The Chicago School of Trading

What We Are Selling

September 2, 2010
If you have ever been to our website before, you might notice a few changes. We have also been working  on our first TV commercial. I was mentioning all this to some people at an event recently when I was asked by someone unfamiliar with our program “Whaddya selling?” That’s a good question and I think I’ll try to answer it here.
The short answer is that we are currently offering an options trading course complete with our own text, companion videos, and twelve in-depth mentoring sessions with a veteran trader who acts as your personal mentor.
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The Market is Up,So Why Hasn't the VIX Gone Down?

Part of it is probably the up and down nature of the market this year. Investors don’t seem to be trusting this year’s rallies. Fear has not been stamped out…..

Wisdom From a Wizard

Former UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden passed away last Friday. There are many of you who are not old enough to remember a time when the NCAA Tournament was the UCLA Invitational. Between 1964 and 1975, UCLA won ten of twelve NCAA Tournaments. If freshmen could have played in 1966 it would have been 11 of twelve. And it took a great (and historically underrated) North Carolina State team 3 overtimes to stop a seven year run in 1974. A year later in Wooden’s final game he led his underdog Bruins over Kentucky for his tenth title.

Some would say… [ Read more ]

Taking Advantage of Volatile Markets

On May 6th, 2010 the stock market took its wildest twelve minute ride in history.  SPY(SPDR S&P 500 ETF, Public, NYSE:SPY) opened at 116.26 rising as high as 117.00 before finishing the day at 112.94. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that SPY traded as low as 105.00 before rallying back up. That all happened within the in that now infamous twelve minute span of time. The VIX (CBOE: VIX) , which tracks the implied volatility of options that are traded on the SPX, was as high as 40.71 before closing at 32.80. The very next day, with the European debt situation still unresolved, the… [ Read more ]

Fat Finger Thursday

Week of May 10, 2010

Since 1929 the market has been haunted by memories of “Black Tuesday”. Now a new generation of traders and investors will be haunted by “Fat-Finger Thursday”, the unprecedented 600+ point melt down and subsequent melt-back-up that all happened in a matter of minutes. It was not the size of the drop that was so frightening – it was the speed of the thing that left veteran traders gasping in disbelief.

I began trading stock index futures in 1982 and have traded through and witnessed firsthand the crashes of 1987 and 1997, had my picture… [ Read more ]