GS

The vertical bull spreads that subscribers hold in this stock are virtually riskless, since they were legged on for a net CREDIT of 0.01.  This means that if Goldman shares were to fall to zero we would have no loss, even after commissions.  Specifically, we hold the July 195-200 call spread 32 times -- a position that could produce a gain for us of $16,000 if Goldman is trading above $200 when the options expire on July 19. What are the chances that this gambit will pay off at maximum odds? The chart shows that Goldman would need to put on a powerful burst of speed to deliver on its potential.  A move to at least 180.67 looks like an odds-on bet a this point, and if the stock were to get there before July we'd be tempted to tell you to cash out of the position for a profit of perhaps $3000-$4000. That's because GS would probably have to noodle around for a week or two to develop enough thrust for the additional $20 run-up it would take to push our spread in-the-money.  For now, let's cross our fingers and hope that we are challenged with such a decision.  Think you can't do this stuff?  Click here and let us show you how. ______ UPDATE (July 8):  The stock is trading about where it was two months ago, making the chance of a payoff extremely remote. However, since our spread was legged on for a small credit, we'll come away with no loss even after taking commissions into account.

Back by popular demand! I'd mothballed our speculative long in this stock because it had become too depressing to watch it languish each day.  However, the position is still 'live' and -- who knows? -- we could even get a play if Wall Street's quasi-criminal silliness gets out of hand.  We hold 32 July 195 calls with an average cost of 0.14, and our goal is to short July 200 calls against them for at least as much as we paid.  For now, though, we'll keep our fingers crossed, doing nothing that would get us in any deeper.  _______ UPDATE (May 29, 3:55 p.m. EDT):  Goldman shares are showing surprising pluck today, up $2.30 at the moment at $163 with the Dow off more than 100 points. I'll formalize the trade recommendation above with the suggestion that you offer 32 July 200 calls short for 0.15, good-till-canceled.   If the order fills we'll have a virtually riskless shot at making as much as $16000 if Goldman forges higher over the next seven weeks.  ______ UPDATE (May 30, 11:07 p.m.):  The July 200s traded yesterday for 0.15 and some fills were reported in the chat room.  Any others, before I track the spread officially? _______ UPDATE (May 31, 10:01 a.m. EDT):  July 200 calls have traded as high as 0.17 this morning, so I'll consider the spread done 32 times for a 0.01 CREDIT.  Do nothing further for now, since this position cannot lose.

We hold 32 July 195 calls with an average cost of 0.14. Our goal is to short July 200 calls against them for at least as much, but the strategy was conceived with expectations that bank stocks would lead the charge if the broad averages went bananas. Clearly that has not occurred, but there is still time for the financial sector to catch fire.  In the meantime, because we bought the calls with stingy bids, they are still worth what we paid for them. For now, do nothing further. We'll need a rally of at least $12 to achieve our goal -- a virtually riskless vertical spread that could produce of profit of as much as $16,000.  ______ UPDATE (May 2, 1:59 a.m. EDT): Goldman has looked like hell ever since we bought the calls, and it's clear that my expectation that the stock would lead the charge if the stock market went higher was dead wrong. Accordingly, I'm going to book a $448 loss and archive this tout. In the extremely unlikely event that the bank stocks catch fire between now and July, I'll re-publish the tout and we can proceed as originally planned.

With Goldman shares at a precipice, the July 195 calls we've been attempting to steal came cascading down on us yesterday like summer rain.  I'll treat the order to buy 20 of them @ 0.15 as filled, but as long as DaBoyz are jumping out of windows, let's try to suck up another dozen, bidding 0.12 for them, good-till-canceled.  Be warned that I am suggesting this because it looks like the stock will fall a further $3, to at least 143.58 (see inset), before it can turn around.  We'll need quite a rally to get the second part of our order filled -- i.e., short-sell an equal number of July 200 calls for 0.20 -- but stranger things have happened on Wall Street between April and July. Anyway, our theoretical risk at this point is a mere $300 for a potential 32-to-1 payoff.

As long as we're talking about Dow 14969 today, we might as well reconsider the case for Goldman getting to 205.09.  If I'd been a true believer when I first broached that target, I'd have suggested buying Thursday's dip to a 144.68 midpoint pivot that now looks like support.  Maybe we'll get lucky and GS will relapse one more time to the red line. If not, we can try to get aboard at higher levels, or to buy the July 195-200-205 butterfly for cheap. It closed yesterday for 0.18, but since the best we could hope for on the exit would be around 1.50-2.00, I'd suggest paying no more than 0.05.  You can buy the spread 50 times at that price, but if you can leg it on for nothing, I'd shoot for 250 spreads. Stay tuned in the chat room, since I'll try to signal any opportunities that would enable us to do this for nothing in smaller pieces. _______ UPDATE (March 18, 12:44 p.m. EDT): Let's acquire some bullish butterflies in Goldman, since we've got a $205 rally target to work with and a criminally rigged options market that begs to be chastised. We'll leg into this position, first by bidding 0.12 for 20 July 195 calls. Since DaSleazeballs are showing a 0.08 bid, we'll be improving on it by 50%. We'll leave the bid in until they cut our market with a higher bid.  Un the end, we are shooting to buy the July 195-200-205 call butterfly twenty times for free or perhaps a small credit.  It would leave us long 20 July 195s and 205s, and short 40 July 200s.  The current market for it is -0.27 bid (i.e., a credit), 0.20 asked.  If you put up a 0.15 bid, you could probably "buy it now,"

A very tight stop prevented our shorting the high that preceded yesterday's $8 plunge, but there is no way I would have risked an open-ended short based on information sent out the night before.  In retrospect, it seems inevitable that the best short you could have asked for in this stock would come off a gap-up opening that should have scared the hell out of anyone standing in its way.  In these situations, camouflageurs should reflect on the fact that the camo technique is perfectly suited to the task of extracting opportunity from the panic and fear of others. I have reproduced a one-minute chart that shows a 'camo' pattern that meets all of our rules and which could have been shorted with a minimum of risk and stress. Isn't time you learned the amazing secrets of Camouflage Trading?  If you've been struggling for years to trade profitably, click here to change your life.

I thought we'd back off for a few days, but the shorting opportunity shown in the chart is my kind of pattern.  Accordingly, I'll recommend shorting 400 shares at 154.56, two ticks below the target itself, using a 154.62 stop-loss.  If the position goes in-the-black by 40 cents, cover half and substitute an "impulsive stop" based on the one-minute chart. (Note: You can substitute puts for short stock, but be careful not to pay up. This implies buying them when GS is within pennies of the target. I am using a price target-based buy because I expect the pivot to work precisely. Put positions should be tied to the same stop as the stock. ______ UPDATE (11:58 a.m. EST): I had a hunch the 43-cent differential between our target and Friday's closing price might be too delicate to withstand the kind of wholesale thievery that takes place on Monday morning gaps. Anyway, you should have done nothing on the trade, since the opening was above our offer and the stop.  Strictly speaking, you could have gotten short and stopped yourself simultaneously on the first trade of the day.  Now that DaScumballs have succeeded in unloading a truckload of shares this morning on widows and pensioners, we see that They have since allowed GS to relapse to a so-far low of  151.38 -- more than $4 below the day's criminally engineered high.  What a sleazy carnival game our "securities" markets have become!

I'd had my doubts about that 205 target, technically compelling though it be, and they have been assuaged by Goldman's two-day plunge of $9, or about 5.5%. We'll keep our distance from this rabid animal for now, but if it turns mellow for a day or two, it may be possible to squeeze off a short. I have in mind an April or July put butterfly near the 120 strike, so stay tuned.

We exited four March 145 puts yesterday for a loss of about $200, a number you should keep in mind if a potential $4000 offset in Google comes home.  That was the idea of it:  If we're going to get stopped out of a short position by an institutional stampede, we may as well have a bullish piece of something the Wall Street whack-jobs like. As for Goldman, the Hidden Pivot rally target at 149.42 that looks like it's about to get left in the dust is not, as they say, chopped liver. And that means the stock could be headed significantly higher. We look now to the weekly chart for perspective and find a 205.09 target that seems a little farfetched at the instinctual level but entirely plausible at the technical level. The rally pattern is not exactly Marilyn Monroe -- more like, say, Ida Lupino -- but its vague, 144.68 midpoint has already been trashed, giving us yet one more reason to take the 205.09 target seriously.  Let's make a very low-risk bet on this prospect via the April 170-175-180 call butterfly.  Bid 0.05 or better (versus 0.03 debit on yesterday's closing marks) for 8 spreads. This implies that, in the end, you will be long eight April 170s, long eight April 180s, short 16 April 175s; and that the total cost of the position, commissions excluded, will have been 0.40.  That means $40 plus commissions would be our maximum loss, with a maximum possible gain of $8000.  We may wind up trying to leg into the spread, perhaps buying 170-175 spreads 1:1 at a swing low in the underlying stock, then selling 175-180 call spreads on a rally.  I am not suggesting that for now, though, because technically speaking, Goldman has not yet broken out above the