After more than a month of range-bound volatility, the U.S. markets have broken out to start the week. In the process, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index cleared the headline 1,100 mark, confirming its uptrend as detailed below.

“Inside the Global Gold Frenzy” is the title of an article that appeared last week in The New York Times. It seems the mainstream media has finally caught on to what we’ve known for a long time – we’re in the midst of an honest-to-goodness gold rush. The article pointed out some interesting facts.Starting out in a part of Switzerland where about one-third of the world’s gold is refined into bars and ingots the reporter tells us that every day truckloads of gold jewelry arrive from all over the world to be melted down. “Business is booming ” he ...

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ryan Renicker of Newedge. Renicker has more than 10 years experience at top-tier brokerage firms generating options and derivative trade ideas for institutional clients. Renicker has been a member of three top-ranked options and equity derivatives strategy teams at three separate firms within the past 10 years.SPY one-month implied volatility and SPY one-month realized volatility have come together each at roughly 21.16%.SPY One-Month Implied vs. One-Month Realized Volatility Perhaps one key conclusion I draw from this is that market complacency has finally set in! Of course this is simply my opinion. Some ...

Editor's Note: This is Part 4 in a multiple-part series. Part 1 can be found here Part 2 can be found here and Part 3 can be found here.In the final part of this series we'll consider two additional modifications to using a call spread instead of a call when modifying the covered call writing strategy. This position already looks nothing like a covered call so I'm not going to be using that term any longer.As pointed out in the original article that spurred this discussion "The Truth About Covered Calls" it's not necessary to use either stock or long-term options. ...

It’s becoming common knowledge that commodity-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have some basic design flaws that not only affect their performance but also have an impact on the very futures markets they’re purported to track.At the core of the issue is the fact that they’re open-ended funds that invest in assets usually futures contracts that are essentially close-ended. This has led to major dislocations and caused the funds to move away from the stated mandates of within their prospectuses. From a structural standpoint these ETFs -- from the US Oil Fund (USO) to US Natural Gas (UNG) -- have proven ...