Over the years, no topic has been more controversial then the use of options by investment advisors for unsophisticated clients. This has now reached levels where a number of Canadian wealth management firms have placed compliance restrictions on advisors, limiting them to using only the simplest strategies for their clients....
I wanted to use this article to review and discuss the end result of the blog I wrote last month on Talisman Energy (TSX:TLM). While there was substantial options activity last month on the stock, our focus was on one particularly large trade which consisted of the selling of 10,000 put contracts of the November $12.50 strike....
“October: This is one of the particularly dangerous months to invest in stocks. Other dangerous months are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February – Mark Twain Here we are in the first week of October and my phone is ringing off the hook with concerned investors...
There has been no shortage of business media buzz around Carl Icahn (famous investor and businessman) over the last year. While he has a long history as an activist investor over the last 30 years, his bold move on Herbal Life has made him an outright celebrity. For those not familiar with the story, Bill Ackman (an American...
Gold has been in a material bear market for over 2 years. We have now seen some capitulation selling that has seen gold print below $1200.00 in late June. Since the low, gold has been retracing back to its 50 day moving average, which has been resistance for its entire decline during 2013. After such a prolonged bear market, it...
The Canadian banks find themselves feeling a substantial hangover as the Canadian stock market continues to lag. The ongoing stories of the risks to the Canadian real estate market awaken fears of a U.S. style correction that would certainly leave question marks about the bank balance sheets. Debt continues to be a dominant...
How much money should a trader allocate to any single trade? Should they buy the stock or should they buy options? If you’re not sure, you are not alone. The majority of investors and traders do not have a system for determining how much is too much to invest in one idea. This is a dilemma that has been debated and...
The last 2 months have been nothing short of a roller-coaster ride for Canadian investors. For most of 2013, the resource stocks have been struggling while the bank stocks were a glimpse of hope. That was short lived as February rolled in as a new round of selling started pressuring the darling Canadian banks. We have now seen...
On February 28th, 2013 we wrote a blog discussing if Royal Bank was worth investing in. To read the blog, click here: http://optionmatters.ca/blog/2013/03/01/royal-opportunity/ Our focus was to find an interesting way for investors to play Royal Bank. At that time in February, these were the facts: Royal Bank was trading at...
The Canadian market has continued to complacently forge ahead. Overall we have seen little progress higher throughout March as the international geopolitical circumstances in Cyprus and Korea have started to slowly taper investor enthusiasm. In past blogs, the current state of the implied volatility priced into index options...