One of the things I pride myself on is being a jack of all trades. I may not be the best at any one thing, but I'm pretty decent at most things.
Now I figure just because I work in an office doesn't mean I can't work with my hands. With that mindset I happily spent two full weekends putting up a backsplash that I could have paid someone $500 to do in half a day. And with that same mindset, I spent this weekend putting up a shower door. Took me a pretty long time, but I got it done! I'll post a pic of it later.
Now back to my day job, and back to trading. JPM's up $1 on the day so far, and the market's flat. As are my calls. Come on JP, do your thing.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Super Fast Trade Execution
I had the fastest fill I have ever had on an options trade today. I mean, I literally pressed the button, flipped over to the order status screen, and read my status "filled". Now besides the sense of foreboding that this made me feel (I mean if the market maker's that willing to jump on a bid it makes me kind of nervous), I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the speed of the fill. I bought 6 contracts of JPM Jan 55 Calls, so we'll see soon if that was a good idea or a bad idea.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Commission Fees
About a year and a half ago i left the blue bank to go work at the green bank.
Being a bit lazy / nostalgic / comfortable, I kept trading at the blue bank.
Recently though I've been feeling like a bit of a bad team player by doing this, so I moved the proceeds of one option trade over. The plan was to buy 30 contracts of E-Trade April 4 Calls in my green bank discount brokerage account. Total would be about $1300 + commission. But holy sticker shock batman!!! The cost of the same trade at the green bank is a whopping $145! vs a paltry $43 at the blue bank! That's over 10% of the cost of the trade! The option would have to go up over 25% just to break even! Needless to say I will now have to rethink my trade.
Now I obviously want to be a good corporate citizen, but this differential in cost makes it pretty tough to do so - at least with respect to option trades.
At any rate, I'm going to have to explore some alternatives here, because this is definitely not a good scene.
Being a bit lazy / nostalgic / comfortable, I kept trading at the blue bank.
Recently though I've been feeling like a bit of a bad team player by doing this, so I moved the proceeds of one option trade over. The plan was to buy 30 contracts of E-Trade April 4 Calls in my green bank discount brokerage account. Total would be about $1300 + commission. But holy sticker shock batman!!! The cost of the same trade at the green bank is a whopping $145! vs a paltry $43 at the blue bank! That's over 10% of the cost of the trade! The option would have to go up over 25% just to break even! Needless to say I will now have to rethink my trade.
Now I obviously want to be a good corporate citizen, but this differential in cost makes it pretty tough to do so - at least with respect to option trades.
At any rate, I'm going to have to explore some alternatives here, because this is definitely not a good scene.
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