Kris Tuttle

Expecting a Sell-Off: 35 Ways to Protect for Less

If you are concerned about the general market but still wanting to stay long the individual stocks that are most attractive one could short the closest index: SPY, QQQ, SMH to provide a cushion. If they underlying stock selection is good then even if the pullback doesn't come you should stay in positive territory. Then you can adjust your short position in the index as you see fit. Covered calls are also okay but they cut both ways and you can still lose quite a bit of capital with them. Unless you set up a stop loss with a buyback of the (much lower) call options at a certain threshold.

Bank of America's Free Stock Trading: How "Free" Is It?

Most customers probably don't do this level of analysis. (If they did they probably wouldn't have money at BofA in the first place!)

It's also a huge market move that will put pressure (as if they needed more) on the other providers of online trading. Some providers like ETrade have had some success by cross selling products like Visa which allows customers to earn free trades.

Pressure on prices and demands for increased service will continue in this sector which is good for customers but not great for the providers. Just more reasons to own Goldman Sachs in my view... ;-)