OPTIONSXPRESS.COM
OPTIONSXPRESS.COM
With online trading as popular as it is, many traders may find it tempting
to place trades without doing their homework. This is partly because of
the lack of websites that give you the opportunity to learn about trading,
analyze your strategies, and place trades. Fortunately, the founders
of optionsXpress.com realized that options traders needed more than what
traditional online brokers offer. So they set out to create a site that
would give the options trader the ability to analyze prospective trades
thoroughly prior to hitting the buy or sell button. They did so by integrating
what they refer to as the "three Es" -- education,
evaluation, and execution.
The education section discusses options strategies such as spreads,
reversals, conversions, straddles, strangles, and butterflies, among others.
You can also find more advanced strategies such as options pricing, the
greeks, and volatility. Once you learn the concepts, strategies, and terminology
of the options market, you are ready to move on to the next "E"
-- evaluation.
The features for evaluating various positions form the bulk of this
site, and are the most useful part of it. One is the strategy scan, where
you input the ticker symbol of a stock and your opinion of the market.
Once you enter all of your criteria, click the scan button and all possible
strategies will be listed. Details include your investment risk and the
profit/loss you would incur at different prices of the underlying. From
here you can view options chains, volatility charts, and price charts.
If you like what you see, click "Place This Trade" and you
will be taken directly to the trade window.
Now you get an idea of how education, evaluation, and execution are
integrated. But there are still more tools on this site. The options screener
lets you enter your search criteria based on stock price range, volume,
volatility range, option price range, open interest, average option volume,
expiration month, intrinsic value, and returned assigned (the maximum percentage
return on investment if stock price goes as expected). Once all your requirements
have been entered, a list of stocks that meet your criteria will be displayed.
And if you don't feel confident in selecting your search criteria,
there's the Option Dragon, a set of predefined criteria, which will
list the top 50 stocks meeting its requirements.
The options pricer is another interesting feature. You can view the
theoretical price of a call or put given the current implied volatility,
price of the stock, days until expiration, and interest rate. The pricer
displays all your selected chains with theoretical values -- that
is, the fair market value of each option along with all the greeks, allowing
you to see if arbitrage opportunities exist.
Other features include market overview, market observations, most actives,
and charts. You'll usually see volatility charts together with price
charts, as well as the VIX (CBOE volatility index).
As you've probably figured out by now, optionsXpress.com gives
you more than the average online broker does. Its thorough, information-packed
content combined with the ability to place trades make it an effective
one-stop options trading site. Details such as commissions and account
minimums can be found easily on the website.
-- Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan, Editor
ASKCHART.COM
Figure 1: askchart.com home page
Figure 2: askchart streamer 2.0.7
ASKCHART.COM
One look at AskChart's home page tells you this is an information-packed
site. Not many sites give you an overall picture of the market in such
a condensed fashion, but a visit to AskChart.com will give you an idea
within seconds of which sectors and stocks are outperforming or underperforming.
On the home page you can see how the major indexes have performed. A
click on any symbol will bring up a chart in which you can alter the time
frame, granularity, and indicators, and also three other charts for comparison
purposes. In addition, you can get a detailed quote of the stock or index.
An overview of most-actives, 52-week highs, one-day reversals, and sector
performance is displayed on the right-hand side. Although only four to
five securities may be listed, there are more that meet this criteria,
so it's worth digging deeper and identifying all stocks that are
making the lists.
Across the top of the home page are tabs, each of which leads to more
information. The MarketLive tab displays the performance of the market
indexes, the most active, the percent gainers, percent losers, dollar gainers,
and dollar losers.
A click on the Bulls/Bears tab displays stocks exhibiting bullish and
bearish patterns based on the money flow indicator, rate of change, relative
strength index, stochastics, or one-day reversals. The Hot/Cold stocks
tab looks at market breadth for the past 25 days, penny stocks that are
5% gainers and losers, and stocks at their 52-week highs and lows. These
are updated daily. The Sectors tab shows you the performances of 12 sectors,
with the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly performances of
each. The Research section lets you compare a stock to the index it's
listed on, and also see how it compares to the performance of the other
companies that make up the index. You also have the option of creating
a portfolio that updates every minute.
Access to all of these features is free of charge. However, if you wish
to pay $9.95 per month, you can download AskChart 2.0.7, which is a streaming
charting and quotes package. It's not the most sophisticated package
you could own, but it does let you insert a few indicators, alter the time
frames and chart types, and create customized lists of stocks.
This site would be useful to any trader who wishes to screen stocks
and doesn't want to do his or her own legwork. You will not get
any stock recommendations or any buy or sell signals here. Instead, you
will get enough information to increase your awareness of the markets and
about which stocks or sectors are doing well and which aren't. The
decision to trade any stocks is in your hands, but the site does a good
job of giving you an overall view of the market.
--Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan, Editor
KITCO.COM
Figure 1: Kitco.com. At the top of the home page you can
get an instant update of all gold-related information.
Figure 2: The overall market. The lower part of the home
page gives information on other currencies and indexes.
FIGURE 3: All that glitters. If it has to do with precious
metals, you'll find a link to get you started in the right direction.
KITCO.COM
All that glitters isn't gold, but Kitco.com definitely is. If
you want information on gold or most other precious metals, Kitco.com is
a good place to start. It would be nice if there were sites with as much
pertinent information on other tradable commodities as Kitco.com has about
gold.
If gold is trading anywhere in the world, about two minutes after the
sale Kitco has the quote posted on its website and depicted graphically
on its live gold chart in terms of US dollars (USD). This is pretty much
true of silver, platinum, palladium, and rhodium as well. (See Figure 1.)
At the bottom of the home page is a foreign exchange chart that also has
the relative price of gold in terms of many of the world's major
currencies (Figure 2).
Kitco.com has a very international flavor. When you click on the "Quotes
and Data" tab, the page that comes up gives you the information
in USD along with small flags of seven other countries. These are linked
to quotes in British pounds, euros, yen, and others.
There are links to individual live, monthly, and historical charts from
many areas of the site, in addition to the tab that takes you directly
to Kitco's most comprehensive charting page. Knowing that many visitors
to this site would be interested in the financial markets as a whole, the
site designers included foreign exchange rates and live quotes from major
indexes as well as the information on precious metals.
Though headlines of precious-metal news, linked to the full stories,
are listed on the home page, there is also a tab that takes you to the
current reports and commentary. The jewelry tab takes you to a page that
covers everything from assays to software to weight comparisons. There
are links to pages on the sale of precious metals as grain, wire, and sheets.
Kitco's business is the sale of precious metals, so there is also
a tab that takes you to the Kitco Online Store. There you can purchase
the metals in bullion and other forms, or go to the page that tells you
how to sell precious metals to Kitco.
One of my favorite Kitco areas is the gold forum. Here Kitco.com gives
us a small, but often very insightful, bit of that pined for by the poet
Robert Burns: "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, to see
oursels as others see us." Though there are postings that are vulgar
or inept, there are also many thoughtful individuals from all over the
world who post comments, giving their opinions on topics pertaining to
gold. When the intellectuals get into a real discussion, it can be fascinating.
If you are a gold bug, or just a mite interested in the precious metals,
I highly recommend a visit to Kitco.com.
--Bruce R. Faber, Staff Writer
Return to Table of Contents
Originally published in the May 2002 issue of
Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES magazine. All rights reserved.
© Copyright 2002, Technical Analysis, Inc.
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