Chalco’s Shanghai Stock Gains Threefold on Its Debut, by Helen Yuan
Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., China’s biggest aluminum maker, also known as Chalco, rose as high as 20.07 yuan from its issue price of 6.6 yuan.
Every day in every way things are getting crazier and crazier and crazier. ;-)
I’m considering buying a pair of these pants. Any thoughts?
Reader “Born2Code” left this comment in a recent post that intrigued me:
“If you are looking for a day trade and you have a dummy entry you can use the exact setup to enter ATM (or ITM) front month calls.”
Is this a good idea? I tried to get the data off the Bloomberg to draw an overlay chart (option on top of stock), but I couldn’t. I’m an old fart like Sandy Weill so if anyone can tell me how to export intraday options data from the Bloomberg I’d be much obliged. Anyway, I just grabbed some screenshots instead.
So here we have the call summary page which has Delta, Gamma, Vega, but no (Catherine) Zeta (-Jones), alas.
OK, enough fooling around, let’s look at the 1-minute chart of the AMZN May 55 Calls. That, my friends, is a chart which makes me break into a cold sweat just squinting at it because there’s nothing happening there. Sure I screwed up and didn’t grab the whole day’s chart, but you get the idea.
Now to be fair we can look at it from a volume at price perspective for a better view of the action, seeing exactly where those 2,964 contracts traded.
Still I’m not comfortable with the idea of using options to trade dummy spots. I’ll keep thinking about it, and I’ll try not to be such a fuddy-duddy — I’m trying to keep an open mind. Comments about the (de)merits of Dummies trading options are most welcome!
UPDATE:
Here’s the 15-minute chart for the May 55 calls over Thursday and Friday. You can see that the action on the 26th (Thursday) was pretty good, but the 27th (Friday) looks just awful. They would get you coming and going if you tried to be an options Dummy that day.
This line from an interview in this week’s Barron’s made me laugh out loud:
Back when he started, [Michael Steinhardt] says, hedge-fund chiefs were members of “a very limited, elite group that had mystery and excitement and élan. Now, it’s all about making money for the managers.”
I think there’s still plenty of élan and excitement around, but I’m not sure about the mystery. And it was always about the money. Anyway, later in the article he redeems himself by saying something I totally agree with:
“Mutual funds have been a disgrace, and if they were really measured in terms of their real performance, the disgrace would be much bigger.”
Good thing an unwitting public doesn’t know they’re being shaken and stirred. Maybe there’s our missing mystery.
The main interview in this week’s issue was with someone named Charles Hess whose firm is called Inferential Analysis. Here’s one of his inferences: In an insecure world people need to maintain their sanity… preferably through getting more sleep… so they will spend money on replacing their mattresses. No word on what he charges “an elite group of financial institutions and hedge funds and multinational corporations” for this kind of deep thinking.
And China did not knock “one of our satellites out of the air in October,” as Hess said, they knocked out one of their own. A petty detail for someone obviously focused on “mega-trends,” but it would have been a wee little bit more of a problem had it been one of ours.
I did learn one interesting thing from the interview and here it is:
“The Web-TV series and podcast, Diggnation, features two guys sitting with laptops and talking about technology. But they attract 250,000 viewers and have 15 sponsors paying $10,000 each per episode to place products like beer and tea on the show. Adagio Teas sold $100,000 of tea after the two hosts plugged the tea on the show.”
Oil Services, the Q’s, and Semis all outperformed …
… while Gold, Retail, and Regional Banks were relative underperformers.
Want to Be Next Warren Buffett? by Karen Richardson (W$J, but link may work)
“[Buffett] will have little to judge [applicants] on but their words, personal and private investment records — and his gut reaction to them. Mr. Buffett says he is confident that he will find one, and maybe two successful candidates. Famous for buying companies after brief meetings with owners, Mr. Buffett prides himself on being able to read strangers quickly … [Buffett] plans to hand [the new managers] up to $10 billion to manage until it is time for them to take over the entire portfolio. Mr. Buffett explains that the purpose of the trial run is ‘to see if their decision-making apparatus works out, hopefully while I’m still alive.’”
I was reminded of this bit (paraphrased) from the Louis Simpson profile:
In 1979 Geico’s chairman, John J. Byrne, sent several candidates to see Mr. Buffett about the chief investment officer job. After a four-hour interview with Mr. Simpson, Mr. Buffett called Mr. Byrne. “Stop the search,” Mr. Bryne recalled him saying. “That’s the fellow.”
That was a good decision; let’s hope Buffett can find someone equally “unfancy.”
Poor tone all day, not a great time for the longs. A few notables from the new lows list: Southwest Airlines (LUV), Rackable Systems (RACK), and OmniCare (OCR).
Baidu.com (BIDU) was the stock du jour though it would’ve been darn tough to make a dime there.
High demand, high growth, high… inflation?
Baltic Exchange Capesize Index (BCI) - 11 daily Capesize vessel assessments including voyage and time charter rates.
Along with all the usual Short and UltraShort ETFs, there’s Ballard Power Systems (BLDP) on the new lows list. (Check out the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy ETF (PBW) if you’re interested in exposure to that sector).
Homebuilders jumped nicely… meanwhile some jerk’s lowball limit order is sitting in there.
AMZN was the stock du jour (again) doing over 175,000 trades and moving up smartly.
Here’s a monthly chart of Amazon.com since it came public back in August 1997 to give you a better long-term perspective.
