Jon Markman

Jon Markman

Jon Markman is the editor of Trader’s Advantage, a daily trading service that leverages his unique swing trading principles and aims to capture profits of 7% to 15% — and often much more with his options trades — in less than 90 days. By combining technical analysis with underlying fundamentals, Jon recommends beaten down stocks on the brink of reversal and powerful momentum stocks breaking out to new highs.

In CounterPoint Options Jon helps options traders lock in consistent profits from the volatility that rocks the market. At its heart is a proprietary trading system, Magnitude, that pinpoints indexes or sectors that have reached a critical inflection point — then translates that signal into profitable trades.

CounterPoint Options keeps volatility options trading very simple, focusing on the most popular, highly traded exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are headed for a key reversal. Magnitude scans the market and allows subscribers to take advantage of these very liquid trading opportunities.

When CounterPoint Options first launched, it was focused solely on trading the VIX, commonly known as the “fear index.” When traders start buying up put options as “portfolio insurance,” the VIX spikes — a phenomenon that we’ll either trade directly, or use to inform our ETF trades on specific slices of the market. Our agile (and highly lucrative) strategy lets us turn volatility into profits… just like professional traders and hedge funds have been doing for years.

CounterPoint Options helps individual traders make steady, consistent profits from a very methodical approach to growing your portfolio in the midst of a turbulent market.

A pioneer in the development of stock-rating systems and screening software, Jon Markman is co-inventor on two Microsoft patents and author of the best-selling books Swing Trading and Online Investing. He was portfolio manager and senior investment strategist at a multi-strategy hedge fund from 2002 to 2005; managing editor and columnist at CNBC on MSN Money from 1997 to 2002; and an editor, investment columnist and investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times from 1984 to 1997.

Jon won a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Financial Journalism for his columns explaining market chicanery in 2002; Society of Professional Journalists awards for his 2001 reporting on Enron and the post-Sept. 11-investment environment; and was a news editor on the Los Angeles Times staff that won Pulitzer Prizes for spot-news reporting in 1992 and 1994.

A graduate of Duke University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Jon speaks frequently on investment topics at conferences nationwide, as well as on TV and radio.

Recent Articles

Where Is Our Stimulus Plan?

When talking about the incoming Obama Administration's fiscal stimulus package, it's easy to take heart from the pragmatic brainiacs that are coming to run policy in Washington. Unfortunately, though, the executive branch only gets to propose legislation.

Unemployment Getting Worse. Will a Stimulus Help?

Historically, the first two weeks of January is often a harbinger of the rest of the year, so beware.

Why Frugality Will Hurt the Economy in 2009

Heading into the new year, the financial media will be making much of the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus plan, infrastructure rebuilding and other news out of Washington. But what we really need to be paying attention to is the dawning realization among America's baby boomers that rising asset prices can no longer support debt-to-income ratios of nearly 140%. As that happens, a 20-year credit expansion and associated consumption binge will come to an end.

Looking Ahead in 2009: Pension and Endowment Funds, Retailers and Mortgages

One reason that January is even more important now than ever has to do with the way that the boards of pension funds and endowments -- which control hundreds of billions of investment dollars -- operate. People on these boards are usually not actually experienced investment pros themselves, but rather business people, socialites, union members, political appointments and the like who are subject to a lot of whims and false ideas about the markets.

Small Caps Outperforming Large Caps

The fact that small caps are beginning to outperform large caps is a sign of a bigger set of events afoot in the global economy. Large companies are obviously multinationals, while smaller companies tend to focus on domestic U.S. sales. So whenever we see a big disparity in the performance between the two, it's a head's up that investors believe there is an imbalance in the world.