Over-the-counter (OTC) trading is to trade financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities or derivatives directly between two parties.

There are no stock exchanges like NYSE, NASDAQ, etc. involved. That’s why this kind of trading is called over-the-counter because that’s what basically happens. The phrase “over-the-counter” can be used to refer to stocks that trade via a dealer network as opposed to exchange trading which occurs on futures exchanges or stock exchanges.
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There’s a whole batch of underlying assets one can buy options for.

You can buy options on oil, interest rates, gold, all kinds of commodities and even airplanes. The list is endless! The term “option” refers to a type of derivative in which category it falls. An option is a derivative because it derives from something namely the underlying asset. In our case it’s the stock which is why it’s called a stock option!
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This must be about the 10th full-scale financial panic I’ve seen since the mid-1990s.

Could anyone that’s been with the stock markets for a while ever forget Long-Term Capital Management? How about WorldCom, or the panic after 9/11? Or what about the financial crisis that gripped Asia in Summer 1997 or Russia just one year later? And what about the SARS crisis in Asia back in 2003? There have been plenty more. And during each one, serious and intelligent financial figures around the world assured us that the economic world might collapse altogether.

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A Stock Market or Bear Market Bottom marks the end of a bear market - or even an entire bear market rally - or just a light short-term market downturn and the beginning of an upturn.

A bottom may occur because of presence of a cycle, the end of a recession or because of overselling in reaction to a development in the markets.

It is easy to spot a bear market bottom after an upturn and price rally is well underway. However, it can be hard to predict a bottom when a market is still in the decline. At some point, an attempt by investors to break the downward cycle will be made. These attempts more often than not end in failure because the resulting upturn is sometimes a false upturn - also known as a Bull Trap -, after which the decline resumes.
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