Why Not Bet on Catastrophe? Wall Street Have Cut 34,000 Jobs Over Past 9 Months - May Cut 20,000 Jobs Over Next 2 Years

“People Made A Fortune Betting On Puts, So A Lot Of Folks Will Continue To Do It Until It Doesn’t Work Anymore”

……Some in the market were buying put options at the March $25, $30 and $35 strikes — essentially a gamble that the brokerage would announce some kind of horrific news in the next week-plus prior to March options expirations. While the “sky is falling” scenario seemed far-fetched, Jon Najarian, co-founder of Optionmonster.com, says previous bets on all-out stock-price collapse have worked before with the likes of Ambac Financial, MBIA and Thornburg Mortgage. Open interest (that is, the number of outstanding contracts in a particular issue) ballooned to more than 34,000 in the March $30 puts in the last few days, but just 2300 contracts were traded at that price today, as Bear lost a more pedestrian 2.2% in trading to $61.58 a share — still $32-and-change away from such a bet being profitable. “You can’t blame them,” he says. “People made a fortune betting on puts, so a lot of folks will continue to do it until it doesn’t work anymore……

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http://www.yuumoushin.com/?p=266
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http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSN2434938720080324
[6]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080324/us_nm/newyorkcity_jobs_dc_2
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j866iyhYWDTfSw69fpzQBVpbKwyAD8VJR9OO1