Been following the markets as an individual trader for about 8 years.
And professionally as an advisor for 3 years. Currently I deal with individual clients and business owners, helping them with their investments and financial planning. On a day to day basis I meet with fund managers and fund family representatives (be it private equity, hedge fund, mutual fund, CTA/CPO) or even the inhouse research from both our wealth management department as well as our international investment bank.
Over the trading years, and losing my own money, learned quite a few lessons, from penny stock gambling, to options. Working for individual clients, and having interactions with all of the resources avail to me now, kind of helped screw my head on straight, and gives me damage control.
Obviously I cant say what firm I work with, but offline I can. I am mostly here as I have a newfound interest in trading options in my own personal account, esp since one of my fellow advisors used to be an options trader on the phily exchange for like 20 years, and now works in my office.
As far as for clients, as far as I go with options is doing buy-writes/covered calls for hedging and monetizing large concentrated positions, as well as buying protective puts.
I am here, to basicly see and get ideas from the other side of the table, and quite frankly, turning $146 or whatever it was, to 48k, is impressive, and seeing the "gambling" culture here.
My intent is to scroll through the boards, get ideas, see where it stands in the picture of what I think and feel, as well as what my own firm's resources say, as well as what the other third party investment houses say to turn this from gambling to a tactical play. =)
In return, if I see a place where I can contribute with a different perspective, and maybe give others a great idea, I would be honored.
In particular, I felt almost obligated to post when it seems like 80% of the posts are all bearish, and seems like alot of the people got burned on SKF options. In a similar lesson how I got burned before on Sbux options in the past.