Suspicious discontinuities

• If you read any personal finance forums late last year, there's a decent chance you ran across a question from someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year.
• There are a number of ways someone could do this; one commonly suggested scheme was to buy put options that were expected to expire worthless, allowing the buyer to (probably) take a loss.
• One reason people were looking for ways to lose money was that, in the U.