Buying PUT.

[squiffy]

No. Lost back my entire $10-$12K gain over the last 2-3 days. Should have sold after all. Will now have to hold until end of Feb. or March and pray for a recovery.

I am back to even again, where I started in Sept. 2003.

[Redsox]

You should probably read up on the way that options trade and are priced before even considering trading any options in your own account. I've been a specialist on an organized exchange for a few years now, and the best book for practioners is probably "Options Pricing and Volatility" by Sheldon Natenberg. There are a dozen considerations that go into the pricing of an option that you're probably not even thinking about (volatility, dividend payout, skew, interest rates). It will be much to your advantage to look into the inner-workings of both the way options are priced and the way which they are traded on the floors of organized exchanges in this country. Lastly, make sure that you figure out why you want to trade options against a holding, i.e. why you wouldn't dump the stock if you think that its going to go down? There are significant issues with trading options for the retail investor. Make sure you know what you're getting into.
-Eric

[FredJones888]

"As far as I can tell, buying a put would be much too expensive"

you got it and thats all you need to know. If you are really worried about this position you just need to reduce it or dump it altogether. What you need is some kind of sell discipline. A monkey can throw a dart at a wall street journal and pick a stock, but it takes a thinking human ( or an automated system ) to figure out when to sell. At what point did you want to sell?

[RollaJ]

[ QUOTE ]
Will now have to hold until end of Feb. or March and pray for a recovery.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, if I had $1800 for every time I said that......... I think I'd be even [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]