XpressBlog The Latest News and Views from optionsXpress

The holiday season is upon us in earnest this week, which means overeating, overspending, and, often, over-the-top market behavior. It can be an intriguing time of year for traders, but is there really any discernable rhyme or reason to things like the Black Friday and Santa Claus rallies?

Start your Thanksgiving Week with a tasty investing appetizer on Monday, November 23 with the FREE webinar Seasonal Trends – Trading Around the Holidays featuring Scott Downing of BigTrends.

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Portfolio margining can be a great way to realize more leverage based on the net risk profile of your entire portfolio. But exactly how much more can you do with how much less?

Our enhanced Portfolio Margin Calculator will help you run the numbers. Now you can add, change, and remove equity and option symbols to get the most accurate, up-to-date picture of your margining power.

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With those inscrutable dots and seemingly random patterns of capitalized letters, option symbols have long resembled more of an ancient code than a helpful shortcut for traders.

Perhaps that’s why the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) decided to make overhauling the industry’s symbol system its big resolution for 2010. By February, those awkward, cryptic old symbols that traders love to hate will be history, replaced by intuitive, descriptive shorthand that should be easier to remember, work with, and enter – something like this:

ABCD Corp. $50 strike call option, expires December 18, 2009

Old: .ABABO
New: ABCD (root) Dec09 (expiration) 50 (strike) Call (option type)

Over the next several months, optionsXpress will be rolling out updated symbol functionality alongside the crusty old legacy symbols across various options-related pages on our site. On the Most Actives page, for example, the new descriptive symbols will be joined by their soon-to-be replaced counterparts in parentheses:

When the switchover is complete, the result should be an easier, more logical, and more convenient trading experience. In the meantime, stay up to date on all of the latest changes as we get ready for Symbol Simplicity .

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The closing weeks of 2009 are shaping up to be prime time for options birdwatchers, as optionsXpress dissects the Iron Condor strategy across several FREE webinar presentations:

This Week: November 12 – Condor and Calendar Strategies

Industry veteran Dan Sheridan takes a look at the ins and outs of strike price selection for condor trades.

Next Week: November 17 – Iron Condors – Strategy Discussion

This might be a good place to start for anyone considering the condor strategy for the first time.

Looking Ahead: December 17 – Choosing the “Right” Iron Condor

From volatility to strike prices to timing, assembling a good trade can be tougher than picking the perfect gift. Jim Bittman from the CBOE takes you through your condor shopping list.

Make your plans now to follow the birdie.

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We’ve added two new links to the Positions page to help make it easier for futures options traders to more efficiently manage their positions:

- The Roll link takes your current futures options positions and auto-populates the closing and opening trades into a spread form.

- The More link gives you the opportunity to quickly and easily buy or sell more of a position, add a note to the position, or add the position to a watch list.

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The Saved Orders tool can be a very convenient way to be ready to go when the time is right – you can set up and save up to 50 trades for future use without actually submitting them. But there’s still the not insignificant matter of deciding when, in fact, the time is right.

That’s why we’ve added a new link on the Saved Orders page that will take you directly to our popular Trade Calculator, allowing you to break down the trade and better strategize your timing.

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At optionsXpress, we know that traders can never have too much information, which is why we're proud to offer two FREE daily e-newsletters:

Every trading morning, Mike Zarembski and Rob Kurzatkowski brew up a satisfying blend of fundamental and technical market analysis in XPRESSO – our daily futures newsletter.

Equity and options traders, meanwhile, won’t want to miss the timely insight of Senior Vice President of Education Joe Cusick in his midday and afterhours editions of Xpound.

Get the market information you need delivered right to your electronic doorstep. Subscribe to XPRESSO or Xpound today!

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With crude prices continuing to make headlines, the timing of our latest FREE webinar couldn’t be better.

Join Mike Tosaw from Know Your Options on Monday, October 26 for a look at the many different ways to trade Oil at optionsXpress – from futures and options to ETFs and energy stocks.

Find out if your portfolio could use a fill-up – sign up today.

Know Your Options Inc. is an independent branch office of brokersXpress, LLC. Securities offered through: brokersXpress, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC a Registered Investment Adviser Corporate Office: 311 W. Monroe Street • Suite 1000 • Chicago, Illinois 60606 www.brokersxpress.com • 888.280.7030

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We’ve all been there. A stagnant portfolio. A boring investment mix. A general lack of excitement. But it’s not always easy to come up with new ideas to get yourself out of an investing rut.

That’s why optionsXpress has a full suite of powerful trading tools designed to help you discover your next potential opportunity. Find ideas that fit your specific needs with The Dragon, peek over the shoulders of other like-minded investors with Trading Patterns, or discover new ways to use options with StrategyScan. You can even test out your new ideas risk-free using Virtual Trade.

With so many products to trade and so many ways to trade them, don’t let a lack of good ideas prevent you from getting the most out of your portfolio. Check out these and all of our other great tools today.

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OX Mobile – our FREE trade-on-the-go mobile application – is now up and running for Android devices.

Place stock, option and futures trades directly from your Android, and take advantage of the easy-to-use navigation system to get a full range of timely market data, account information, trading tools, market news, and charts.

Get moving today with OX Mobile for Android.

optionsXpress is not liable for connectivity issues with your mobile service provider. Contact your mobile service provider regarding connectivity and functionality issues. Mobile service provider internet usage costs may apply.

Company names, photos, products, services and branding related to mobile devices and related software may be service marks or registered trademarks ("Marks") of their respective owners, which owners retain all legal rights. Use of the mobile devices and related software is subject to the respective provider's terms and conditions or standard software license agreement. The use of these Marks is not a representation that optionsXpress is affiliated with, sponsors, endorses, is sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with the mobile device, related software or Mark owners.

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