The Traderszone Network

19 February, 2010 by James McBride

Trading Site, StockTwits, Continues To Draw Attention

Image representing StockTwits as depicted in C...
Image via CrunchBase

After breaking away from Twitter awhile back, the investing site StockTwits is rolling out a number of new features that it hopes will draw in more traders. The site, still in beta and billed as a real time platform for stock traders to share information, has a desktop AIR application that includes video, news and charts.

Following the acquisition of Chart.ly last year, StockTwits acquired the small but influential financial news site Abnormal Returns in January of 2010. AR features curated news as well as original content about the financial markets and stocks. StockTwits is reportedly taking that platform and adding its real time news and information feed from the StockTwits network.

The company has raised $4.6 million over three rounds of funding and was originally built on top of the Twitter platform. In late 2009 they launched a desktop version of the product and moved to their own messaging platform. In addition to contributing trading strategies via blog posts and video, some of the things StockTwits users will be able to do on the new site are watching suggested user streams, perusing charts shared by other users, checking out specific filtered ticker pages and watching the 24-hour StockTwits TV stream.

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1 June, 2009 by James McBride

The Iron Condor: Making Money In A Sideways Market?

The PowerOptions blog has an interesting recent post on the Iron Condor Spread strategy. The Iron Condor is a neutral strategy where a trader combines a Bear-Call Credit Spread and a Bull-Put Credit Spread on the same underlying security. This type of trade is often used when an investor thinks the underlying may trend neutral over the life of the trade. Also, there is the potential to double the credit obtained over a single spread position.

There are two spreads involved in the strategy (four options). There is an upper break even and a lower break even. A profit is made if the stock remains above the lower break even point or below the upper break even point as evidenced by the chart.

Generic Profit/loss graph for a Condor
Image via Wikipedia

An investor will receive a net credit from both positions. The total net credit is the max. profit. The max. profit is earned if the stock price remains above the sold put strike and below the sold call strike. The max. risk is the difference in strike prices on either spread minus the net credit.

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