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....
Despite sounding somewhat complex, a synthetic option strategy simply refers to combining an option contract with the underlying security to arrive at the same risk/reward profile of a specific options only position. It is not always the intention of the investor to implement a synthetic position. More often then not, the...
It’s been some time since I talked about gold. Not surprising since I am anything but a gold bug. But when you look at where some of the premier Canadian gold stocks are trading, even the most avid non-believer has to take a second look. Not that I recommend buying the miners in search of a turnaround, but as covered call...
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....
This week I’m looking at TransAlta (TSE:TA) as a buying opportunity. Not only did TransAlta options make the most active list last week, an analysis of the price chart reveals a number of technical attributes supporting a continuation to the upside for the stock. TransAlta is a non-regulated electricity generation and...
Back on October 15th, I wrote about some unusual activity on Tim Hortons options that caught my eye earlier in the week. At the time, I hypothesized that a trader may have created a position to take advantage of the earnings report scheduled to be released on November 7th. While I will provide a brief review of the strategy...
Just getting back from holidays makes this a great time to do some follow up on past trade ideas. Most notable among them being the calendar spread on Suncor (See “Calendar Spreads Trough October” – Sept 30–2013). The suggestion was to sell the Suncor November 38 call at 75 cents while simultaneously buying the...
Today’s market open revealed a boost in activity on Cameco (CCO-TC) option contracts. So far this morning all of the action seems to be favoring the call side. As always, I will stress the importance of understanding that this does not suggest a specific directional bias as options are used to meet a number or investor...