There's essentially an infinite supply of all these metals in space, on asteroids and such. Eventually we'll be able to mine those and bring them back.

The asteroid Psyche alone is estimated to be worth $10 quintillion. Bringing a 140 mile diameter metal object to Earth might not be easy

Likewise. I did similar around the same time. I dabbled in 3x levered VIX ETFS, S&P 500 ETFS, and gold miner ETFS. My total losses on these were in the 6 figures (over 2 years after tax salary at the time). I invest very conservatively now and am still digging out from that hole I made with a capital loss carryover following me yearly on my tax returns to remind me of my stupidity.

On a positive note, I'm up almost 30k this week (mostly on 4k shares of WBA that are up about $6/share this week). That will knock a big chunk out of that loss carryover.

1/2/21 - BTC hits $32k - "This thing is so overvalued, I can't believe it's this high"

1/11/21 - BTC hits $32k - "Huge buying opportunity. Buy the dips. Steal of a lifetime"

I have a BOA savings and 2 checking. Come at me bro!

No kidding. People post their big winners, but you rarely hear about the big losers.

One of the reasons I left my 9 year job a couple years ago was so I could roll over the 401k with terrible investment options to a vanguard IRA where I can do whatever I want with it. The final nail in it for me was when they switched over a real estate fund, that held actual ownership in 100+ properties to a REIT fund and said they were comparable. I had about half of my 401k in the real estate fund and it did great from 2009-2017.

We all know Ice likes to partake in the spirits at night. This isn't the first time. He'll be back.

I see both sides on PSTH. I said before I don't like Ackman. Right now you're paying $29 for $20 cash and a promise. I bought 1000 yesterday and sold covered calls on them expiring Friday. Thinking more on it, I closed the positions today for about $250 profit. I like the strategy, but I'd like it much better in the $22-25 range. Paying $1.50 for $1 is awfully risky.

I post some of my trades, but nobody seems to care since they aren't the sexy growth names. I posted shorting PTON at $166 and it fell as low as $141 a couple days ago. I posted that I'm biggest long on WBA and XOM. They were down huge at one point, but are up 50-70% off their lows. They both seem like low risk turnaround no brainer dividend plays right now. WBA is finally seeing results of their multi-year turnaround effort. They just sold their wholesale pharma stake for $6.5+ billion plus stock. They're adding VillageMD clinics to most of their stores. I see them as an investment, not a trade and they are by far my biggest position. I had over 5000 shares a few months ago, but have cut back to about 2000 for risk management.

That's what they are. I saw an article this morning that said the average stock purchased through a SPAC since 2015 is down something like 18%.

Shorting is just the opposite of buying. You sell stock you don't own for a promise to buy it back later, hopefully at a cheaper price so you make a profit. Can be dangerous, but can also make a lot fast. Stocks take the stairs up, but the elevator down.

I'm thinking of shorting DASH after it just ran up $50 in 3 days on no news.

Ok I did it. Hopefully I don't look like a fool in a few hours/days.

Short 100 at 184.50.
Sold a $185 put expiring Friday for $8.20.

If held to expiration and the stock is below $185, I'll make $770. If it's above $185, I'll make $820 + (184.50 - whatever stock price is) * 100. So if it's $190, I'll still make $270 even though I'm down $550 on the short stock portion. I'll have to be wrong on the short all the way to $192.70 before I start losing money.

Usually when I do this, I close out the positions early if they get up near the maximum profit. If they turn into a loss, I just sell another put the next week, and the next week, until I finally come out ahead. My theory is that nothing goes up forever and I'm only losing time. I've only been doing this strategy for a few months, but it hasn't failed yet.

*@#$ Short Squeeze....

I bought back my put and sold another out a couple weeks. Now instead of break even at $192.xx, I'm profitable up to $204.xx. Just have to hold the position a couple extra weeks. Gotta be nimble when you're playing with fire.

You know it’s a good night when you drain the thread and don’t remember it the next day

That sounds kind of dirty...

The few IPOs I've watched lately, the stocks drop quite a bit in the weeks leading up to lockup expiration, but on the actual day of lockup they've gone up significantly. Just the opposite of what the retail traders are expecting.

On an IPO, certain employees and insiders can't sell until a few months after the IPO. When that date comes, some traders expect a flood of selling to occur.

Any thoughts on WOOF and POSH IPOs? Both down today, putting their market caps at 6-7 billion. Not the sexy tech names most here like though.

https://www.highshortinterest.com/

How are they reasonably valued now when the stock is the highest since 2007, but sales and earnings are a fraction of what they were in 2007?

There they go again. GME and AMC up 40% in the premarket. BB up 33%.

Of course it is. My covered calls executed Friday.

FYI you can buy AMC and sell 1/29 calls for about $1. That's some pretty nice protection for 4 days.

That was for calls that were 0.75 and 1.25 out of the money too.

Good thing you didn't, with it now at $140.

MAC has the 4th highest short interest. It's part of the squeeze the shorts game going on right now.

Probably, but a $150 short would have looked better.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/daytrading-army-unleashes-furious-cascade-short-squeeze-meltups

All you degenerate gamblers broke the market today

Robinhood is experiencing issues with crypto trading
Vanguard tweeted it understands some clients are experiencing issues accessing their accounts
TD Ameritrade says it is aware of an issue impacting a small number of clients on the thinkorswim platform, a company spokesperson said
Charles Schwab announced it worked to resolve an issue
There was a slowdown in Merrill logins earlier Monday, but the situation has been resolved, according to a Bank of America spokesperson
E*Trade users reported problems Monday, according to Downdetector

I couldn't access Vanguard for about 20 minutes a couple hours ago.

They've changed from a way to hedge your stock positions to a way to control the market itself. Softbank pretty much single-handedly caused a couple tech surges last year.

True, but AMC has some substance behind it I think. Their new financing will keep them solvent for a while. I rarely/never get it on these pump and dumb stocks, but I bought some AMC Friday and more today.

I almost went to work for them a couple years ago. Their corporate office is one street over from where I work now. I applied, but when I heard details of how their IT department works, I canceled my interview. Glad I didn't go for it with all the layoffs from Covid.

Supposedly shorts add much needed liquidity in volatile markets. They are much needed buyers in a down market and sellers in an up market.

Thanks to all of you that brought it up. It and the wallstreetbets stuff wasn't really on my radar. I'm well hedged, so my gains are limited, but I could make a max of around $10k if it's above $5.50 at the end of the week. That would be a big shot in the arm this early in the new trading year. It would have to drop to around $3.25 before I went negative on my positions.

Starting to get antsy on it. Close the positions early for a double, or wait it out for a home run?

My covered calls are at 5.50 and 6.00, except some next Friday at 3.50 I bought last week. Premiums were much lower last week, so I sold 3.50s on my 3.20 shares. Looking pretty likely it will be over 3.50 next Friday, so I'll let that batch ride and get called away.

Ditto. The ones I sold last Friday, for 2/5, were 20 cents out of the money and only got 0.67 premium. 20% of the share price at the time for 2 weeks. Still nothing to sneeze at.

And you know he does that on purpose to thumb his nose at the SEC.

While everybody is watching GME and AMC, the rest of the high flyers are kind of falling apart this morning. Might be something to keep an eye on. The ARK ETFs are down about 3% each.

PSTH down to 26 and change too. AFRM lowest since IPO day. I'm getting a bit of that today.

Usually in tears. I've seen similar trading behavior every few years in different parts of the market. Dot Com, anything with blockchain in the name, anything related to pot, now anything with high short interest. It's a temporary phenomenon that will be over in a few weeks at most.

Here's your reason for the dump on the quality stocks this morning.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hedge-funds-are-puking-longs-cover-short-squeeze-losses

Recent IPO Posh might be worth a look finally. It dropped 10% this morning to new all time lows and then recovered to go green. That's usually a good sign of bottoming. It was down about 40% from it's IPO day high.

I thought the squeeze would be tougher on larger companies. NOK just went from 25 billion to 50 billion market cap in minutes. AMC was under a billion, so that was no surprise.

I just swing trade a little in my Vanguard accounts so all my buying power is concentrated in one place (their trading platform is horrible). I haven't been able to log in for a couple hours now, so I'm just spectating today. I bought a little AFRM on the opening drop, but haven't been able to get back on since.

Kinda regret those covered calls.....

amc1 (resized).JPG

amc2 (resized).JPG

Call premiums for Friday were $2+ when I checked a couple hours ago. Could have sold covered calls and would have been a profitable trade if it closed above $5 Friday.

Still high. $7 calls are $1.62 at this second.

They would be crazy not to do an offering soon.

When the CEO was on CNBC a couple days ago he mentioned maybe loans being converted to shares.

Or it slaps everyone around and does a 1/4 night.

I sold a few $55 puts on PINS at the close today for next Friday. Low risk, and it will get me in at about $52.50 if does drop that far in a week.

Sounds like you handled it fine. I would have sold at $20, $5, and $5.

Like it hasn't done since last March? When you last posted here and cashed out everything? No need to be jealous of the traders making money here.

Fair enough. I’d like to buy cheaper too. I play both short and long equally, but shorting feels dirty sometimes.

I would think you just can't buy it on Margin. If you have the money to buy, you should be able to buy it.

I also don't understand why anybody uses Robinhood these days when trading is free everywhere. It made sense when they were free and others weren't.

If you don't have a margin account, you can't buy and sell with unsettled funds. It takes like 3 days for funds from a sale to settle. Do it enough times and they'll restrict your account.

Once in a while should be fine. It's like daytrading. If you don't have $25k and a margin account, you can't buy and sell the same stock on the same day more than a couple times a week or something or you'll get restricted.

The SPAC crowd sure went silent recently. That was no match for short-crushing mania.

It was over 20 when I woke up a couple hours ago.

You all might be right about RH not allowing buying:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/you-can-not-purchase-additional-shares-robinhood-reportedly-removed-shuts-down-buying

AMC down to 11 and GME down from 500+ to 275 on the restrictions.

This would be entertaining. It was enough to spike Silver 4% this morning.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/reddit-rebellion-about-descend-precious-metals-market

I'd expect the hedge funds favorite longs to bounce hard today if they got the short losses under control.

Yep, been long XOM for about a year. Collecting the nice divs.

I think AMC still has a story. The shares they issued were to people converting loans, so that's all debt wiped away. I bought in just now at 7.40 and then sold $10 calls expiring tomorrow for $1.50.

And those people got their shares at $13.50, so they obviously think that's a good deal or they wouldn't have taken those in exchange for their loans.

I didn't really understand the NOK hype, as they didn't have a large short percentage. I bought yesterday, but with the calls I sold, my cost basis is essentially $4.60-4.75. Break even at this point. I could see it dropping as low as $3.80-4.00, or flying again. Flip a coin on that one. Earnings next week could help.

For all its limitations as a trading platform, Vanguard hasn't blocked trading in any stock or option that I've tried. They cater more to long term index fund purchasers investing their retirement accounts, so maybe they expect their users to be adults and take responsibility for their trades.

They have no premarket trading and a very limited after market session, so that's the biggest drawback I've found. Keeps me from doing something stupid sometimes.

Wait what? This has always been a "trading" thread, not investing. Except when investingdad shows up. It's just that the trades changed from days/weeks to minutes.

I was giving you props. I wish I'd just bought index funds for the last 20 years. I'd have 3x or more what I do now.

People than loaned them 600 million took shares in exchange of having the loan repaid. They either sold them already or believe it's worth more than $13.50.

I wouldn't go near XSPA. I day traded it for about a week back 3 or 4 years ago. Last I knew their business model was spas in airports. Accounting for reverse splits, it looks like they are down about 98% since then.

Today is playing out pretty much how I expected. Longs like Apple are getting sold off because of the huge losses in the most shorted stocks. If the reddit gang keeps this going for a few weeks, I think we'll see a mini market crash.

You can do it, just don't do it more than 3 times this week.

Nah. It's as Wolfmarsh said.

The SEC collaborated with the NYSE and NASD to determine a “Pattern Day Trader”, as one who executes four or more round trips in a rolling 5-business day period in a margin account.

1999-2000 was pretty similar. That was my first year out of college, so I didn't participate, but I watched it daily and all my co-workers were talking about it.

I saw some of it starting up about this time last year, before the pandemic shut up all the new daytraders in my office. People were opening accounts with $200 and buying far out of the money call options.

I remember waiting and watching Ask Jeeves IPO. I think they were up 500% at one point on their opening day. I used their site quite a bit as an alternative to google.

There's no wash sales on profits.

Even on a loss, it's not a big deal. Your cost basis just gets adjusted. You don't lose the loss, it just carries forward.

That's disturbing. I have covered calls on all my positions at Vanguard, including AMC and NOK from late last week.

I sold out of all my AMC positions yesterday a couple hours before close. I had covered calls on everything and holding through the end of the week was risking several dollars per share on the shares to squeeze out the last 30 cents per share on the calls. Wasn't worth the risk. Overall made about $7500 trading it, but if I had never sold the calls and just ridden the shares up to 18-20, I would have made 6 figures.

Only other reddit position I traded was NOK, which I still have. Bought around $6, sold $10 calls and bought those back the next day for about $2/share gain. Sold $6 calls on them after that. Doubled share position at $5 and sold $5 calls on those. Overall it looks like I could sell out of everything this morning for about $1k total gains, or risk holding until Friday through earnings and end up somewhere between break even and $2k gain. I'll probably close out and move on.

It was fun while it lasted.

For core holdings, I doubled my XOM positions yesterday. Fundamentals are improving rapidly, earnings this morning, and it had dropped from $51->$45 in a week or so. 8% dividend payer.

Should have sold my WBA last week when they popped 10% on the new CEO news. It gave all that pop back already. Sold some puts on that yesterday that could potentially double my position there. I like where they are headed.

Said I liked and picked up AFRM at $102 and it's up to $108. Out of my PTON and DASH shorts. Both lost money on the shares, but both made enough selling weekly puts for a few weeks to make up for the loss and then some. Stressful trading that way.

If AMC gets down around $8 and the call premiums are $2+, I might give it another go. I didn't see it dropping this much in extended hours.

Usually the same week or the next week. Depending on the difference in premiums, I might sell them right at the price I bought the shares, just hoping to make 100% gains on the options and nothing on the shares if I'm lucky. If each dollar higher on the calls is only like 10 cents less in premium, I might go out 2-4 dollars. In that case maybe I could make $4/share on the shares and $1.50/share on the calls if the stock went up $4.

I try to make it so worst case I don't lose. If the shares are $8 and the calls are $2, it would have to go under $6 to lose overall. And if it does, I usually hold the shares and sell more calls for the next week. I've been doing this strategy with longs + calls and shorts + puts for a few months now and haven't lost yet. At some point, a stock will stop going up or stop going down and I'll come out ahead I hope. I did this with shorting PTON for about 6 weeks. Overall I lost about $5000 on the short, but I collected about $6500 in premiums on the puts I was selling to protect the short.

I'll look at WISH. KODK scares me. It was worthless until that Trump tweet or whatever spiked it last year.

I really want to try POSH, but 3 weeks after the IPO there's still no options. It IPO'd the same day as WOOF and WOOF had options in under a week.

Yep. I bought 1500 at 7.75 and sold 15 $8 calls for $2.25. Think they were next Friday expiration. So that puts the basis at $5.50 for break even. If it drops another dollar or two I'll double up.

Dumped all the NOK positions. They were in a SEP IRA I just started a couple years ago. Not much in it. Made $780 overall on that trade.

Nah. I haven't read enough to research all the different option strategies. Collars, spreads, straddles, etc. I know they exist, but don't know what they mean. I'm not sure my Vanguard account even supports them. I'll stick with simple strategies I know.

I've never read a book solely devoted to options, but I've read about 20 investing and trading books and most at least dedicate a chapter or two to options.

For me:

If I want to own a stock a bit lower than it currently is, I sell a put at that level. If it gets there, it forces me to buy it, if not I collect the premiums.

If I want to own a stock now, I buy it and sell covered calls at a higher price if it's something I want to own for a while or at the current price if it's a quick trade.

If I want to short a stock, I short it and sell puts at the current price or a little lower. That protects me against the short going against me, but limits the gains to pretty much the premium of the put.

Thinking about buying a bunch of value dividend payers in my retirement accounts and selling calls on them all to get extra income that way.

What I never do is buy out of the money calls. Yes you can make a fortune on them if you're right, but you can easily lose it all too. It doesn't make sense to me to buy something that has to go up 20% in a year just to break even as the premium decays.

Yah I figured it was something like that. I only have level 2 options approval on Vanguard, so I can't sell calls without owning the shares. I'm guessing if I applied for level 3 then I could do the spreads.

Robinhood just increased their share limits, so the gang can buy again. Not sure it's enough to help.

How so? Buy $50 and it goes to $500, you made 10x your money.
Short at $500 and it goes to $50, you didn't even double your money.

I was using that as a concrete example as it did get to $500 in the premarket. I think $483 was the high during regular hours. You would have gotten either if you were watching and sold at those times.

Yep, some were only allowing it by phone. And all brokers will need you to get approved for different levels of option trading. Took 3-4 days per account when I added those to my vanguard accounts.

Went ahead and closed this out. Volatility dropped while the stock stayed around where I bought it. +$290. Better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Feels like AMC is just going to drift lower from here, but if there's another big move I'll put on a similar position again.

Those things just aren't for me. Essentially you're buying $10 bills for $34 and a dream right?

I've tried it. I've read countless books on daytrading, technical analysis, indicators, etc. I'd have real time charts with indicators going on 3 monitors at once. I'd watch channels, VWAP, falling/rising wedges, support/resistance, moving averages, etc. I found I was great at making $100 10 times in a row, then losing $1500 in one quick wrong trade.

Maybe, but if you set it too conservative, like 1-2%, it's going to get hit on normal price fluctuations. Too many times I saw a stop get hit exactly on the number, then reverse hard the other way.

I think there's some absolute rules you must follow to be successful daytrading. Never ever add to a losing position. Don't go "I'm down 5%, if I just double down, it only has to get half that back and I'll be even overall and I promise I'll get out and never do it again". If you really day trade, never hold a position overnight. Too many uncertainties. That 1% chance of something bad happening will get you eventually.

Ebay earnings just now were great. Could potentially give a hint on POSH.

They’re like $1 each.

You pretty much describe exactly what I do. I’ve been doing that for about a year and made more than the previous 10 years combined with just stocks.

True. I mostly do it with stocks in the $50-125 range.

Definitely risky. I would/do only use this strategy with stuff I wouldn't mind owning anyway. I got burned when I first started it by selling like 5 SPY $300 puts right before the pandemic. I was forced to buy 500 shares at $290ish when it was all the way down in the low 200s. Thankfully I had enough saved back that I could basically double down at the lows. That and it was SPY, so you know eventually it will recover.

I've been bringing this up for months. My biggest and longest held position. They popped 10+% a couple weeks ago on the new CEO announcement, then gave all those gains back. Great opportunity there.

I really like XOM too. It's my second biggest dividend play. Oil is going up by the day and is at 52 week highs. Last time oil was this high, XOM was around 70, but it's only 50 now. Activists are going after it to unlock value, they talked about merging with Chevron (which would never happen IMO), and eventually they'll move into cleaner energy. Their latest oil finds they are working on are profitable down to like $30/barrel oil. Oh and the dividend is 7+%

My initial buy was $66, but I kept buying all the way down to $33 or so. Some shares I swing traded for profits, but the remaining shares I cost averaged down to about $50 (plus collected 4 quarters of juicy dividends).

It was $45 just 5 days ago, now $52. Feels like that was the final dip.

I'm guessing you can upgrade to a margin account if you have $25k balance and get rid of that 90 day restriction.