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+1. A lot of financially successful people, when interviewed, state that they made the majority of their wealth in 1 stock or business. With investing, this has been proven time and time again, with stocks such as MSFT, intc, aapl, dell, Cisco, and IBM. Of course, there are many failures as...

May I ask, what is your largest position?

I am very interested in the upcoming twitter ipo. Rumors are they want to go public before thanksgiving. Good article in the most recent fortune magazine on the co-founder and chairman, Jack Dorsey. He also co-founded a second company, square, a mobile payment company, which could also go...

Thanks for the link! Horace Dediu is a sharp guy. If these podcasts are anything like his podcasts on aapl and the smartphone industry, then we are in for a treat. Can't wait to listen.

As sleepy and others have stated, the jan 16s will likely be avail in early nov. 350s would be less risky with another year's duration, but will not be as cheap as the jan 15s. Only problem is a run up before the 16s are released, including q3 earnings. Still, jan 16 may be worth a buy after...

Agree 100% with you that LEAPS offset the short term swings in a momentum stock like tsla. What strikes and expiration are you considering as a replacement for the 140s you are contemplating to sell?

Yes, that is correct, but I am in luv2b camp of buying options (ie risk a little for a potential to make a lot) rather than sell something for say $1 to have potential of buying it back for $10. However, many ways to skin a cat.

To my fellow Delawarean :) et al., If Tsla pulls back to 170 and we are in a high IV environment and are very confident that tsla will be above 200 in Jan 14, an example of a spread to buy would be a Dec 170/190 bull call spread for around $7 (I am basing the price of the spread based on...

on a pullback and if IV remains high, the better play in my opinion is to initiate an intact bull call spread and to sell half once it doubles to obtain a risk free play.

Since it is a sell to open order, it will be a taxable event in one of three scenarios: 1) the date you buy to close the option you sold 2) the option is exercised by the person you sold it to 3) the option expires worthless

What did you buy?

Close above 175 would be nice.

Congrats on your first delayed construct bull call spread! Hopefully, it was a risk free or near risk free spread.

Welcome to the wonderful world of options and good luck!

If sleepy's 10% gain based on db's upgrade comes to fruition, that will take us to 182-183. Crystal ball time: do you think it stops there or will it overshoot?

i need to borrow your crystal ball!

Anyone following MasterCard? Beautiful v shaped recovery off the lows since the beginning of sept. Was considering buying options on MasterCard, but decided to buy tsla options instead :(

for the stock replacement strategy, look for a delta of 90 or above. With regards to other factors with the DITM LEAP as stock replacement, the LEAP, especially if considering jan 15 or 16, will not be sensitive to time decay because it is so far out from expiration. However, it will be...

Does anyone have any experience with this Oneil Equity Research, ie is it worth subscribing to, and if so, what is the cost? Thanks.

Lump, I am also looking at the 3d printer sector, mainly ddd and ssys. Are you also invested in Ddd or just ssys? If only ssys, why did you choose it over ddd?

This is a good read. Does anyone know if this Oneil special report newsletter is worth subscribing to, and what is the cost? Thanks.

good choice sleepy. No need to milk every dime out of a risk free spread and have to deal with possible exercise or shorting shares. I'd rather have a nice, relaxing weekend than worry about exercise shenanigans and plan for your next trade. Anytime you can get out with 90% of max profit is a...

Dave, did you follow the facebook ipo roadshow and did you end up investing in it? Seems like after a tumultuous year, facebook's stock is really beginning to take off. I ended up not buying due to the glitch on the ipo day, but it certainly has become interesting again over the last couple...

It is still in the early stages, but does anyone have any preliminary thoughts on the potential twitter ipo? Is it a day one buy or is it better to wait and hope to get a better price, like what occurred with facebook during its first year?

If you open the lower leg with a longer dated option than the short, then technically it is a call calendar spread vs. both options with similar expiration (which would be a pure vertical spread). Good luck!

mershaw, In theory, it sounds good, but I am very hesitant about shorting naked calls under any circumstance. Plus, you would need the highest options trading level in order to short naked calls.

90% of max profit is very good indeed. No need to get greedy trying to squeeze another 10% out by holding for another week b/c, like you said, anything can happen. Now you can start researching your next bull call spread! BTW, do you prefer intact bull call spreads or delayed construct?

Sorry. I was using the 10 day simple moving average. $200+ by Q3 earnings and $250 after would be most welcomed, and much sooner than my own price target of $200 by march 2014.

3rd day in a row that tsla is being contained by the 10 day MA. Need to get above this in order for the uptrend to continue.

Sub, It can be confusing but I always use the buying power(non margin) to be extra sure that I won't receive any margin calls. I also keep a separate excel spreadsheet to document my profit and losses and to keep track of my cash balance.

you can move the entire account, with securities included when you transfer. Only problem, is during the transfer, you can't access your holdings so can't take advantage of buying/selling shares or options. The holdings, as far as i can tell, are essentially frozen until the move is complete.

Kevin, i haven't done it with thinkorswim in awhile (as I only have a minimal account balance with them currently), but did test it a couple years ago when I switched. IB execution was faster and commissions were cheaper than thinkorswim when I made the switch. I still have an optionxpress...

you should be able to designate your account as FIFO (first in, first out) or LIFO (last in, first out). With FIFO, the shares sold will be the one you have held the longest and with LIFO, the shares sold will be the most recent ones.

yes, IB is interactive brokers. Like Causalien, I also kept my thinkorswim account to use their desktop platform for charting and options analysis. Thinkorswim's desktop platform is still the best, IMO, but IB beats it on commissions and executions.

Agree with all of the above. I switched from thinkorswim to IB for my taxable accounts about 2 years ago and haven't looked back. The desktop platform can be confusing at first, but learning to navigate it in order to receive the best execution and commissions is well worth it. Still have my...

Dave, very interesting. I am not familiar with a flat base, but am familiar with a bullish flag/pennant. I wonder what the differences are between the two?

MasterCard up nicely this week. Although it is a non-tech company, I think it will continue to do well as the rest of the world moves away from paper money.

Scty coming close to support around $27, from 200 day ma and consolidation area from early may. If it can hold in that area, could provide an attractive entry point.

Just an educated guess, but likely in Nov or Dec.

thanks for the correction. I guess I was typing too fast on the ipad!

With the volatile swings in solar and inherent risks associated with the sector in the foreseeable future, as documented in this forum, I would not play solar stocks with short term options. One can consider longer term options, LEAPS, or even shares. Choices are limited because only 3...

you can use thinkorswim's platform, which has a thinkback function, with historic options pricing in real time.

what "clear warning signals" did we miss on solar city? They didn't quite have as good an earnings qtr as tsla, which is the current darling of the street, so scty tanked. Remember, solar stocks (including scty) have had tremendous gains during the 1st half of the year, so any disappointment...

Sleepy, The trader in the aapl PDF who did this was SNIPUS. He didn't go into details, but he often bought LEAPS calls which had appreciated significantly, and thus, he had a large tax bill, which he partially offset by selling calls. Don't know how he managed it, but the guy was very shrewd...

There is a story in Barron's this weekend entitled "Dark clouds over solar city". I don't subscribe to Barron's, so don't have access to the article, but this could lead to additional downward pressure on the stock next week.

DaveT, Trading earnings is indeed a tricky endeavor, especially when using options. In addition to choosing the right direction, one also has to contend with the actual earnings report (revenue, profit, margins, and guidance), analysts expectations such as whisper numbers as well as the...

Sub, Using your example of Jan 15 $110 LEAP, currently trading for about $71.75 with Tsla trading about $164.50 about a couple hours ago. This LEAP has a delta of 0.82. The time premium of this option is $17.75 ($110+$71.75-$164.50) so effectively, you are buying TSLA today at $181.75...

Citzen T, What other 3d printer stocks do you own? In addition to DDD, I am currently looking at SSYS and XONE. Also looking forward to reading 2 books on the potential 3d printer revolution (when I can get some more spare time) entitled "Fabricated" and "Makers".

Congrats to all who played SOL earnings! It looks very good in the premarket.

Gym, Yes, in theory one could recycle a set amount of money into "infinite" zero cost bull call spreads. See a trader by the name of "Gregg Thurman" in the aapl pdf. Read his posts on how he took about 10k to multi 7 figures and bought a bunch of colllectible cars using delayed construct...