As you probably know ETNs are debt obligations of someone, usually a bank. Apparently Lehman Brothers backed a few of them under the brand name Opta. I don't remember what the Opta ETNs are/were but their fate seems to be in question because Lehman Brothers went under.For purposes of this post it does not matter what the Opta ETNs tracked or whether Barclays makes good or not.If you are interested in that part of it both Index Universe and Tom Lydon are all over it.I wrote about several ETNs for theStreet.com about certain funds that I thought were interesting.A typical disclaimer I put in those articles was that it is unlikely that an issuer would go under (despite what has happened, that is still a true statement) but that it would not be a good ...

This screened ETF list is based on a combination of features that are often requested by more cautious equity investors:

funds with history and reasonable liquidity acceptable expense ratios for the type of portfolio not too much volatility for the return some current yield better total returns than bonds

The funds in the list are not recommendations. They are simply idea possibilities for do-it-yourself investors who may find the particular screening criteria useful.

The funds do not represent a full spread of the asset classes which we believe should be in a well designed portfolio.

The universe from which they were filtered is the entire database of hundreds of ETFs at www.IndexUniverse.com.

Important Note:

The fact that cautious investors ask the kinds of questions on which the filter is based, does not mean the funds that make it through the filter are conservative or necessarily good investments. In fact, some

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If you know what an iron condor is—which, if you’re reading this, you probably do—you also know that it isn’t the only options strategy out there. It’s worked very well for us, consistently providing close to 10% average monthly returns—but a lot of our subscribers have expressed an interest in, shall we say, a bit more variety. Sure, our bonus trades mix it up a little, but we thought it was time we started talking about other kinds of trades on a regular basis. That’s why we’re introducing Calendar Options. Condor’s Complement So what’s the best way to complement our iron condor positions? We like the idea of profiting no matter which direction the market takes from week to week, especially with so much economic uncertainty out there right now. So we’re going to stick with the delta-neutral theme for our ...

New alerts and filters added recently expand the arsenal of ways in which any trading universe can be modeled in Trade-Ideas. We even created some sample strategies to show you how they are used.Here's what we did:Added bottoming tail and topping tail alerts. Added new filters to find stocks based on how much the price has moved in the last 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes. Added new filters to find stocks based on the amount of volume they have traded in the last 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes.

The tail alerts attempt to find tipping points where movement in one direction is exhausted. Not a bad thing to be looking for in this market. Here's a good definition of a bottoming/topping tail (for our own Glossary): http://www.trade-ideas.com/Glossary/Topping_Tail.html.

The price and volume filters let a trader define, "How much movement or volume?",

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Trade-Ideas expands the list of ways to describe an option trader's universe with 6 new filters. These filters are in their final testing phase and will soon go live. When they do subscribers will simply see them appear in the list under the Filters tab in Trade-Ideas PRO. And you thought you had to download a new version to see them. That's so 90s, dude.Min Option Volume Max Option VolumeThese filter stocks based on the number of option contracts traded on an average day. This includes both puts and calls.Units: # of ContractsMin Option ...