CS

Water Cooler Investing
#1

Hi folks. How to best short CS as I see discrepancy in its current trading price. Given that it trades as an ADR in nyse, I was shorting it as a simple vanilla put may not yield much? Any other way to go about shorting this beast with maximum damage. CAX perhaps? I am talking about a position with least maximum one way gain and minimum protection on calls. Any exotic takers? Much appreciated folks. Cheers

#2

Ahem…none.

#3

a simply vanilla put will yeild much if timed correctly

#4

I don’t really understand the question. There seem to be only 4 basic ways to short CS.

  1. Borrow the shares and sell them.

  2. Buy a put.

  3. Short a future on CS if you can find one.

  4. Short an index future and buy a little of everything except for CS.

I’m sure there are more exotic ways to do it. Buying a put will give you maximum leverage, but you lose 100% of the premium if you don’t time it right. If you want to reduce the premium cost, you can be more out of the money when you buy, and this makes some sense if you expect CS to fall through the floor. But if you just expect it to go down a bit, then you want to be closer to the money.