Originally Published in Futures Magazine 4/1/2011

Question: How do you trade a quiet market likely to breakout?

Answer: Upside/downside ratio spreads             

Before World War I, most national currencies featured convertibility to gold. At times, this could act as a drag on the economy.  If an economy became vastly more productive and the gold convertibility feature prevented commensurate monetary growth, then economic growth would be stunted or even reversed. For all of its flaws, the gold standard did prevent runaway inflation of the sort that occurred in Germany under the Weimar Republic. That inflation ushered in the rule… [ Read more ]

by DanKeegan

Originally Published in Futures Magazine 2/1/2011

Question: How can traders take advantage of leveraged ETFs without a huge capital commitment?

Answer: Cut out the middleman and do as the indexers do, trade options on the ETFs.

Inverse and ultra exchange traded funds (ETFs) can be handy arrows to be found in a trader’s quiver. The “ultra” funds return two or three times the daily return than a normal ETF. Inverse ETFs can achieve the same goals as a straight out short position without consuming nearly as much margin.

What is an ultra ETF? It… [ Read more ]

November 2, 2010

All of us at CST would like to welcome all of you who are atttending the Futures Industry Association’s 26th Annual Futures and Options Expo in Chicago this week .

When the Expo began in the 1980s it was primarily about futures. Today it encompasses the entire world of alternative trading and investments and the one thing that unites them is options. Dan Keegan, CST‘s Head Options Mentor, has taught experienced equity and futures traders how to use options to augment their trading and he has taught novice traders how to use options in equities, futures,… [ Read more ]

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… [ Read more ]

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…..

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 ]

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… [ Read more ]

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 [ Read more ]

Week of May 3, 2010

Last week it was reported that internal investigation revealed that several SEC employees spent most of their days watching internet porn. One senior attorney at the SEC spent an average of eight hours a day watching porn! That’s dedication. We would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the SEC.

Week of April 26, 2010

Several times last year, this column criticized the SEC for sitting on their hands while the evidence in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme was staring them right in the face. Well last week it was reported that internal investigation revealed that several SEC employees spent most of their days watching internet porn.

One senior attorney at the SEC spent an average of eight hours a day watching porn! That’s dedication. We would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the SEC. It was clearly not the Madoff case that was staring them in the… [ Read more ]