A new Yorker I know who just got transferred to London re Healthcare! (Just a quick blurb)

[Lucky Luciano]

A capitalist trader commenting how easy and efficient Britain's healthcare is:

From: [e-mail]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 3:33 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: BARCLAYS CAPITAL EUROPEAN INDEX VOL COMMENTARY: WHAT WILL $1TRN BUY YOU? MORE GLOBAL SPREADS TRADING....

Not a quick wait at the doctor's office. I've been questioned about a pro-US bias here, which has not been the intention at all; I like my tapered pants. Enjoying London got me quite sick. Call the doctor's office at 9AM; appointment at 10:30AM; arrive on time; fill out a form that a kindergartener could (name, address, mum's name); literally before I could sit down, nice doctor greets me, invites me in, takes care of me right away, and even happily writes scripts for some of those things that are nice to have around (but aren't necessarily medically necessary); and, at the end, the cost is zero. A trillion dollars won't buy you that! Somebody please tell me the program will at least create some jobs in the US.

Speaking of speed, how quickly we have recovered from that nasty selloff. Clients are generally taking risk off the books into year end. But if you want to play, even small size, for next week, here goes 3 variations on direction/path:

SX5E 2875 fut ref

Nov09

1 we do nothing sell 2850-2900 strangle collect 61.00 not enough ways to win, rather sell premium with a view, as in call/put calendar

2 we rally 2900-2950-3000 call tree pay 12.50 Mikey likes it

3 we selloff 2750-2800-2850 put tree pay 6.50 cheaper to play the downside because of the skew

4 we selloff 2700-2750-28000-2850 put condor pay 10.50 rather put up the extra premium than sell the crash, as in 3

All of these involve selling premium to express a view. As you can tell, we prefer more positively convex payoffs (pay 6-12 to get paid 50) rather than the other way around.