1. dollar-cost averaging is silly if you have all the money up front. what is your assumption? if you assume the market will go up and down without going anywhere, you will make more money selling a call. if you assume it will go up, of course you will lose. if you assume it will go down, of course you should wait. but again, you can't make something out of nothing which is the mirage, and you can probably better leverage your "assumptions" - whatever they may be - using options.


2. limit orders? never use limit orders. the limit-order mirage is so complex and insidious, and dupes even multi-billion-dollar 70-year-old money managers, i can't even begin to explain it here. also, in a completely separate issue, i must say that the prediction that a stock will go down then up seems about twice as complex as the simple prediciton it will go up.


3. i write extensively about the "cheap" price mirage, or counter-trend trading in these threads:


http://www.twoplustwo.com/cgi-bin/ne....pl/read/29015


http://www.twoplustwo.com/cgi-bin/ne....pl/read/29217


4. how about my bond call below? tack on another three points.


http://www.twoplustwo.com/cgi-bin/ne...s.pl/read/1446