BigTrends

The broad stock market weakness has now been in effect for the entire month of May.  Times like these are when "buy and hold" and 100% long strategies are laid to waste yet again.  The current environment shows the huge opportunity for outperformance by using Options (specifically Puts), swing trading, active investing, momentum trading, technical analysis, sentiment analysis, etc. ... in short, what we at BigTrends specialize in.

So while the DJIA (DIA), S&P 500 (SPY), and Nasdaq 100 (QQQQ) are now all down for the calendar year 2010 in terms of absolute return, we have been advising specific option trades (including many, many Put trades) in our premium real-time option advisory programs.

A student of history can look at the long-term market charts and see that we are likely due for a 5 to 20 year volatile trading range environment (see Japan's Nikkei from 1989 to present).  So we will see more of the same, don't miss the chance to actively profit and grow/protect your accounts while the long-only Mutual Fund and Index Fund holders see their wealth erode due to inflation.  There also is the "opportunity cost" of holding the S&P 500 for 10 years of net no gains -- be one of those who can catch the swings and have a strong risk/reward & profit/loss profile.

I'm a big Sirius/XM satellite radio fan (the product, not the stock).  If you've checked SIRI stock recently, it reached a low of around a nickel (0.05) in January, and is now trading over 0.50.  That's a a ten-fold increase ... however, it must be remembered that the vast majority of investors in SIRI lost money on the way down.   Similar to most every other stock that has made huge gains since the March 9th bottom -- the vast majority of the public lost money on all these stocks;  very few people (if any) emerged unscathed from the brutal downslide we have seen, and then jumped back into the long side in March.  However, this does point out that active investing and trading is THE way to profit and outperform the markets in 2009 and beyond.  Buy-and-hold, Index Funds, and other "passive" forms of investing are not working and will not work.  And of course, with Options, we can play BOTH sides of the market -- and with Options on ETFs, we can trade virtually every sector in addition to individual stocks and market indices.  And also remember that with Advanced Options Strategies like Spreads, Condors, and the like, we can both buy and sell time premium and volatility in a limited risk environment.

Catchy title from a Marketwatch article today (linked at bottom of entry):