THE BACK PAGE
I have been a reader for years of Futures magazine. I always looked forward to reading the profile of traders covered on your back page. I have noticed a trend in this column of leaning toward profiling the hedge fund manager. Although informative and also appealing to your growing hedge fund demographic, I think I speak for some in that we miss the individual trader profiles whether prop, retail or otherwise — the trader who is not attached to an offshore entity or is soliciting for investors.
Your readership enjoys hearing the story of the guy/gal who started out small and built their trading account into a respectable sum. Those individual stories are usually a great read and serve as inspiration for others.
Just adding my two ticks of feedback.
— John Pancrazi, NYC
Finding individual traders is often difficult in terms of confirming returns but we noticed this tendency as well and will work on profiling more individual retail traders.
–Ed.
MISLEADING CONCLUSION
In [the May] mid-month update [you concluded] that the 1-2 ratio option strategy was better than buying the outright call. What the explanation failed to include was the 1-2 ratio option strategy had the ability to lose the amount paid for the spread (72.5¢) plus the difference between the two strikes ($1). The discussion did not disclose the full potential loss (cost) of the trade, which is misleading and could lead novice option traders to employ that strategy unknowingly.
— Brandon DiTullio via e-mail
The Options Strategy that was published in the May issue included all the potential risks and rewards of the trade. The mid-month update is a chance to show how some of our authors’ suggested strategies would have worked out. The story did a fair job of describing the risk and suggesting other strategies, but because the update goes out to subscribers, we assume that they have read the piece; if not they would go back and look at it in detail before replicating it. We aren’t trying to rerun the piece, just show the value of what was in a recent issue and update stories. That being said, it may have been prudent to add a sentence from the original piece that stated the specific risks involved in that strategy.
–Ed.
THANKS
Thank you for offering such a great magazine and Web site. These are terrific resources.
— Jos. E. FitzGerald, Jr. Beaumont, TX via e-mail
