My Schwab Christmas 2011 wish list

Update:  Schwab has added weekly and quarterly option support to all of their trading platforms.  See here for more information. Schwab has provided a peek under the tree for the account holders they think have been good: Stocking stuffers (not available until January): A 35% discount for TurboTax.  In your Schwab account online look for “Tools and Calculators” under “Guidance”, then look for “File with …

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Monthly ETF Dividend Amounts

Tickers covered:  AGG, BIL, SCJ, HYG, IEF, INY, JNK, LAG, LQD, MUB, PFF, TIP, TLT For dividend history data and charts from 2005 on click here. You can use the search window within the post (upper right) to search for a specific ticker, or increase the number of entries to show in the upper right box to 25 in order to see all the symbols. …

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XXV: Dancing the contango—without getting mugged

Update  redirected to https://www.sixfigureinvesting.com/2010/04/going-short-on-vix/ I do not recommend XXV.  At its current price of around $30/share  it does not deliver the sort of performance you would expect an inverse volatility security to deliver.   This security can go no higher than $40 per share and can only get there slowly.  See this post for more information.   If you want to be short volatility use XIV …

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XXV behavior—it’s a pretty good VXX short

Update: I do not believe XXV is a good way to short VXX, or volatility in general.  It has very little upside remaining (maximum value will be $40/share),  see this post for more details. ********************************************************** With the recent action in the VIX and VXX I thought it would be good time to go back and check the performance of Barclays’ new ETN product XXV to see …

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Betting that fear will fade

Made my first trade in XXV yesterday, buying at 23.07.    During corrections, like the one we are in right now, the VIX index tends to spike up pretty early, a day or two in.   Later, even when the market drops are larger, the VIX does not seem to match the earlier highs–unless of course the market moves into a more panicky phase.