we were listening to brian stutland of stutland equities. k to brian with his ideas on the trades going into the weekend. brian? >> thanks, maria. private equity is certainly an area i want to be in the financial space. take a look at kkr who just announced earnings the other day, announcing they've already raised $6 billion in their private equity fund. more could be flowing into that area. pension funds will be flowing into private equities. rather than buy private equity, i want to own a firm that is private equity. what i could do here to have a bullish sentiment on kkr is pie the march 15th calls, and at the same time offset the calls for the march 17th calls. i pay about 35 cents. i'm called away, yes, at 17 cents, but risking only 35 cents to make $1.65. a great risk/reward profile here to play private equity. this is an area i want to be in for clients and myself. playing it on the close here, or into next week, maria, now back to you. >> thank you so much, brian. let's get to bill on the floor, with just about seven minutes before th

let's hit options action and get the trade with brian stutland. brian? >> on the hunt is right. a name that's interesting to me is stone energy. a home-grown american company looking at exploration of getting gas and oil right here in the united states, in the appalachian region, in the gulf of mexico. the stock had a tremendous run in 2011, up 17% or so. 2012 has already been a great year for the stock. i think there's more room to run for here. valuations are still compelling, and with earnings next week, i want to echo a bullish sentiment in the options market. by march, a call. i'll sell a march 32 put against that. net net, the trade only cost a dime here. what i do is allocate cash in case i have to buy the stock below 32. i have all the upside potential above 36. if the earnings come out great, i have the upside, if you look at a one-year chart, it could make a new high on its earnings play. it looks very compelling. this is brian stutland bringing you your energy play and earnings play for next week. >> thank you, brian stutland. be sure to get more "options action" toni

. >> brian stutland, are you in stocks? >> one thing we're doing is using a little caution. weiss makes a great point about beta and understanding your risk relative to the s&p 500. what we've been doing is overwriting these stock positions, selling ca still playing for a 4% or 5% up move in the market. selling calls 4% to 5% to the upside. i think the market still has some legs. we've seen nice consolidation where the market's not gapping higher. it's very controlled. a lot of liquidity coming back into the system. i think that's still bullish for equities. you just have to be worried. another 4% or 5% to the upside, you have to reassess that beta risk to the -- >> keep in mind, larry fink is one of the largest managers of fixed income in the world. he's agnostic in terms of where money goes. i try not to focus where the stock has gone from but where the stock is going to. that's how i'm going to make money, not crying over spilt milk or not crying over things i miss. when things ramp up significantly, you have to take some off the table, which i did, which is why i went to

let's find out the way to play with brian, managing member of the stutland volatility group. brian?> hi, mandy. we've seen yields back up. bond prices are slowly starting to fall. if you're owning u.s. treasuries against a stock portfolio, you're in danger to getting negative to zero returns in the u.s. treasury market to offset any income you would receive from those bonds. i'm going to use tlt and use the options market for a better risk reward return on my money. by selling the march 15th put for about $1, i basically collected $1, plus i'd have to be getting into the tlt at the 115 level or lower. so now i have my break-even here at 114, a much lower level, essentially giving me a better effective yield on my money. plus that dollar expires in three weeks. the annualized return on that is about 15%. much better than current yields in the tlt. so this is certainly a much better risk reward way to play things especially over the next few weeks. now back to you, amanda. >> my goodness, we've got a bevy of brins on the show at the moment. we'll go for a quick break and we'll come ba