Jon Markman

Editor, Trader's Advantage and CounterPoint Options

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

Selling Still Not Exhaustive Enough to Make a Bottom

By Jon Markman, Editor, Trader's Advantage and CounterPoint Options Sep 30, 2008

Stocks have fallen broadly this month on intensifying credit fears, and now it's getting serious. The broad market is now down 24% for the year and 30% from the last top in October 2007.

Corrosion of Commercial Paper: The Silent Killer

By Jon Markman, Editor, Trader's Advantage and CounterPoint Options Sep 30, 2008

Last week you already know that stocks were in bad shape, but you may not have realized that the credit markets were even worse. This is important because this bear began with a worsening of credit in mid 2007, and it will end with an improvement in credit at some point.

6 Ways to Profit in These Turbulent Times

By Jon Markman, Editor, Trader's Advantage and CounterPoint Options Sep 24, 2008

Unlike Warren Buffett, most investors don't have $5 billion to bailout the U.S. banking system. But they still have a lot at stake that's riding on the economy, the Federal Reserve and this so-called bailout package. Here are 6 tried and true tips that will help you profit AND protect your wealth in these choppy waters of economic uncertainty.

Getting High on the Speed Rally

By Jon Markman, Editor, Trader's Advantage and CounterPoint Options Sep 24, 2008

Clearly the market has decided that, at minimum, throwing another trillion dollars at the banking crisis will be inflationary. You can't float that many bonds and flood the world with new paper and not cause inflation. You can argue whether deflationary forces, such as lower asset prices, will thwart the inflation in the long term, by which I mean a few years. But you can't argue that flooding the market with brand-new money won't cause the value of current money to be debased a lot sooner.

Intensity of Thursday Rally Suggests Multi-Week Move

By Jon Markman, Editor, Trader's Advantage and CounterPoint Options Sep 22, 2008

Stocks pulled out of a stunning tailspin last week by mounting a ferocious rally in the last two days that actually occurred faster than it might have seemed.