Top Takes From RealMoney

The RealMoney contributors are in the business of trading and investing all day on the basis of ongoing news flow. Below, we offer the top five ideas that RealMoney contributors posted today and how they played those ideas.

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Volatility and ETF Trades

By Christopher Grey
1:42 p.m.EDT

The volatility in some of the leveraged ETFs such as Ultra Real Estate ProShares (URE Quote) and Direxion Financial Bull(FAS Quote) and Direxion Financial Bear(FAZ Quote) is astounding and has created several profitable short-term trades for me during the past week.

I would not recommend anyone hold FAZ or FAS long-term for reasons that have been explained very well on this site by other people, but they are great short-term trading vehicles. URE is something that I would consider holding somewhat longer term, but I have been achieving such profitable short-term results because of the volatility that I keep trading in and out of it rather than holding.

Currently, I am all in cash again, but I have a long-side bias at this point especially for larger public real estate companies. These companies trade at a big discount to private real estate and they have improved their balance sheets dramatically in recent months.

No positions.

Quick Hits

Paul Rubillo

I was able to take a taste of two names I talked about this past weekend in a column here. I picked up $1.50 on a quick Potash(POT Quote) pop. Also, nearly $3 on CME Group(CME Quote).

Both names were on the top of my buy watch-list this morning if the markets were going to be strong. Not my usual style, but as I have been saying, the 1998-1999 playbook was dusted off, and that means more intraday momentum-style hits will likely be part of the game plan as well.

No positions