A little over a year ago I went to one of those free trading seminars provided by companies that want you to sign up for their coaching or training.

The concept they were teaching was day trading and so it did not interest me very much, but a couple things the speaker said were very interesting. The guy’s name was Tom Busby.

He said that once a stock breaks a hundred $ level for the first time it zooms up 10%.  For example, once a stock breaks through $100 it is going to $110. When it breaks through $200 it is going to $220, etc.

I had heard this before somewhere so I started looking it up. It turns out that Jesse Livermore mentioned this in one of his books. Livermore was probably the best trader of all time.

So now with two reference points I decided this was something worthy of looking into. [...]

Another positive month.

November gave us returns of +5.34%.

To me anything above 5% is a great month. Of course any month with a positive return is good, but 5% or above is better. 

November is usually a good month for option sellers because of all the extra holiday time. It is also close to the end of the year whan many traders and fund managers take extra time off, especially if they have had a good year. With the S&P being up over 20% so far this year, many managers are feeling pretty good about themselves. It doesn’t come close my yearly results of over 40% so far this year with one month left to go but, hey, let them be happy – it’s the holidays.

Today the VIX, traded below 20 for the first time all year.

What does this mean? It means that the markets are calming down almost back to normal, that volatility is coming out, that wild price swings in the stock market won’t be so large, and that option premiums won’t be so juicy.

But overall, a low VIX is fine with me. I don’t like all the wild price swings.  A couple years ago there was a saying, when the VIX is high, time to buy. When the VIX is low, look out below.

When the market drops, VIX moves up and if it gets too low, the market will correct by dropping.

I don’t know how much lower it will go, but I feel it will stabilize somewhere in the area around 20. For the last couple months, it has traded between 20 and 30. A good trade has been to [...]

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has set the date for a shareholders meeting related to its planned acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

In a preliminary proxy statement filed this morning with the SEC, Berkshire gives notice that a special meeting of shareholders will be held at 9:30a on Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at Omaha’s Holland Performing Arts Center.     

Shareholders are being asked to approve a 50-for-1 split of Berkshire’s Class B shares, without splitting the higher-priced Class A shares.

That split would bring Class B shares down from about $3300 each (at today’s price) to roughly $66 each.

In an interview with CNBCjust after the Burlington deal was announced about a month ago, Buffett told us:

“I’m not big on stock splits. But by having this split, it enables anybody that has as little as one share of BNSF to opt for the tax-free exchange… So those small shareholders can have exactly the same availability [...]

How bad is the economy, really?
The economy is so bad that African television stations are showing ‘Sponsor an American Child’ commercials!

The economy is so bad, a picture is now only worth 200 words.

It’s so bad, Snoop Dogg had to start eating regular brownies. 

The economy is so bad, I saw the CEO of Wal-Mart shopping at Wal-Mart.

The economy is so bad, I went to my bank the other day and the teller handed me a note saying, “This is a robbery!”

The economy is so bad, George W. Bush appeared in a flight suit and declared economic recovery was complete.
The economy is so bad, Bill Gates had to switch to dial up.

The economy is so bad, Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.

The economy is so bad, Dr. Seuss rose from the grave to write a new book: Green Eggs and Spam.

The economy is so bad that I went to my bank to [...]

The symbols used to trade options are changing soon. Here is how Fidelity explains the changes:

Options Symbology Initiative (OSI)
Background

Due to the significant growth of the option market, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) has enacted an industry-wide initiative known as the Options Symbology Initiative (OSI). Fidelity will be implementing changes during the weekend of January 23, 2010. The new options symbology will expand the current option series key, commonly referred to as the OPRA symbol, from a 5 character convention to a new key that accommodates up to 22 characters.

Benefits of the symbol change

It will be easier to identify a contract’s underlying security, original expiration date, call or put, and strike price without the use of code-translation tables. It provides more flexibility than the OPRA symbols. The new convention allows for the addition of unique identifiers for new issuers, for the indication of expiration days other than the standard monthly expiration, [...]