think Pretzel is one of the best I’ve come across.

Great quote...how very true.

Your question identifies the fundamental problem with the occupy movement. On the surface, I think most of us agree that government and business greed and corruption are a problem that the occupy movement has correctly identified. However, most members of the movement seem to have no thoughts whatsoever about a solution or think the solution is more government regulation/involvement, which is a huge part of the problem.

I live in Southern California, and a local talk show spent a day with the occupy group in the downtown of my city, talking to people and recording most of it. Obviously the show could select certain people to talk to try to affirm their bias, but even so it was striking how completely clueless 99% of the people were about what the solution to the greed and corruption problem is. However, this seems to be consistent with everything I have read or seen about the occupy movement.

I don't think the occupy movement is going to end well. Anytime you get a large group of people really mad about something with no idea how to address what they are mad about, things end up going bad as all that frustration needs to be released somewhere, and if it doesn't go towards a solution, it goes elsewhere. I hope it doesn't play out that way, but I'm a bit concerned.

I'm a lurker on this thread, but I'll echo your observation. I live near the San Diego area, and there is a strip mall on the way to my house that has lost so many business in the past year that there are more vacancies than occupants at this point (that is no exaggeration).

It's almost a nightly conversation at my house about who just got laid off or what restaurant or business down the road is closing down.

Based on my observations, things have continued to get worse over the past year.

I'd love for things to get better and hope they do eventually, but the jobs report today doesn't seem to indicate any meaningful improvement.

A day trade is defined as a buy and sell of the same stock (or option) in the same day. If you make more than 3 of these in a rolling 5 day period, you become classified as a pattern day trader. At that point, you have to maintain $25K equity in your account to be able to buy anything at all (you can still sell stuff you already own). Futures are excluded from this rule, however.

Veve has not diluted at all yet as the outstanding shares still seem to be 40,000,000. If Veve had been selling some of the 460,000,000 shares, we would have seen this in the trading volume and in an increase to the outstanding share count. We could verify whether the outstanding has increased by calling the TA (assuming the TA is not gagged).

By the way, just because the authorized shares are at 500,000,000 the doesn't necessarily mean all of these will eventually be dumped on the market. I'm sure many will along the way in some shape or form for funding (e.g. warrants to investors), but they needn't all be. I worked for a start-up that had 60M authorized shares, but the most that were ever outstanding was 12M (from a starting amount of 7M). The 5M increase was to new investors in exchange for capital.

I know emails are only worth so much, but I emailed Mr. Veve about the TDA issue (as one of my accounts is with them). Below is his response (received within a few hours)...


XXXXX,
Thank you for being a share holder. Thank you for brining this to my attention. We have in no way made any of the decisions that TD Ameritrade has stated below. I will personally see to this matter first thing in the morning. Thank you again for bringing this to our attention.
WIlliam

On Jun 30, 2011, at 1:13 PM, XXXXX wrote:


Hi Mr. Veve,

I have a brokerage account with TD Ameritrade and am no longer able to purchase VMGI stock (since the R/S). The explanation they provided is below…

“VMGI has made the decision to only allow its stock to be traded via physical certificate instead of the modern electronic book-entry system. When companies convert to physical certificates only, it becomes extremely difficult and, in some cases, impossible for brokerage firms like Ameritrade to obtain shares for their clients. Converting to physical delivery also increases the costs associated with transferring ownership of common stock between buyers and sellers. To reduce the risks that transactions cannot be settled timely and the added expenses associated with physical delivery of shares, Ameritrade has made a business decision to no longer accept orders for stocks that only trade via physical certificate. However, you may still sell the shares that you currently own. I appreciate your understanding in this matter.”

Are you aware of this and is there a plan to address this issue? Is so, what is the time-table? It seems that locking out the ability to buy VMGI stock at some of the major brokerages can’t be good for the share price.

Nice to see you back around here posting, Sid. It's actually nice to see a lot of the old Den folks no longer drinking the Koolaid.

Anyway, I know how you feel. Back when I woke up and posted my thoughts about the whole FLD mess on the EIGH and CDIV boards, I got a wide variety of PM's explaining how I was a bad guy and had betrayed the Den family. The most amazing ones were PM's about how I was a bad Christian for questioning Monk's integrity. The whole thing really did become a cult for a lot of people.

I got another round of people expressing what they thought of me when I posted my review of the PHX Monkinar.

I never posted much anyway but largely gave up saying anything about FLD's at that point. I figured the truth would eventually come out, which it did.

For what's it worth, I'll agree with you publicly.

I don't post much...but I have to agree with Frankie on this.

Like most, I was initially very disappointed with the R/S, mainly from feeling betrayed by Veve. However, the more I consider it, I think it could end up being a good thing depending on what happens next.

The float is only 40M now, so news should actually move it. Even if Veve dumps a few 100M shares into the float, it should still move nicely with any sort of real news or even any sort of pump or PR campaign.

I really don't think Veve had much of a choice. Obviously, things are taking longer than anyone expected, and he's got to raise money somehow. I have no problem with him raising money via dilution if it turns the company into something. Depending on the news, dilution doesn't necessarily mean a lower share price. I think we're actually in a better position to see some pps upside than we were before.

I realize all this probably sounds hollow to many, especially to those who got in high and were wiped out by the R/S, but even the R/S could have been worse than it was. For those of us who got in low enough, we're really no worse off.

I personally would at least wait to see what happens with the next piece of news before bailing. Bid x Ask is actually .035 x .04 as I type this.

It would appear that way. However, IF the reverse split does not change the A/S, the O/S will remain maxed out as it is now, and Veve won't be able to dilute anymore than he can now. The big question is whether the A/S is changing during this process or not. We'll have to wait and see before we can really answer that question. It may not change anything other than provide more room for the stock to drop unless there is some miracle news about CM.

So, worst case (seems likely) is we're all getting diluted into oblivion with VMGI.

Best case is no dilution if the A/S doesn't change, and since the float will be dramatically smaller, the thing might actually run with real news.

We'll see...

I agree with you. I hardly ever post on this board because, quite honestly, I think it’s a complete waste of time. Most of the posts are endless whining about the word “imminent.”

While I don’t question whether or not the TLC email is legit, I’m not sure what it proves. It certainly doesn’t prove Veve lied. He never stated that CM would be on TLC. This was simply something gleaned from a questionable source that had no connection with VMGI. VMGI simply PR’ed that a network deal with some network (not necessarily TLC) was in the works. Unfortunately, that PR also included the word imminent, which we can all agree at this time was a very poor choice of words.

Taking both the email and the PR at face value, we really haven’t learned anything we didn’t already know. The only thing we might have learned is that the network deal is not with TLC. So what? There are a ton of other networks out there that the deal might be with, and Veve never said the network was TLC.

The only mistake I think Veve has committed is the use of the word imminent. Other than that, he has done everything he has promised. Obviously, he has not done it as fast as most of us would like, but he has done it. If Veve is lying and all this is a scam, how exactly does he plan to make money with the share structure maxed out. You’ll say reverse split, but until that happens, that’s just baseless speculation.

Finally, do some real DD. Don’t make your buy/sell decisions based on what’s posted on a message board, especially the stuff posted on this message board.

Good point. lol

We'll see if the admins approve my name change. Feel free to tell me what name I should have chosen when the new one shows up.

Cool. That's good to know. He always struck me as an honest guy.

Have a great Easter!

Last post on this board from me...

Do some research on this guy before you get too intoxicated from the Kool-aid.

Best of luck in your trading.

I'd love to see some of these option calls made in real-time, but I doubt we ever will. Quite honestly, the whole thing is way beyond the bounds of believability. For his $333 dollar account, he's not only called winners every single time but crazy big winners (like NSM and CEPH, etc.). He's gone from $333 dollars to $400K in a couple weeks. No one calls that many 100%+ winners in a row.

I believe he's calling stuff after the fact, and it would be pretty easy to prove that assertion wrong simply by making calls in advance of the events, but like I said, I don't think we're going to see that. You know the old adage: If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

It's easy enough to do DD on people these days. I'd encourage everyone to do a little digging before they invest too much time in any investment/trading idea. This, and every other idea presented on this site, is no exception.

Good luck.

I'm not trying to be difficult here. I appreciate you sharing your techniques with us, but I'm baffled at how you called RIMM correctly. It should have gone up based on almost all of your criteria. The t price vs. actual was very evenly balanced for puts/calls. Volume was a little high (but this just predicts move--not direction). The 60/120 min RSI2 and MACD were up on the session before earnings. The last few earnings have been up. The optionslam straddles were basically all losers and it's score was mediocre (very few stars for earnings or options).

Why did you think RIMM was going down? It seems like all your criteria indicated it was going to go up--not down. What am I missing?

Thanks.

I guess we'll either both lose or win on this one. I did a small "test the water" position as well. I did 41p/44c near the end of the day (slightly more expensive than yours--around $2.90)

This is probably the only earnings strangle I'll play this week. Nothing else looked that promising. I do plan to keep an eye on MED however (so much turmoil around that one right now), but I'll wait until after they announce as the ImpVol is really high (so the earnings move will have to be huge to make a strangle pay off).

To answer your questions...

1 - The RSI in the list is just the RSI(14) for the daily. I'm not currently using RSI to filter the list.

2 - The 0/4 means zero stars out of the last four earnings, whereas the 3/12 means 3 stars for the past 12 months. I'm just using the free plan, so that's all the history I see.

3 - I think relative stock volume (and RSI2 and the chart and option pricing, etc.) are very useful for the day or two before earnings when considering investing in a particular stock on my list but may not be as useful to filter the list at the start (just IMO).

Thanks

Here is my list for this week. To be honest, nothing really looks that interesting this week. I have only one company that made my A list, and I’m not very confident it will be worth playing. Anyway, it’s below.

Ticker	ErnDate	MrkCap	F Shrt	Beta	RSI	VolStrs	E Stars	Avg Ern% 
 APOL	3/29-b	6.28B	5.71%	1.14	56.28	4/12	2/4	13.00%

Here are a few other companies that might be worth watching (the B list) but are higher risk plays due to very high implied volatility or average earning moves that likely won’t break-even on a strangle or straddle even with a good size earning move.

Ticker	ErnDate	MrkCap	F Shrt	Beta	RSI	VolStrs	E Stars	Avg Ern% 
 LEN	3/29-b	3.73B	16.32%	0.73	51.65	5/12	1/4	8.00% 
 MED	3/31-b	295.6M	27.55%	1.01	39.58	6/12	0/4	6.00% 
 KMX	3/31-b	7.45B	4.59%	1.14	46.42	5/12	0/4	8.50%

For those interested, here is the basic process in how I create this list. It is based in a large part on the information Lerogee supplied with some additional steps/modifications to get the list down to the couple stocks I think have the best chance of making decent (i.e. profitable strangle/straddle) moves on earnings.

- Using Finviz or some other screener, get the list of all stocks with earnings for the next week that are option-able and have a share price of at least $10 (as stocks under $10 rarely move enough from an option perspective to make a strangle/straddle profitable IMO).

- From this list, remove any companies that have little option activity (e.g. not much volume or open interest) or an excessive bid/ask spread as their options will likely be too illiquid to be profitable.

- Using OptionSlam, pick the companies that are the most volatile (e.g. lots of stars or consistently big moves on earnings).

- From this list, remove any ones with extremely high implied volatility as the volatility collapse when earnings come out will likely kill any profit even on a big jump. Also remove any that have excessively overpriced puts or calls or average earning moves that aren’t that big.

- Finally, I do some analysis with ToS’s “thinkback” to see how playing them on previous earnings would have panned out. Ones that weren’t very profitable even with a decent earnings move also get removed from the list (or moved to the B list).

That’s my basic procedure. There is obviously some subjectivity involved (e.g. what is too big a bid/ask spread, etc.)

Thanks for the feedback. Here are some answers/comments...

I used April expirations which were ~4 weeks to expiration. My option and underlying stock prices at entry were the prices of each at the end of day for the respective earnings day.

I guess you can skew in different ways. I originally just considered buying more/less of put/calls to create a bias, but moving strike prices around would also make sense. I probably should have done a downward bias on WAG and especially on BBY given the charts for both. I went in bias free on both unfortunately, but my positions were very tiny. I only used real money simply because I tend to pay more attention and remember the lessons better if I have a bit of skin in the game (but not enough on these that it would have really hurt if they completely failed). I also don't go in unless I at least think I have some clue on what I should be doing.

I'm still relatively new to options, but I've been reading some on volatility and looking at skews in put vs. call implied volatility to predict direction as well as find better deals. So I can see how not accounting for volatility could really burn you. It seems that Lerogee (the guy who started this board) goes through a similar process with actual vs. theoretical option prices to detect bias and good/bad deals--at least that's how I understand his approach.

Is Peter Shultz worth checking out?

Here are the results from my top three strangle earning plays for the past week. The table below shows how strangle plays worked out in percentage gains/losses. The EOD column is the results at the end of day after the earnings came out, and the EOW column is the results at the close of this week. Obviously, they will continue to change (for better or worse) depending on how long one continues to hold them. You would have had a slight loss if you played all three and were still holding at the end of the week. I have some comments on strike prices, timing, etc. at the end of this post.

				EOD	EOW		 
 WAG	40/44 strangle		-5%	-30%		 
 JBL	18/20 strangle		17%	26%		 
 BBY	30/34 strangle		-31%	0%		 
 

I also looked at playing the same three as straddles. These results are below. You would have done slightly better overall doing this.

				EOD	EOW 
 WAG	42/42 straddle		5%	-16%		 
 JBL	19/19 straddle		6%	18%		 
 BBY	32/32 straddle		-16%	6%		 
 

Here are some observations/suggestions (all just IMO)...

- Straddles seem to be better for smaller percentage moves; while strangles do better for larger moves.

- A good strike price selection for a strangle is around the absolute value of the typical earnings day move. For example, if a company has previous earnings day moves of 5%, -6%, 4%, and 20%, the typical is around 5% (i.e. don’t take a single big outlier into consideration). If you pick strike prices too far away, you will lose a lot if it doesn’t move much. If you’re too far in, you will gain less if it moves big (risk/reward trade-off).

- Buy an equal dollar amount of puts and calls--not an equal number of options. You can always bias this one way or another depending on how confident you are that the price is going up or going down on earnings.

- Buy the strangle at the end of the day, not at the beginning.

- Pick an option expiration date that is far enough out that you have time to be right. Again, this is a risk/reward trade-off, but options very close to expiration decline in value rapidly unless they are fairly deep in the money. Unless you are really sure there will be a big move, I would suggest you give yourself at least a month until expiration. This way you can hold them for a week or so to let the full effect of the earnings play out. If the expiration date is too close, you’ll probably lose any price improvement to time value decay.

Finally, my intention was to play very small experimental positions in all three of these this week. I ended up getting busy at work and missed out on JBL (of course, lol) and only played WAG and BBY. I’m still holding both of them. I think BBY still has some downside left. WAG is a tougher call. I should have sold it first thing the next day, but I really expected it to retest the low later in the day, but it just kept drifting up. It seems to be turning over today, but we’ll see how far back down it goes on Monday.

Thoughts/feedback are welcome.

I was wondering what prompted you to choose RIMM to play. Historically it hasn't been that volatile around earnings, the options were equally riced, and it doesn't have a particularly high short percentage. I was watching it and ORCL around the close today and didn't see anything that seemed that unusual. What caused you to pull the trigger? What did I not see on this one? Did you make any other earnings plays this week?

Thanks.

Here are updated earnings dates for my lists (as I didn't label some as before/after market).. Also, it turns out LEN is not reporting until the 29th, so I took it off my list.

 
 Tickr 	ErnDate 
 WAG	Mar-22/b 
 JBL	Mar-22/a 
 BBY	Mar-24/b 
 	 
 ADBE	Mar-22/a 
 KBH	Mar-25/b 
 	 
 GME	Mar-24/b 
 RHT	Mar-23/a 
 RIMM	Mar-24/a 
 ORCL	Mar-24/a

I left TIF off because I was screening for strangles/straddles this week, and TIF reports Monday before market open, so you would have had to enter the position on Friday. With that said, TIF is probably still worth watching if they open way up or way down to play the dip or bounce.

I used the option calculator that Lerogee uses to calculate how overpriced the options are.

I also use ToS's thinkback feature to do some "what if" analysis of how playing a strangle/straddle would have worked on previous earnings of a particular stock. This was one criteria to keep/remove something from the top list.

I created another list of what I think might be potentially interesting earnings option plays for this week. I've revised my screening process from last week a bit. I'm only including stocks that have a decent amount of option volume to provide a reasonable bid/ask spread, etc. I've divided the list into three sections (see my original post--the reply to of this one--for a description of the acronyms in the list). This first list contains ones that could potentially make good strangle/straddle plays as their typical price movement gives a good chance of at least breaking even. FWIW, I think JBL is probably the best bet of the three at this point in time.

Ticker 	ErnDate	MrkCap 	F Shrt 	Beta 	RSI 	OpOvr	VolStrs	E Stars	Avg Ern% 
 JBL	Mar-22	4.05B	2.08%	2.15	31.46	~5%	7/12	0/4	~10% 
 WAG	Mar-22	37.7B	1.51%	0.99	42.77	~5%	1/12	0/4	~7% 
 BBY	Mar-24	12.4B	6.57%	1.29	41.69	~5%	2/12	1/4	~11%

This second list contains companies that are likely to make decent moves (based on historical data, short interest, etc.) but probably not moves big enough to quickly break even on a strangle/straddle. These would be good plays if you're fairly confident of which direction they are going to move.

Ticker 	ErnDate	MrkCap 	F Shrt 	Beta 	RSI 	OpOvr	VolStrs	E Stars	Avg Ern% 
 KBH	Mar-21	1.15B	32.59%	1.64	43.7		8/12	0/4	~7.5% 
 LEN	Mar-21	3.67B	16.32%	1.69	47.76		5/12	1/4	~9% 
 ADBE	Mar-22	16.1B	2.75%	1.59	34.64		4/12	1/4	~9%

The final list is simply other companies that are worth watching for moves on earnings this week.

Ticker 	ErnDate	MrkCap 	F Shrt 	Beta 	RSI 	OpOvr	VolStrs	E Stars	Avg Ern% 
 RHT	Mar-23	7.5B	1.38%	1.22	34.26		2/12	0/4	~5% 
 GME	3/24/b	3.7B	24.13%	1.08	64.33		3/12	0/4	~5% 
 RIMM	Mar-24	31.9B	4.51%	1.92	38.72		3/12	0/4	~6.5% 
 ORCL	3/24/a	155.4B	0.57%	1.11	40.46		3/12	0/4	~5%

All of the above is, of course, just my opinion based on my research. Additional thoughts about any of the above is welcome.

Here is my contribution to the board…Below is a list of the up-coming earnings for this week screened for what I think will make the best strangle plays. My criteria for putting something on the list was to pick stocks that have a high float short percentage, have high OptionSlam star ratings, and have options that are not excessively overpriced. I also removed stocks that had very limited option strike prices or little option activity.

The cryptic column codes in the table are “F Shrt” = Float short percentage, “OpOver” is how overpriced ATM options are, “VolStrs” is the number of volatility stars out of the last 12 months (e.g. 6/12 means 6 stars out of the last 12), and “E Stars” is the number of earning stars for the last few earnings periods, and “Avg Ern%” is the average 1 day movement of the stock for the day after earnings. The rest of the fields should be fairly self-explanatory. The "-a" and "-b" on the dates means after or before market hours.

The goal is obviously to pick ones that make big moves (up or down). Any thoughts about which would be good plays is appreciated as well as any other feedback. I actually went in very small on ZAGG today...we’ll see how that pans out. I went with April expirations as I wanted to be able to give it a couple days to move without getting completely burnt by time decay on the March options (less upside on the move but more time for it to happen).

Finally, thanks to Lerogee as I borrowed several of his ideas in my screening.

Ticker 	ErnDate	MrkCap 	F Shrt 	Beta 	RSI 	OpOvr	VolStrs	E Stars	Avg Ern% 
 EBIX	3/14	978.36M	22.45%	1.29	60.86	~5%	6/12	0/4	~5% 
 ZAGG	3/14-a	180.76M	37.70%	-	37.21	~15%	10/12	1/4	~5% 
 LLEN	3/14-a	240.63M	20.61%	-	45.84	~20%	12/12	0/3	~5% 
 WSM	3/15-b	3.74B	7.03%	1.71	47.88	~15%	4/12	1/4	~7% 
 DCTH	3/15	286.25M	22.94%	1.38	34.77	~10%	12/12	1/4	~5% 
 YONG	3/15	333.25M	17.05%	-	38.2	~25%	9/12	-	- 
 PANL	3/15-a	1.55B	11.75%	1.62	51.23	~20%	10/12	1/4	~7% 
 BPZ	3/15-a	723.09M	13.52%	2.25	52.86	~20%	10/12	2/4	~6% 
 CVVT	3/16	216.46M	19.03%	-0.33	32.66	~15%	11/12	0/2	~5% 
 GES	3/16	4.11B	6.63%	1.63	49.65	~10%	5/12	0/4	~5% 
 LULU	3/17-b	5.43B	13.89%	2.64	51.66	~10%	9/12	1/4	~6% 
 LDK	3/17-a	1.54B	10.07%	2.73	30.31	~5%	10/12	0/4	~5%

If you haven't seen it...

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=60893011

Thanks for the response and for the PDF on reasons to play earnings--very helpful.

Sure, but my question was concerning your earnings strangle technique. Certainly, you're trying to pick a stock that you expect to move significantly following earnings, but you've bought the options the day before. There is always a possibility that the stock won't actually move on earnings (e.g. maybe earnings end up being a wash). My question was about exit strategy in this case.

However, maybe a better question would be: besides looking at short interest of the playable float, are there any other criteria you examine in trying to pick a mover in advance of earnings (e.g. market cap, price range, volatility, etc.)? You pointed out ANN was the strangle play for yesterday (which it was), but why play ANN yesterday instead of ATPG or HIBB which also had high short interest?

Thanks. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this.

Hi lerogee. Thanks for the info on the earnings strangle. I had a couple questions about it...

How far out from expiration do you purchase the options?

The reason I ask has to do with my second question which is what do you do if the stock doesn't really move after earnings? Just exit anyway with whatever loss you have.

If you end up buying options very near expiration in this case, both sides of the strangle decrease substantially just from time decay.

Thanks

I was wondering if you still see SPY making a big move up this week (i.e. getting to 133/134 as you mentioned in the first post) after today's action. Was today just another opportunity to squeeze the new bears on a move up? Thanks.

This Monk-in-a-box thing is too funny. What will the guy think up next.

Now, as much as I don't want to appear like I am in any way defending this goofy thing, I do have a question. Do you read the recent trades from bottom to top or top to bottom? I'm thinking bottom to top so that it's current holding indication matches the last thing bought (FAZ at 8.30). If this is the case, the thing does better as its recent trades end up at -0.02 on FAS and +0.15 on FAZ for the day (which may, as much as I hate to admit it, actually jive somewhat with the profit number it claims assuming an equal dollar amount per trade). Looking at the chart, however, it made some odd decisions. It really just seemed to just get lucky with one FAZ trade and catch a run.

My question would, of course, answer itself if his demo gave an actual time stamp for the trades, rather than just dates.

I'm still waiting for Monk's Den to add an online store. Maybe they'll have more luck selling T-shirts than EIGH does.

Hi all. I don't post much on iHub, but I thought I'd share Mr. Veve's response to an email I sent him yesterday. I'm pretty familiar with scams (I got sucked into the crazy Monk FLD insanity for a bit). I'm confident VMGI isn't a scam.

Anyway, below Mr. Veve's email and my original question to him. I can always post a screenshot if people don't believe it is real...



Yes the Timmons site fell through. The President reneged our access that was granted to Globexplore through their Mexican operation and Managers. Unfortunate for them as we moved locations and worked with Azure Minerals instead.
Thank you,
William
On Jan 27, 2011, at 5:17 PM, XXXXXXXX wrote:


Hello,

I am a shareholder in your company. Some accusations were made today implying that your company is a scam based on an old press release dated 8/5/2010 that indicated that you had secured Timmons San Francisco Gold Project in Sonora, Mexico as a site for the filming of cowboy mining. Apparently Timmons has indicated that this is not true. While I don’t at all believe VMGI is a scam, I do wonder what to make of this accusation. Did the Timmons site fall through? I’ve included the text of the press release below.

Thank you in advance for any information you can provide. Looking forward to news about Cowboy Mining,

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Koolaid: FLD's

For anyone who might not already know, there is a whole board devoted to the examination of this flavor of Koolaid:

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=19351

Certainly Randi, as a staunch atheist, was referring to religion, but I agree his point does apply to these stock scams as well. As some have touched on, we live in a world in which the ability to think logically and critically about almost anything is a lost art. Without venturing too far into religion (there are other boards for those discussions), I am a Christian and have a son who is at the age at which he is asking many questions about religious matters and truth in general. I stress to him that questioning what he believes to be true and facing his doubts are good things. If something is in fact true it will only be strengthened by honest inquiry—not destroyed. If any sort of sincere examination debunks something, it was never worth much to begin with and certainly not true. It was nothing more than Koolaid. This is equally true with these so called “investments” like FLD’s, etc. Fanaticism about anything should always be a big red flag.

I appreciate all the posts. Perhaps they will save someone from drinking a very bitter glass of investment Koolaid.

Ignoring for the moment whether trading the F's will or will not end well for this poor woman and her husband, are there any psychologists out there that have some insight into Monk?

Does he at some level feel guilty about the damage that the FLD's have done to people? Is his altruistic act simply keeping up the appearance of innocence to the very end? Monk has always claimed that all he wants to do is help people. Does he actually really believe this at some level or is it merely part of an elaborate con? From my limited interaction with Monk, he's always struck me as someone who desperately desires the approval of other people. He's got it from at least a few people by doing this.

Regardless of all that, who actually encourages a couple that has just lost their life savings in the stock market to sell what little they have left and go back in? It seems the height of irresponsibility to encourage a couple that has lost everything from one get rich quick scheme to jump into another.

Quite the twists and turns in this FLD story. I do, however, hope that trading the F's works out well for these people (as unlikely as that probably is). Wow.

Don't have time for a detailed response, but I've thought a lot about the whole FLD idea recently...

One thing that might be worth discussing is whether or not an FLD could actually work on a pinkie stock, regardless of whether or not it's legal.

Consider the old folks home investors: Suppose they did continue to just buy and hold. Could they actually buy the whole float and induce a squeeze? Would they run into other issues before they owned the whole float (e.g. beneficial ownership issues)? Would the MM's really short significantly into their buying? Would anybody else? What would really happen to the stock price? Would it just go up as a result of their buying and sit at some value where no one else was willing to buy (i.e. no one to sell to without tanking the price)? What would be the catalyst for a short squeeze in this case?

Lot's of things to consider, but it might be interesting to think through whether or not an FLD would even work, regardless of the legality of the whole thing.