Volatility Games

10:31am EDT: Seems like market makers are playing some nasty volatility games with our long term puts – observe:

I still think that kind of drop is excessive, especially since the VIX was around 26 when I bought those, but alright – I’ll quit bitching about it now. BTW, if you bought calls at the bottom to play this thing up you just got hosed, which is why I never do that. You could sell some front or near month puts against the ones you’re holding and I think this will be a good strategy going forward. I’d actually like for Fujisan to chime in on that very subject later this week as it’ll be an important exercise for all of us in the coming months.

BTW, regarding those bullshit U3 numbers – nothing really has changed and U6 at 16.8 will come back to haunt them later this year. It doesn’t matter if you are being counted or not – you’re still not getting into a mortgage and you’re not buying anything if you’re busy not getting kicked out of your apartment.

For what it’s worth, disqus completely sucks and the guy running it has seemingly adopted a ‘works for me’ attitude – which are the three deadly words in software engineering. Time to start looking for an alternative solution – I’m open to suggestions or inquiries by the competition. Had it with those constant outages…

Okay, I think I had my fill of bitching and will go back to bed now – not worth watching this tape.