How much is cannabis going to cost you?

Edited from thestar ~ Jack Hauen
By Osirustwits


Today October 17th the recreational use of Marijuana has been legalised. As the country becomes even more happier with the 10:17 AM/PM anticipated time for a large cloud to begin over the nation.

How much could it cost you across the country to get "lifted"?

Newfoundland

The cheapest MJ currently on the government-run cannabis website is $5.87 per gram, but it isn’t available for purchase yet. The cheapest one you can buy right now is $7.71 per gram if you buy 3.5 grams at once. Prices will range from $6 to $13 per gram, according to the Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation.

P.E.I.

The cheapest MJ currently on the government-run cannabis website is $7.83 per gram. Pre-rolled half-gram joints are $5.65 each.

Nova Scotia

There are three levels of cannabis quality in Nova Scotia, as decided by the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation: “value” ranges from $6.33 to $8.49, “core” goes from $9.00 to $10.98 and “premium” starts at $10.99 and goes up.

New Brunswick

MJ starts at $8.99 per gram online and goes up to $15.50. Pre-rolled half-gram joints are $7.50 each.

Quebec

The government has said that grams will start at just over $5. As of early Wednesday morning, the province’s online store still hadn’t been activated.

Ontario

The cheapest gram of MJ on the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) is $7.50, and prices go up to $13.25 per gram. The cheapest half-gram pre-rolled joint is $10.35. Keep in mind the most you can order at one time is 30 grams, in line with the amount you’re allowed to carry under federal law. The OCS also sells more extras and goodies than any other store currently online, from oils and sprays to rolling papers to vaporizers — pick up a hemp wick for $1.95, or a $7 bottle of Orange Chronic glass cleaner.

Manitoba

Six stores have been licensed to open in the province, but retailer Delta 9 is the province’s only online non-medical retailer so far. Delta 9 sells grams online for $12. Of note: the company has partnered with the Pineapple Express delivery service and is promising same-day delivery for orders in Winnipeg.

Saskatchewan

Nothing listed for prices but I think they have always been growing and blowing that "Wheat"

Alberta

The website crashed at the stroke of midnight for several minutes before sorting users into a queue of thousands. Multiple products were already out of stock, but the cheapest MJ available was $9.24 per gram. A half-gram pre-rolled joint is $6.64. Every retailer will have to purchase its cannabis through the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission, which will sell it at an average price per gram of $8.90.

British Columbia

Grams of MJ start at $6.99, with a huge variety — more than any other online store right now. Half-gram pre-rolled joints start at $4.20. Ironically clever

Yukon

The government will run one temporary store in Whitehorse, and the online store will open Wednesday morning. They have not released a price list yet.

Northwest Territories

The government is selling through its liquor branch, which lists five MJs and nothing else available for purchase. All three of the cheapest individual grams are “coming soon,” so the least expensive legal gram of weed you can buy in the territory right now is $17.50.

Nunavut

Cannabis will only be available through Tweed, an online retailer with no brick and mortar shops in Nunavut. At this time online ordering wasn’t available on Tweed.

The caveat of this is the looming Canada post strike that is on the table for Monday Oct 22nd 2018, this could impact online prices and delivery times and costs.

Join the discussion as we trade the MJ stocks and talk prices and discounts here.

Updated just to remind you this is the short or squeeze so based on the information here shared in our chatroom our sentiment is to SHORT all MJ stocks

Laddered Puts on $UVXY

Today we are going to do a laddered put set up on the fear index tracker $UVXY.

$UVXY has just recently undergone a R/S and this trade lets us do 3 things
1. Take advantage of the price spike that should normalise
2. Take the trade for less risk than if we went long
3. Get paid a premium rather than paying the premium

The plan on this is 2 things simply IV contracts and $UVXY decays over time. We want that volatility that is what we are really trading on this. If IV is high we want to sell if IV is low we want to buy it.

Short Put Ladder Construction
Sell 1 ITM Put
Buy 1 near ATM Put
Buy 1 OTM Put
To setup the short put ladder, the options trader sells an in-the-money put, buys an at-the-money put and buys another lower strike out-of-the-money put of the same underlying security and expiration date.

Unlimited Downside, Limited Upside Profit Potential
Maximum gain is limited to the initial credit received if the stock price rallies above the upper breakeven point but large unlimited profit can be achieved should the stock price makes a dramatic move to the downside below the lower breakeven point.

The formula for calculating profit is given below:

Maximum Profit = Unlimited
Profit Achieved When Price of Underlying < Total Strike Prices of Long Puts - Strike Price of Short Put + Net Premium Received
Profit = Lower Breakeven - Price of Underlying


Strikes being $75 short put the $55 long put spread puts me at a risk of $20 between strikes x100
the long $50 says that I expect $UVXY to be more than ($2000-$500 credit) /100

In short I expect if I sell the $75 buy $55 credit spread and buy the $50 with a credit left over $UVXY will be under $35 by contract expiration date.

Another option is if we believe that $UVXY will be lower than $35 by EXP is strongly going to happen

Short Put Ladder Construction
Sell 1 ITM Put
Buy 1 nearer ATM Put
Buy 2 further OTM Puts

Same risk as the spread is $15 with nearly no credit but better chance of higher profit if it does indeed break $35 and keep going.

I don't have a crystal ball and none of this is investment advice just some trade ideas being tossed around in our chatroom to join the conversation there enter here.

Options give you options #TradeSocially 

What Covered Calls and Poor man's Covered Calls?

What is a covered call?

For a covered call, the call that is sold is typically out of the money (OTM). This allows for profit to be made on both the options contract and the stock if the stock price stays below the strike price of the OTM option. If you believe the stock price is going to drop, but you still want to maintain your stock position for the time being, you can sell an in the money call option (ITM). For this you will receive a higher premium on your option trade, but the stock must fall below the ITM option strike price, otherwise the buyer of your option will receive your shares if the share price is above the strike price at expiration (you lose your share position).

This is discussed in more detail in the Risk and Reward section below.

How to Create a Covered Call Trade

1.   Purchase a stock, and only buy it in lots of 100 shares. 

2.   Sell a call contract for each 100 shares of stock you own. One contract represents 100 shares of stock. If you own 500 shares of stock, you can sell up to 5 call contracts against that position. You can also sell less than 5 contracts, which means if the call options are exercised you will retain part of your stock position. In this example, if you sell 3 contracts, and the price is above the strike price at expiration, 300 of your shares will be called away, but you will still have 200 remaining. 

3.   Wait for the call to be exercised or to expire. You are making money off the premium the buyer of the option is paying you. If the premium is $0.10 per share, you make that full premium if you hold option until expiration and it is not exercised. You can buy back the option before expiry, but there is little reason to do so, and thus isn't usually part of the strategy.

Risks and Rewards of the Covered Call Options Strategy

The risk of a covered call comes from holding the stock position, which could drop. 

Your maximum loss occurs if the stock goes to zero. Therefore, you maximum loss per share is:

(Stock Entry Price - $0) + Option Premium Received

For example, if you buy a stock at $9, and receive a $0.10 option premium on your sold call, your maximum loss is $8.90 per share. The option premium reduces your maximum loss, relative to just owning the stock.The income from the option premium comes at a cost though, as it also limits your upside on the stock. 

You can only profit on the stock up to the strike price of the options contracts you sold. Therefore, your maximum profit is:

(Strike Price - Stock Entry Price) + Option Premium Received

For example, if you buy a stock at $9, receive a $0.10 option premium from selling a $9.50 strike price call, then you maintain your stock position as long as the stock price stays below $9.50 at expiration. If the stock price moves to $10, you only profit up to $9.50, so your profit is $9.50 - $9.00 + $0.10 = $0.60. 

If you sell an ITM call option, the price will need to fall below the strike price in order for you to maintain your shares. If this occurs, you will likely be facing a loss on your stock position, but you will still own your shares, and you will have received the premium to help offset the loss. 

The main goal of the covered call is to collect income via option premiums by selling calls against a stock that is already owned. Assuming the stock doesn't move above the strike price, the trader collects the premium and is allowed to maintain the stock position (which can still profit up to the strike price).

Traders need to factor in commission when trading a covered call. If commissions will erase a significant portion of the premium received, then it isn't worth while selling the option(s) and creating a covered call.

Covered call writing is typically used by investors and longer-term traders, and is rarely used by day traders.
For more trade ideas using this join the discussion. 

Why not everything is going to be a short squeeze

Let's start but clarifying this not investment advice and in my more than 21 years of being involved in the market very seldom have I ever held a position over night or for that matter a short more than hours. This is a post in response to several who asked me about protecting a short going into a catalyst. To join the knowledge pool enter here 

When ever I heard a short squeeze is coming by traders who have no clue how to short I shudder. You see this all the time on free message boards, chatrooms and the worst place for this  stocktwits. Really is everything going to be a short squeeze because you happened to have bought a few hundred shares in a company and over stretched your leverage? This is akin to the shorts crying offering is coming when the company is cash rich.  Let’s be real for a minute let’s sit down and actually look at an example of why those touting short squeeze all the time with no background in shorting are for lack of a better word, clowns. The stock market is a casino not a circus you are always hedging your bet on your trade to be the house or you are just the degenerate gambler. That being said if you want to think this is a circus then let me be your ring master.

A very basic (still going to be over most heads) idea of what a covered short is not to be confused with covering your short aka closing out. This will assume you know about rolling options and trading for a credit. For this example, we will use $MU which reported earning yesterday and where I saw someone say shoirts will be squeezed. $MU is considered one of the most liquid stock tickers with over 1 billion shares and an average of nearly 73 million traded daily on average.

Now had you been living under a rock with no idea what GPU cryptocurrency mining has done to the world in the last year nor knew $MU made what is considered arguably the second best memory for GPU miners in the silicon lottery you may have decided to short this. That would be gambling to do so before the move and as such could go 1 of 2 ways slightly good or very bad. So here is what an experienced trader would have done to hedge his bets in his favour and protect his trade.

Image 1
Step 1 you must ascertain how big is the float

Step 2 you need to know the trading volume on average and on the day

Step 3 find out how much of the float is actually short

Step 4 find the cost of protection (this is where most will happen to fail)

Once you have that you then look to see the technical entry on your fundamental short. This is the traders advantage on $MU you would not have entered the ticker until it priced a new 1 minute back to back 52 week high this usually gives you a sweet pull back on any trade but more so on a stock going into an earnings report because you will have shorts who failed to do step 4 covering and running. That is it that would end the short squeeze after that you now have the sharks and the wolves entering.

Image 2

At ASCEND TRADING everyone knows the rule I have for whole dollar breakouts and as it is a secret sauce I will not share that here but if you entered at the break of the previous 52 weeks high say $61.05 you would be in the trade now short.

The trade worked in your favour and it bleed out all day long fast forward to the end of the day power hour you would look to either close the short as I like to do and did with $I or protect it.

Protection is done knowing you are now $2 ahead on the trade in the last 15mins of the day the expected move for $MU from Earning is to be 6.8% either way and most times it has only moved 50% of the expected move and if it did move outside it was by less than 1%.

Image 3

This is where the magic happens and as your ring master I am going to mesmerize you.

At the power hour price of $59.02 the expected move of 6.8% would put you in the range $4, $4.01336 to be exact. 50% of that puts you back to the risk of $2 from this point or break even on the trade. To protect you $2 profit and hold for the possibility of much more gains you would now sell the $58.50 weekly put naked for $1.79 mid price shown in RED Graph 3 (this would give you another $0.50 of profit plus the credit of $1.79 per contract) and doing so you would buy the $60.50 weekly call for $1.32 mid price (locks in that you will not lose on the trade with at least $0.50 profit) shown in GREEN graph 3 for a net credit of $0.47.

This is similar to a protective collar when you are long the stock for those have been doing this in IRA, TFSA or RRSP accounts on dividend paying stocks.

So recap to this point you are up $2.00 on your short you have now protected your short for possible gain of $0.50 more and were paid $0.47 to do so total would be $2.97 profit risk is stopped at a profit of $0.50 plus you were paid $0.47 to do so total of $0.97 profit. Now you see why on a billion share stock doing this is going to be quite favourable as you covering the spread. This is a special trade that sets up when a binary event like an ER is reporting in the middle of the week could be a case for $GIS coming up if you get that gap up.

When I trade my goal is simple to make more money than the bank pays me interest and when I short my results are life time better than 90% because I don’t take unnecessary risks or over exposure, I hedge. You want to learn to trade with a lower risk on exposure join the link http://www.ascendtrading.net?aff=osirustwits #TradeSocially 

EOS Mainnet is coming and so are the airdrops. How to register before June 1st

So everyone loves free things and airdrops are no exception to that. Give me something for doing very little to nothing yes please. So let's dive in with as quick break down of what is EOS and how to get that free coin.

EOS is a blockchain platform for the development of decentralized applications (dapps), similar to Ethereum in its functionality. It makes decentralised applications (dapps) development easy by providing an operating system and protocol set of services and functions that dapps can take advantage of.
The EOS ideology is to bring together the best from various smart contract technologies, into a simple to use, yet massively scalable dapp platform for everyday use empowering the future blockchain ecosystem.
The EOS vision is to create a scalable secure blockchain dapp platform that can can handle thousands of transactions per second, all while providing an accessible experience to developers, entrepreneurs and users. The aim is to provide a complete operating system for decentralized applications focused on the web by providing services like user authentication, cloud storage, and server hosting.
The EOS project is being developed by a company called Block One, led by Dan Larimer (co-founder of both Bitshares and Steemit) and Brendan Bloomer. Both provide some serious crypto experience and have been active in promoting the technology as a whole in addition to their own projects.

The EOS Mainnet is scheduled to launch on June 1, 2018 and EOS token holders must register their tokens before the launch in order to claim their official tokens. Assuming you already have a MyEtherWallet holding EOS tokens, these steps explain how to manually register EOS tokens using MyEtherWallet.com (MEW).

1 Go to MyEtherWallet.com 2 Click "Contracts" 3 Click "EOS Contribution" 4 Click "Access" 5 Go https://eos.io/instructions about halfway down choose register and generate EOS keys (make sure you write down your keys and store them safely or risk losing your tokens) 6 Enter your PUBLIC EOS key into the "key string" field in MEW (Do Not enter your private key) 7 Click "write" to register your tokens 8 Check to see if you tokens were register correctly 9 Refresh MEW page 10 Click "Contracts" 11 Click "Access" 12 Click "Keys" 13 Enter your public Ethereum address 14 Click "Read" 15 If you registered your tokens correctly your Public EOS key should appear under the field that reads "string"

Here is a list of the projects past and present that have or are planning to airdrop on the EOS ecosystem.

https://www.eosdrops.io

Feel free to drop by our group and join the community http://www.ascendtrading.net?aff=osirustwits
Hit me up on twitter with your thoughts and comments https://twitter.com/Osirustwits

Which Cryptocurrencies should be on your watch list in the next few weeks?

Well it has been a month since the alerted bull run was coming and Ascend Trading  has seen some great gains but what is next? Where should we be looking to see signs of the next #LamboMoon or as we say now #FerrariSoon

Here are some intangible coins I have my eyes on. Do your own due diligence as you take your own risk this is not investment advice just infotainment.

Section 1 
The main net coins:

The following coins will be launching their main nets within the month or next. Most of these are anticipated to rival existing GEN 2 coins and show the innovation of GEN 3 coins. With many hours of discussion and tweets about these they need no further introduction.

Coin                         Launch Date
Oyster (PRL)                  May 29th
TRON (TRX)              May 31st
Nuls (NULS)                  Sometime in May
EOS (EOS)                  June 2nd
VeChain (VEN)              By end of June
High Performance
Blockchain (HPB)          By end of June
Fusion (FSN)                  By end of June
Ontology (ONT)             By end of June
Credits (CS)                  By end of June
DADI (DADI)                By end of June
Aeternity (AE)                By end of June

Section 2
Consensus 2018:

Ripio Credit Network (RCN)
Ripio had a partnership integration with both Decentraland (MANA) and Bancor (BNT), some nice positive awareness for Ripio and for Decentraland from Silicon Valley. This should be a meaningful partnerships with each other, unlike a certain "coin and pornhub".

CIVIC & THEKEY
Both CIVIC and THEKEY focus on blockchain to solve the identity problem. Civic has made big gains prior and both of the their charts and market caps are looking similar. The identity discussion can bring increased awareness to the pair of projects.

AION
Aion has a low blockchain market cap of under half a billion. Thy got a nod from PBC as a project to watch and if they can get a buzz could easily increase in market cap and worth. The discussion on blockchain interoperability and its importance is going to be a needed catalyst.

PROPY (PRO) Rentberry (BERRY)
Have a lot going for them real property backing these assets, low market caps with BERRY being 1/2 of PRO. The buzz is the wildcard can they pick up steam if so they could move fast.

Keep up to date on the day to day discussion on Crypto and join the community at AscendTrading
http://www.ascendtrading.net?aff=osirustwits

Sign up Binance   https://www.binance.com/?ref=10323618  and get on Kucoin https://www.kucoin.com/#/?r=1RNtQ while they are taking on new users. Happy trading.

Where is bitcoin ( #BTC ) and the entire Cryptocurrency market heading?

Well is the bear market over? Are we ready to go back to all time highs? Is now time to buy?

I have received several questions and I hope to answer the many questions but the above ones require a crystal ball. I will look at these 2 questions and how I weigh the risk vs reward.

What is a crypto currency Initial Coin Offering (ICO) ?

How do you evaluate an ICO for potential and risk?

Hope this short video helps clear the air on what I do with my trades. Please do your own research and weigh the risks accordingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6qi5wwz5gE

Feel free to contact me on twitter @osirustwits or in the Chatroom trade safely!

A Crypto Currency play on Wall Street

With how hot cryptocurrency has been and blockchain in general why not look at a trade that could combine the best of both worlds.

Looking at a possible options combination on $AMD as part of the crypto currency play tied in with their processing chip partnership expected profits. If you would like get more information on trading ideas in crypto to Stocks to options feel free to join the discussion http://www.ascendtrading.net?aff=osirustwits

Here are the trade ideas

AMD LONG CALL has an average move 12% during earnings with current price at time of report $11.79 means buying the $11 strike could net you a 25% move profit.

An AMD BULL CALL SPREAD buying the $11 for $1.73 and selling either the $13 strike for $0.83 or $14 strike for $0.55 gets you into this trade for $0.90 and $1.18 respectfully. Keeping in mind that you are currently $0.79 in the money that means only buying $0.11 and $0.39 of extrinsic value to have a profit potential of a $2 or $3 spread. I like those odds on the reduced capital as you have long the 66 Delta.

AMD COVERED CALL Buying shares of AMD at $11.79 and selling the $12.00 call for $1.22 would result in a call-away-return of 11.9% if the stock trades above the strike following earnings. This also would provides downside protection to $10.58 and positive Theta

SHORT STRANGLE expecting the move to not go past the 12% avg means that we could throw an other trade over top and short strangle selling the $14 Call strike and the $10 Put Strike for a total of  $1.08 meaning break even would be $15.08 tot he upside and $8.92 to the downside.

LIZARD also could be thrown on top of the bull call spread by selling short the $13 call for $0.83 and sell the $11 put for $0.86 then to reduce the infinite upside risk buying the $14 strike call for $0.57 put the LIZARD in play for a credit of $1.12.

Why I like the combo of the BULL CALL SPREAD and the LIZARD is:

If AMD goes down after EARNINGS the break even on the BCS is $11.90 so you would loose under that and the break even on the  LIZARD would be $9.88 so $10.89 would roughly wash both trades as no gain or loss..

If AMD goes up as I expect since I have capped the upside risk by taking in more than the spread $1.12 vs $1 (-$13C +$14C)  I would still make $0.12 profit on the LIZARD while I would make full spread on the BCS  ~$1.10 profit totalling  $1.22 but anything less than full spread would keep the full $1.12 from the LIZARD 

Best Scenario AMD is pegged at $12.99 at option expiry from the BCS I would get full value of the $11 call being $1.99 in the money no value on the short call and thus also keep full value on the LIZARD for a profit of $3.11 you can see why I like the combo of the BCS + LIZARD in this case.

Option Chain from https://marketchameleon.com/Overview/AMD/OptionChain/
This is strictly for infotainment any trade I post is how I am trading my money if you follow you do so at your own risk. Everything has risk even crossing the street so look both ways, do your due diligence.

Today we closed the $DDD options play took the profit off the table this let us focus on the play of the day the $KBSF halt short.


$KBSF a former runner approaching resistance levels and moving on what I consider not the strongest of volume. We had wanted a short at the break of $7 for top tick but she was not cooperating so we hit it on the VWAP (Volume Weighted Average Pricing) break.

This was not the strongest of the shorts as we shorting into a weakness thus the trade was not a repeat affair just a scalp.

As always the chatroom got the alert before we took the trade. If you would like to get these alerts you may also join the community ( HERE ) where we trade everything from Stocks, Options, Futures, CryptoCurrency and FOREX. We #TradeSocially

If you have any question feel free to join the discussion http://www.ascendtrading.net?aff=osirustwits

Earnings Report play for the week $DDD

This was a spread option trade.

In order to create a spread you are buying one option strike and selling the other. The difference between them is the spread. It reduces risk as it reduces the amount of capital in the trade.

The last few months I have been immersed in the crytpo-verse with mining, trading, running masternodes and buying ICOs. I will update those going forward through this site and youtube as we go into the 3rd month of 2018. Took a short break from the intangible world to get short on stock as a help for a member with their entry and exits on shorts. $ZSAN was the target. Here is the trade Osirustwits™ AT (@Osirustwits) tweeted at 7:13 AM - 27 Feb 2018 :

Took a break from #Crypto with the @Ascend_Trading #TheDarkArmy to help a member who was having issues with short entries & exits. Did a live trade walk through on $ZSAN if you want to learn to trade #Charts on #Crypto #Stocks literally anything join in https://t.co/Zerbd0nh7G https://t.co/55kgo9j1ZD (http://twitter.com/Osirustwits/status/968504481599012864?s=17)