Market Bleeding today - profitable plays?

get into high-frequency trading... they must be killing

I would try to find companies that announced earnigs today and killed estimates. These are going to be the stocks that get beaten down only because of the market and once this all clears up will jump significantly (or so I hope).

Anything that is LONG GAMMA!!

Cleanest play is a gamma swap (good luck getting that as an individual)

But you can easily buy any options and delta hedge discretely!! massive money right now!!

^ Meh....that's not really a good quick play, nor is it that profitable. (Two posts above me)

Think sectors that are going to be getting hammered or negative Beta movers. Find a nice leveraged ETF that moves Bear or Bull based on its portfolio and cash in at the end of the day.

You'll loose a little money in fees, but you don't have to take any short positions, and the leverage will turn more money.

Holding Leveraged Etf's for weeks or months is an awful idea, but when you know the way a sector is going to turn it's a great way to cash in off a horrible market. All my long position are getting hammered, even ones that posted positive earnings.

In defense of FXTrader, long gamma is actually a marvelous play right now... For those with decent option knowledge... check your volgamma and vanna numbers... They exploded and anyone who just happened to buy a gamma swap is essentially breaking the bank.

The only problem with the discrete play is you need to ensure your in a very liquid name, but I'm hearing from my desk that tons of institutional players who were late to the swap party are trying to play the discrete game

CD~

If you had the foresight to buy into anything tied to the VIX this morning or earlier, you probably made a killing today.

Another good play:

Buy cheap on Long positions (not for quick money)

Some positive earners are down 10%, definitely a high-Freq nightmare right now, traders are being executed on price not value, so find something that undervalued (alot out there today) and hold long.

go long! well it might be too late now

I wonder what the fuck happened though

Look at Accentures charts.

Supposedly someone at a major player dumped 16BILLION shares instead of million (tape error).

The rest was history as soon as the algo's got a hold of the information

Lol I can't believe this thread isn't blowing up more. This is insane. There was a human error? No there was a computer error? Lol P&G goes from 61 to 42 back to 59 in 30 seconds. Insane. These times, I wish I had a fund.

Some shop that plays volatility should make a video of today with their traders going nuts and saying "I love this game!!"

Yea, that Accenture move was crazy.. down to one cent?

My thread on Traders Train has the ACN Chart for your viewing pleasure.

Someone could have very well made over 40 BB today of Accenture

The VIX was off the charts because of this

I was too busy today... but if I had been keeping up with the market I would have picked up 2,000 shares of NBG at anything under 2.60. It will easily be back up between 2.80 to 3.20 in the next 7 days. Would have been an easy kill.

......

I loaded up on the Yen, Aussie and Kiwi when DOW was down about 800 points... awesome 2 days

I'm at a HFT FX desk w/ a BB. Yesterday was the most profitable day in our history of eFX. Seeing the waterfall of s/l's break after the UsdJpy broke 90 the figure was like music to our ears.

for our future references... any easy way to long skew/smile for the individual investor?

Well, if say you thought skew would rise for strikes greater than ATM, you could:

Buy OTM Calls (or ITM Puts) Sell ATM Calls/Puts, less OTM Calls or less ITM Puts Delta Hedge

Therefore, if the curve shifts up or down, you are essentially flat. If skew rises for OTM Calls (ITM Puts) you benefit because vol would rise more for the options you bought than the options you sold.

This can get tricky margin wise for the individual investor since you are selling naked options, so keep that in mind.