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Albertgax
10-21-2015,
Hi all,

I am new to investing and purchased 91 shares of (SSO) etf based on a online advice subscription which switches back an forth between SSO ETF, SDS ETF, and cash. Is this a good place to start off the records show that this system traditionally has had 25% return thus far this year.

Any guidance or advice would be much appreciated - see attached jpg for system I was talking about

Thanks
Dibya

AntonioVem
10-21-2015,
Not something I would ever trade for the following reasons. The options market is not liquid enough to be tradeable. Also there is much less margin relief in these 2x volatility products

You can play the SPY for the same amount of capital or less as you can get at least 50% margin there and have playable options when things go wrong.
For me...1 share of SSO would be about 75$ buying power where 1 share of SPY is 68$....and the SPY is waaaaaaayyyyy more liquid. And since the SSO derives it's value from S&P products (probably /ES futures I would guess) there is probably a cost to carry so I would check that out and make sure that it is not underperforming the SPY under the same strategy. But I'm just guessing there. The aforementioned reasons are enough for me to say no thanks.

And as far as their "positions results summary"....so they say..... And if they have had a buy SSO signal for the last 3 weeks I would guess some people had to sit from some pretty heavy losses and if they managed to not get shook out they might be even if /ES continues to rally for the rest of the week. Otherwise I'll bet they are not up 25% for the year at this point.

I'm guessing this "system" has a price tag? How much?

aqueiluk
10-22-2015,
Hhah you're asking the wrong guy but here goes.

So I guess in the IRA you not getting margin so the point about margin relief is irrelevant. Then I would wonder why an IRA would suggest you trade in a 2x volatility ETF. Do they have anything to gain from you trading those particular ETF's? The problem is I don't trust anybody up the ladder where money is concerned. And it looks like their buy/sell signals aren't getting it right. I'll bet they are not up anywhere near 25% right now. But that point aside...the reality is that this is an IRA. When I think of IRA's I don't think of 2x vol products....and I don't think of going in and out on somebody's buy/sell recommendations, churning and whipsawing my IRA into oblivion. What I do think of is ,continual cost basis reduction in highly liquid products or defined risk trades selling premium in anything liquid where volatility is high out at least with a 70% probability of expiring worthless. It's not very sexy but it grinds out returns over time...which to me makes more sense for an IRA.

And to answer your last question....Who knows...maybe, maybe not. But I'm not going to pay money to find out. If he can't articulate cost basis reduction or probability of profit then I'm not really interested. For me...any thing else is just guessing. Some will be right, some will be wrong...who knows.

alufejuli
10-22-2015,
The system does not suggest to invest the IRA in this manner that is done using the set funds (S&P 500, ^W4500, AGG, EFA) the system I posted was a bonus system he provdes if you subscribe to his IRA system - I am only asking about it as I am novice and it was advice provided - do you have any suggestions or methodologies I can follow that are prescriptive in nature rather than generalized

admin
10-23-2015,
For IRA or margin? And above 2500$ or above 25k or above 125k?
My particular strategies would vary from one account size to another.