Opportunities

Everybody is in fear. People at work who usually talk about sports or politics are talking about stock markets. I'm in the same fear as well. I was going to start building a house in 2 months, but I told my wife that we better wait until Jan 09 or so.

My supervisor who's about 45 years old said he's -30% YTD in his retirement account. I would safely say that's about -$100K. At work, I don't talk about markets much because people don't understand what I do (as a side job?) anyway. I didn't even tell all of my retirement money is on cash since Dec 07.

As global markets go down including indexes and other leverage instrument, there are a few markets that started looking very attractive. I talked about this before, but they quickly bounced off and ran away. Now it's back. Sure, the lumber trading still gives me a lot of headache (today limit down, ouch), but I need to be objective.

1. Cotton. Look at monthly chart to see where we're. I'm thinking about selling 50 puts and slowly accumulate.

2. Orange juice. This is at an interesting level, but I think it needs to come down more just to be conservative.

3. Natural gas. I'll be very aggressively positioned. The current price of NG is 6.8ish. I'll sell 6 puts for $1500 or better. Then every 0.5, I'll sell more put for another $1500+. I have a good chunk of money sitting at the bank (which I was going to use to build a house) and I just requested a transfer and I'll send a check to my broker this week. I know this doesn't happen often, so I want to make sure I'm involved with it.

The point is when the public is in panic, there's always something one can take advantage of.

Just be careful in this market and make sure you do not overtrade.