Still ripping. Forgot about it, stop cancelled. Still have WEN order out on b/o. Ticker "I" like 4 to 8 and not stopping yet. Fun to watch. Buy volume should get exhaustd next couple days and it comes down.

Missed this yesterday, have to take you off ignore
Earnings is the major driver for recovery in fear markets. It really doesn't matter what happens in the world, if companies are posting record after record, stocks rip. Reasonable expectations for great earnings are the ticker of a bull. And companies are very likely to post very good earnings right now for a number of reasons. Fundies say it, institutions say it, talking heads say it. Big money accumulates off lows into earnings season like this. And most importantly, you could watch news fear (trade, Syria) slowly give way in importance to a bid as earnings has approached. In private chat I've been saying this for two weeks, that the lead up to earnings is going to be a bid.

The prospect of good earnings also gets large shorts to cover and take their profit, both in individual names and the market.
Earnings though.
Yes, a great time to buy because it made forward earnings quite attractive. If there's no recession coming then stocks remain a reasonably justifiable buy for big money in the Trumpconomy. What buys up off lows the most? Tech turds, except Tesla. The worse the stock, the better.

Cliffs:



Hope that helps you.

Bombs are bullish, just like always

The counterargument is that high expectations for earnings isn't bullish through actual earnings. The most recent example of this is big banks crushing earnings estimates this earnings season and then dropping. A handjob is bad if you were expecting a blowjob.

But, yeah, earnings and economic conditions (because they affect future earnings) are what really matter. Most everything else is noise that only matters on short timeframes. That the market cared about Syria is just the market being silly.

Not going to disagree with you there. The runup was the period I had an opinion on, which we're still in for a little longer. In two weeks after earnings is done I wouldn't be surprised to see volatility return.

I think political instability is bad as well at high multiples like this. There's no reason multiples wouldn't compress in a different political environment. Once earnings are done the market will start weighing those more because that's all there is to weigh.

Decisive upside breakout which I've been waiting weeks for, could see FSLR challenge $100 over the next year provided the fundamentals cooperate.

Good stuff. I have RUN and a core position in TAN. Do you have any favorite energy stocks? I like SWN. Looks like this oil move is the real deal.

My heart goes out to anyone here short LFIN. Looks like you may not be able to ex puts, and people who are short still need to pay 150% hard to borrow interest.

Pretty insane that you can be charged over 100% interest on something you can't buy back (because its worthless). That should qualify as usury, but **** shorts I guess?

I’ve been slowly building a short position via options in CVNA these past few days and fully intend to add a bunch more over the next couple of weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one in the mid teens after earnings.

We could definitely see it at $100 if the price keeps going up. Particularly if it goes up to $100.

Congrats on getting me to agree with TS, grim etc on how useless you are to this community (bar is pretty low on here already), quite the accomplishment.

I find helpful to paraphrase when something that sounds like it is meaningful can be reduced, without any loss of meaning, to its essential nature of being both vapid and vacuous.

Others might find it less than helpful, but they are just silly.

[My Bold]

Depends on who is giving the hand job and if dirty talk is included. Sloppy blowjobs with little enthusiasm is just so much wasted time. Plain fantasy masturbation is better. - Dr. Sex

It's probably hard to appreciate the value of that post when you're the target getting dunked on.

I'd appreciate it if it was clever and worth the effort, how else I am supposed to say I think FSLR upside target is $100 over the next year? He adds nothing of value, seriously I'd love for someone to defend Brian on his knowledge of the markets or trading in general. He's a conversation killer everytime he posts which isn't a shock since he's another person on here all the time.

If you give a "because" after the "you think" it is worth saying. That would make it worth typing. "I have a price target of $100 because the drop in operating earnings exhibited on their last quarterly report reduced analyst expected earnings for the next earnings report (coming to a theatre near you on 4/26) on are too low given the something something something something. and their xyz project will something something something that will make investors buy in. Anyone else see something I am missing?" <- conversation worth starting and having

Heck, I'd even accept it as being fine (slightly annoying, but fine and pretty normal unless you believe in bad trading karma) if you are just pleased with yourself that it has gone up and are doing a victory lap celebration.

My upside price target for FSLR is $103.92.* Is that the sort of helpful things you'd like others to type? Do you find it useful to encourage discourse or as a source of information for others to absorb? Are you even the slightest bit interested in what my downside price target is? Any interest in what sort of information would lead me to change my upside and downside price targets? Was my price target of $103.92 worth reading to any real or imagined person in the real or any possible universes?

I'd rather no one defend me, tyvm.

Obviously, just buy .50 delta (or higher delta) VXX puts over 90 days or more to expiry when the 28 or 35 day weighted vx (depending on whether the 1st month started as 28 or 35 day to expiry when it became the front month, ldo) is more than 6% over spot VIX using no more than 20% of your bankroll and then close out the trade when the weighted vx (as described above) premium to spot VIX drops below 5.7%. If trade isn't closed as described, then roll out to new 90+ day contracts when the expiry is around 30 days. It is ok to wait a day to three days after the trade signal to enter the trade if the IV of the puts is excessively high. This is somewhat conservative in nature, but it does a fairly good job of capturing risk premium while getting out of the way of major losses.

I'd appreciate any feedback from those who have any idea what all (understanding 95% is not understanding all) of that meant. Particularly those who have the data on hand to find any weaknesses in my quantitative analysis, but I would also enjoy discussing the theoretical basis for the trade with anyone who has good training as a CTA or is willing and capable of reading and comprehending a ****ton of material to learn about futures markets and statistical arbitrage.

I'm a conversation killer when the conversation happens to be silly and not amusing.**

*this isn't my actual price target.

**Also,*** occasionally when someone has really strong beliefs and cannot bear to have them challenged that counts as being a conversation killer even though they never stfu and keep repeating themselves.

***Also, also with people who equate "that is wrong" with "you are a horrible person."

Wouldn't selling weed out of your taxicab be easier? But perhaps you already do this on the side; just for the kicks. I know you can't pimp. You don't have the proper wardrobe.

You sound somewhat less intelligent than bragging about trading CDO off a gaussian copula. I also didn't see the word because in this post

CTAs have been garbage for the past decade: https://www.barclayhedge.com/researc...a/sub/cta.html

Not bragging and definitely not worried about sounding intelligent.

If you said that I work too hard, I'd be deeply offended. Telling me that an idea I have is stupid would be great, so long that you explain why it is stupid.*

Yep. Useless drivel without it. Here is a partial because: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=2255327

The part about what puts to buy isn't really very important other than it works as a really good substitute for buying XIV (r.i.p) now that XIV doesn't exist and SVXY has been neutered and has to wear a ridiculous cone on its head to keep it from licking its stitches. You could just short VXX instead, but since you need to rebalance the short to maintain leverage, and I've not discovered (or been made aware of) a way of rebalancing the short that doesn't look like a more ****ty version of XIV, it is all I've got.

Yes. I mentioned them because they'd at least understand how futures contango/backwardation works and be able to critique ideas in a useful manner.

*no real reason for this footnote

Man there is so much wrong with that I can barely touch the surface. I don't think I've ever seen a paper on vix with so little math and so much appeal to reason.

Here's some things to think about:
- Your goal here is to collect VRP by shorting VXX, but by buying a derivative you are in fact paying for vol of vol as well. Do you have reason to believe vol premium > vol of vol premium? Unless its substantial you're taking on two distinct risks for marginal profit.
- The paper accepts VRP as a fact based on looking at charts. How much do you attribute to VRP and how much to Jensens inequality?
- Do you know what the implied borrow rate is for your short position?
- How much do you really trust this backtested data in a highly skewed second order derivative product? Having dodged 2 shocks may have given you a warped sense of sophistication.

It turns out when someone titles a paper 'easy investing' on one of the most complicated products available they are publishing junk most of the time.

Here are some gems from the paper:

It's an inconvenient mathematical fact that this is completely made up

They definitely aren't overselling themselves

Happy backtesting (y)

Is this better than selling vxx or vix call spreads? I like theta decay

Theta decay, like any asset, is great when it's mispriced. Is it mispriced? Some people are going through bankruptcy court right now who were sure it was. "Oh looks it's decaying and printing money every second"....well no, vol could be 50% too cheap and it'd still be theta decaying, and holding it for decay would be stupid and -EV.

brain appears to be looking to passively avoid gamma risk and capitalize on overstated vol. this is a strategy that allows him to watch the price is right and scratch his ball bag. since you trade short duration options, this is pretty much the opposite of what you do. people naked short vol got wrecked on risk management, not really about theta decay. anyone taking on far too much risk is going to get burnt eventually . Also saying vol could be 50% too cheap would be like predicting the future. If one could predict far less of a mispricing than 50% with any sort of accuracy, all of these discussions of pathetic little edges would be worthless

brian can look at the two strategies and sort out what works best for him. take a look at selling a 5 dollar wide (or 10) ATM call spread in Vix or VXX. Sell 45 DTE and close 15 DTE to collect theta and avoid gamma. Repeat. How does that stack up against the put buying strat?

Did you read his paper? The whole point is that they believe vol is predictable. They also support going long vol when its too high

Anyways, outside of edge cases theta and gamma are the same thing. I'm not sure what your strategy is.

I have not and will not read the paper. If by predictable they mean its mean reverting, yes. I also don't believe they or brian support the idea of going long vol when it's too high. there is a difference between theta and gamma and it matters, especially when it matters