Philip Davis

Options Trader: Tough-Decisions Tuesday

David, your idea is interesting but, like Cover says "who would do it." Actually the answer is English people, who still have 100-year lease-holds when they buy property sometimes but I don't think people would like it here, although they do go for reverse mortgages, which give you a little money until you die (as long as you are expected to die soon, actuarily).

I do not disagree with DC - enough with the bailouts but we will bail out bank after bank after bank if we don't do something about the reason they are failing. Buffet stopped insuring accounts over the FDIC limit in Kansas - that's not a good sign! The FACT of the matter is the FDIC simply doesn't have enough money to cover one major failure, yet alone something on the scale of the last S&L crisis.

This is not about fiscal discipline anymore. This is coming home and finding your basement flooding from a broken pipe and the Feds solution is to keep going to the store to buy more paper towels. It just isn't addressing the problem. The loans have been sold, people are in homes they never should have been allowed to occupy at appraised values that never should have been put on a form (that is not the homeowner's fault).

Junk (thanks for nice words yesterday by the way), I don't think you can clear this brush without losing the forest. What would happen to your home's value if one in 5 around you were empty with foreclosure signs?

This is a national crisis and kicking 5M families onto the streets, even if 2M of them were greedy and knew they were getting in over their heads, is not going to solve anything.

Options Trader: Friday Outlook

Sweet and Sour Crude Primer:

thefraserdomain.typepa...

Options Trader: Friday Outlook

Actally JR, this guy says it was the Bushes that killed Kennedy: www.jfkmurdersolved.co... - Don't blame me, I'm only pointing you to the correct conspiracy theory - Enron didn't exist at the time.

As to ignorance - Oil, on a global average, cost $40 a barrel to produce. Oil in the Middle east, cost $24 a barrel to produce, all of the rest is mark-up paid by enablers like you who have the very sick attitude that if someone "were any good, you would make a fortune and give a rat's ass about others makin' a killin'."

I'll tell you that it's comments like that which remind me why I do prefer to spend my time trying to make a difference in the world rather than whatever the heck it is you think you're doing supporting this BS.


As to the sweet/sour crude issue, I'd post more links but you don't seem to read the ones I've posted that already refute your statements so what is the point. Obviously, if there were really a long-term supply issue in WTIC (which is sweet crute) then refiners would be doing conversions to make the additional $20 per barrel on the spread but they, like you, know the whole scam is a house of cards that is ready to collapse and only throwing out red herrings like "sour crude refining capacity" can help you justify your position to others at this point.

Like Jjason - I'm as angry as hell and I am doing something about it, we're supporting our Senators and Congressmen and sending them the information they need to take control of this situation. We are doing what we can to make our side aware of all the facts and we are going to push for legislation to change this game.

Last week was just a start, there are proposals coming down the pike that will knock your socks off as the pendulum swings way back on this one.

Options Trader: Friday Outlook

Sorry you don't like the Bahamas, here's more: complete911timeline.or...

There's actually 132,000 references in Google to Enron Taliban and I just grabbed the first one that summed up the story. Had I known my source was being graded I would have checked with you first.

Yes we have been shorting oil and losing money for years but we also have shorted oil and made spectacular amounts of money as well. The nice thing about shorting oil is the periodic sell-offs that work great for options traders. While we lose $1 here and there shorting XOM at the tops, when it drops $15 (as it did 3 times in the past year) we can make 10X our investment. As a short to hold, oil stocks would be a tough game but as option trades, they are cash machines. Just yesterday XOM gave us an intraday double, then it went up and now we are short the June $95 puts at a basis of $4.30 (we took a loss on the roll up from lower calls). Feel free to sell some of those puts and we'll see who has more money at the end of next week!

Nice article that says 3/4 of US refining capacity can handle sour crude: peakoildebunked.blogsp...

Also, no one is saying we shouldn't open up to more drilling but certainly you can't believe that asking the Saudis to pump more oil is a bad idea. We need the oil now. Meanwhile, here are some interesting maps showing you how much oil is not being drilled in Iraq and Saudi Arabia - why can't we get some drilling done there, on land, where it's quick and cheap to deveolp???

peakoildebunked.blogsp...


I will also say that simply taking away JR's Hummer (because you know he's the type) and regulating a minimum fleet average mpg of 35 vs. the 20 we have now and the 25 we are "hoping" to attain in 7 years would cut 7Mb per day in US fuel consumption once our existing fleet rolls over (7 years). That's a 33% reduction in oil consumption over 7 years at a rate of 1Mb/day per year cumulative.

That's 7 ANWARS worth of fuel per year once we get that job done. Does it sound impossible? Europe has that standard now. Who is the number one auto dealer in Europe? Ford. Number 2? GM... The same exact companies that sell us high-margin gas guzzlers here, sell the Europeans lower-margin fuel efficient vehicles over there BECAUSE they are regulated.

There's no profit in conservation - that's why certain parties fight against it tooth and nail!