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Maybe you don’t mind the ads for that bicycle rack following you around in cyberspace after you visited a site for all things bike, but browser trackers (“cookies”) also create a profile of you that gets sold to other advertisers and third parties.

Are you doomed to be stalked forever by bike ads? This is caused by third-party cookies. You can use third party software such as CCleaner, which can identify third-party cookies and clean out the cookies in your hard drive. It’s the third-party cookie

I am conducting a Risk Management Survey compiling best practices from organizations' Risk Management Programs.  If you would like to participate in this survey, please complete the questions below and submit to me no later than September 15th.  I will compile these results and send back to those who participated in this.

Below are the survey questions:

1)      Company Name:  ________________________________________________

2)      What industry is your organization classified in:

1. Financial Servi

The federal tax rules concerning options are among the most complex sections of the tax code. This has led to many misunderstandings. For example, many traders have heard that some covered calls are "unqualified." What does this mean?

It means that in some situations, a trader who has opened such a position will not be able to report gains as long-term gains if and when the call is exercised and the underlying called away. This applies only if you have held the underlying for less than one year w

The naked call is probably the highest-risk option strategy of all, right?

Not necessarily.

Most options traders associate risk with specific strategies. But you might want to question this assumption, based on a different definition of risks in trading: risk is not only determined by the attributes of a strategy, but more so by when and where the position is opened.

Even the notorious uncovered call may be less risky than most traders believe, based on a few important observations. These include:

1

When you subscribe to an online service, be careful of how much information you give out about yourself.

Most businesses in their terms and conditions, say they “respect your privacy.” But what if these companies go under or are sold? An article from the online New York Times explores this concept. Today’s market-data-hungry-businesses can gather lots of data about subscribers. This data can be transferred to third parties in the event the company is sold or goes belly up.

The New York Times recen

The Japanese word "doji" means "mistake" or "a foolish thing." This probably is due to the appearance of a doji session. Instead of a rectangle representing the difference between opening and closing price, the doji is a horizontal line, meaning open and close were the same price or very close.

The doji is not so much of a mistake, however, as a session in which buyers and sellers may be struggling with one another for control, and neither side is able to move the price off its mark.

But interpre

In the 1940s the average holding period for stocks was as high as 10 years. This is unheard of today. Now the average is down below one year and many active traders (day traders, swing traders) are looking at being in open positions for a matter of days, not even weeks or months.

With this new "normal" (created in part by access through the Internet, low trading costs, and markets characterized by high volatility), do options play a role?

In fact, they can. Options are flexible, much cheaper than

Hi All,

My book "Risk-based Management in the World of Threats and Opportunities" is now available in paperback and kindle editions. Check it out and grab a copy.

For all who are interested in risk-based management, it's a good read.

Follow the link below:

https://youtu.be/wxWgYUhiWos

RCF

Burglars get burgled, muggers get mugged, and hackers get hacked. This includes a sophisticated ring of hackers: Hacking Team, hailing from Italy, specializing in selling hacking software to major governments.

An article on wired.com describes how a “400 gigabyte trove” went online by anonymous hackers who gutted the Hacking Team, including source code. Even their Twitter feed was hacked, and the secret hackers tweeted HT’s cracked files.

One of the exposed files apparently was a list of HT’s cust

Traders, especially covered call writers, love the forward roll. It helps avoid or defer exercise, creates additional income, and helps keep ownership of stock that is on an uptrend.

But there are potential problems. Among these are the following four every covered call writer needs to remember:

1. Rolling keeps you exposed longer, tying up capital. As advantageous as it might look to roll forward, does it really make sense? When you roll, you buy to close the original position and replace it with

The attraction of the ratio write is the potential for higher premium income. Traders too often convince themselves that exercise is unlikely, and that time decay is likely to outpace intrinsic value as the stock goes higher, even if the calls go in the money.

Here's the thinking: You own shares of an underlying security. You sell to open ATM, OTM or slightly ITM (At, Out of or In The-Money) call positions with one to two months until expiration. A ratio write is defined as a strategy in which yo

Let’s look at the top 10 scams (random order).

Charity

• A fraudster claims to represent a charitable organization.
• Such scams can operate ring-style, such as one out in Colorado some years ago in which women wearing crisp white dresses that resembled the dresses nurses used to wear, and also wearing white caps (like a nurse), solicited motorists for money by walking around at stoplights holding out tin cans that had a label on them like “Help Fight Drugs.” Many people were fooled by the white outfit

This October 14-16, MoneyShow.com will present this year's International Trader's Expo. From the website:

"Join thousands of your fellow traders for this three-day event that will have a substantial impact on your trading success in today's markets. We're bringing together the country's top trading pros with one goal in mind-to teach you their best trading strategies to help you profit in the months ahead."

Registration is free. You can sign up at Las Vegas Traders Expo, where further details are

Healthcare organizations manage an almost unimaginable amount of sensitive data, and industry experts say they aren’t doing enough to protect it.

For their 2015 Vendor Risk Management Benchmark Study, The Shared Assessments Program surveyed nearly 500 professionals for insight into risk management practices across various industries. The findings show that healthcare organizations come up short when implementing and maintaining a vendor risk management process. Perhaps the largest gap in healthca

Did you know that the original meaning of hacker, as far as computers, was that of a person who built codes into computers? In fact, the bad guy was called a “cracker.” Somehow, “cracker” didn’t catch on. But the mainstream folk out there hears “hacker,” and right away, they think of a digital thief, often someone who breaks into governmental computer systems or Russian “hacking rings” that steal credit card numbers.

An article at motherboard.vice.com mentions that Richard Stallman gets the credi

Saalam,

We are a United Arab Emirates based investment company, working on expanding our international portfolio globally by giving out loan to finance project outside United Arab Emirates.

We would be happy to receive a business plan of any viable project,we don't have any major area of funding but we give priority attention to finance by making financial investment in form of debt, after which we can negotiate the funding modalities, duration of investment and amount to invest.if you have any pr

Using the Black-Scholes pricing model for pricing options is not the best system for trade timing. Given the numerous flawed assumptions in Black-Scholes, traders may consider an alternative for selecting options and timing trades - for two reasons.

First, many systems are based on using options expiring in the very near future. However, if the selection is based on implied volatility analysis, this is an unreliable method. Volatility

Further thoughts on the shortcomings of the Black-Scholes pricing model:

Three possible causes (separately or together) for differences between value and price related to volatility are: (1) the value is correct but the option price is not; (2) the incorrect outputs are derived from the Black-Scholes model; and (3) the Black-Scholes model might be inaccurate.

The primary cause of inaccuracy is due to the underlying assumption that volatility is a constant. This means that volatility of the underly

The original Black-Scholes formula often is cited as the authoritative source for options pricing. However, with a large number of variables built into option formulae, it is surprising that they occasionally are close to approximating or matching market value.

The Black-Scholes formula as originally published was full of unrealistic assumptions. These include:

1. Volatility is fixed and never changes.

2. The short-term interest rate never changes.

3. Anyone can lend or borrow as much as he wants as

On the surface, it seems obvious that chasing big dividends is smart trading. But in practice, a double-digit dividend stock may also be a red flag.

Because dividend yield is based on the dividend per share and current price per share, if the price plummets, the yield goes up. A big dividend could result from bigger problems in the fundamentals.

For the purpose of evaluating dividend yield, the reasons behind these changes are not important; what is important is the underlying cause of the decline