Articles - Option Trading | Options Trading Strategies

Price Of Education

May 11 2013 12:35 AM | Posted in General

A while ago I got an email from one of my Seeking Alpha readers. He told me that he is a big fan of my articles and asked how he can learn more. Then he said that he is new to trading options, he set aside a small amount of money in hopes of doubling it at least yearly.

Did you get it? The guy admits to be new to options, but expects to double his account at least yearly? I told him that for someone who just starts options trading, preserving your capital during your first year of trading would be a great achievement.

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SteadyOptions Produced 33.9% ROI in April 2013

May 01 2013 06:34 PM | Posted in General

April was an excellent month for SteadyOptions. We closed 16 trades in April, 13 winners and 3 losers. Total gain in April was $2,032 based on $1,000 allocation per trade. Assuming maximum of 6 trades open (the average number is lower), that's 33.9% non-compounded gain. Most Fund Managers don't make those returns in a full year.

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Lessons From Apple Crash

Apr 23 2013 09:14 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Despite a healthy beat and dividend hike, shares of Apple (AAPL) are slightly down in after hours trading. They have lost now almost half of their value in the last 6 months.

During 2012, I warned several times that Apple has gone up too far too fast. When the stock was going up almost every day for no visible reason, I asked a simple question: what do we know today that we didn't know a month ago?

I won't go into models, forecasts, P/E ratios, DCF analysis etc. I'm sure there will be enough gurus doing just that. Most of this mumbo jumbo stuff is useless anyway - the markets will do what they have to do and will usually laugh at your analysis. Instead, I would like to offer some analysis how you could see the warning signs and what are the lessons from the American darling's crash.

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Trading Earnings: A Tale Of Two Strategies

Apr 20 2013 09:39 AM | Posted in General

When a fellow Seeking Alpha contributor Kevin O'Brian promised back in September to write an article "on Kim Klaiman's/Steady Options trading approach and why it doesn't work as advertised.", I was pretty excited. I have over 10 years of experience in the stock market. However, unlike Kevin who claims to "know basically all there is to know about options", I'm still learning. I will be learning as long as I breathe. So despite my 152% ROI in 2012, I really wanted to know why my approach doesn't work. Maybe it was all just a fluke?

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Trading Options – The Binary Way

Mar 26 2013 10:17 AM | Posted in General

The following article was kindly provided to us by Adam Grunwerg at BinaryOptions.com. His site provides information about binary options trading, lessons and trader picks.

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Option Strategies for Earnings Announcements

Mar 09 2013 12:59 AM | Posted in General

I just finished reading Option Strategies for Earnings Announcements book by Ping Zhou and John Shon. It introduces several ways to exploit option trading opportunities around earnings news.

Chapter 8 is especially relevant to what we are doing at SteadyOptions. It examines a strategy of "buying volatility" in the days or weeks prior to the earning announcements by longing straddles/strangles and closing the positions a day before the announcements when implied volatility is at its highest level.

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Performance Reporting: The Myths and The Reality

Jan 20 2013 01:22 AM | Posted in General

It never stops to amaze me. I'm talking about the creativity of some options "guru" when it comes to presenting their track record. "Maximum profit potential", "Cumulative return", "90% winning ratio", "Annualized return" are just few of the tricks used in the industry to entice you into joining their website.

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2012 - Year In Review

Jan 04 2013 09:08 PM | Posted in General

Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you and your families a lot of health and happiness in 2013.

It's hard to believe that it has been a full year since SteadyOptions (SO) started as a public service. Overall, we had an excellent year. We did 271 trades which produced a $9,149 gain, based on fixed $1,000 allocation per trade (non-compounded). Assuming maximum of 6 trades open (the average number is much lower), that translates to 152.5% ROI. We had only two losing months and the maximum drawdown was around 10%. Check out the Performance page to see the full results. Please note that those results are based on real fills, not hypothetical performance.

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Options Expiration Date And How It Influences T...

Dec 13 2012 12:01 PM | Posted in General

I'm glad to present a guest contributor article from Marcus Holland, the editor of FinancialTrading.com – a new but fast growing education resource on all aspects of financial trading

Introduction
To understand how the expiration date of an option influences the price, one first needs to understand how the price of an option is calculated in the first place. While the standard formula to calculate options prices, the Black-Scholes model, is very complex and requires advanced knowledge of statistics, for most traders it is sufficient to understand the basics involved.

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November delivered 16.7% ROI to SteadyOptions s...

Dec 09 2012 01:17 AM | Posted in General

November was a good month for SteadyOptions. We closed 35 options trades in November, 20 winners and 15 losers. Total gain in November was $1,000 based on $1,000 allocation per trade. Assuming maximum of 6 trades open (the average number is much lower), that’s 16.7% non-compounded gain.

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More Options For Options Traders

Dec 08 2012 07:21 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

NYSE Euronext U.S. Options Exchanges announced on November 12, 2012 that they are expanding the listing and trading of their Short Term Option Series program from a single week to five consecutive weeks.

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Debit Spreads Vs. Credit Spreads

Nov 28 2012 06:42 PM | Posted in General

There is a lot of confusion and misconception about debit and credit spreads. One of the most common misconceptions:
"One of the many drawbacks of a credit spread is that it will tie up so much capital."

Another misconseption:
“Selling credit spreads is like picking up pennies in front of a steam roller.”

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The Use And The Abuse Of The Weekly Options

Jul 29 2012 11:07 AM | Posted in Forexpros

Options trading is becoming more and more popular every year. The options become more liquid and more traders use them for hedging, speculation, income etc.

Weekly options, first introduced by CBOE in October 2005, are one-week options as opposed to traditional options that have a life of months or years before expiration. Not every stock or index has weekly options. For those that do, it basically means that every Friday is an expiration Friday. That opens tremendous new opportunities but also introduces new risks which can be much higher than "traditional" monthly options.

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Thank You Google, And See You Next Cycle

Jul 23 2012 01:30 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Google (GOOG) reported earnings on Thursday, July 19, 2012, after the market close. My favorite way to play Google earnings is by placing a reverse iron condor few days before earnings and selling it before the announcement when IV (Implied Volatility) spikes. This cycle the strategy played out especially well for Google.

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Google Earnings Trade: Risk Vs. Reward

Jul 04 2012 12:51 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

As we all know, risk and reward are directly related in trading. You must take more risk to get a larger return on the trade. There is a third parameter, which is related to a potential return: probability of success. A higher probability of success translates to lower potential return and vice versa.

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Lessons From Earnings Plays

May 07 2012 10:27 AM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

There are many ways to play earnings. Some people prefer to play them directionally, buying calls or puts. I think that earnings are unpredictable; hence I prefer to play them non-directionally.
I decided to check how some of the popular high flying stocks performed this earnings cycle.

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Balancing your portfolio

Apr 28 2012 11:48 AM | Posted in Forum (Premium Content)

As a non-directional trader, I'm trying not to be dependent on the market direction. My goal is to make money in any market. To achieve that goal, I need to constantly balance my portfolio in terms of direction and volatility.

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Determining a good entry price for pre-earnings...

Apr 20 2012 10:41 AM | Posted in Forum (Premium Content)

When playing the pre-earnings trades, it is very important not to overpay in order to increase our odds. Determining what is a good price is not easy. Lets try to see what are the factors impacting our decision.

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What A High Beta Means For Apple

Apr 17 2012 09:03 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Apple (AAPL) closed April 16 at $580.13, down 10% from its all-time high of $644. It is now down for five consecutive days, something that hasn't happened since last October. What is behind the selloff and what does it mean for the stock?

In one of my previous articles, I argued that Apple might have become a speculative stock. Today I must ask the same question I asked a week ago: What do we know today that we didn't know a week ago? What caused the stock to lose $65 billion in market cap in just one week? The obvious answer is: speculation.

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6 Ways To Play Apple's Earnings

Apr 17 2012 09:18 AM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Apple (AAPL) reports earnings on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, after the market close. There are many ways to play earnings. Some people would bet on the direction of the stock movement after the announcement and then buy or short the stock. Others will buy call or put options.

My opinion is that predicting the market reaction to earnings is an extremely difficult task. In the case of Apple, the options expiration is just few days after the announcement, so if you are wrong, you are likely to experience a very big loss.

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Lessons From Google's Earnings Options Plays

Apr 15 2012 06:20 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Last week, I presented 5 ways to play Google's (GOOG) earnings non-directionally. The stock moved 4.06% after the announcement, much less than expected. I would like to do some analysis how those trades turned out and what we can learn from them.

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Trading Apple's Pre-Earnings Run

Apr 09 2012 09:40 AM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Apple (AAPL) will report earnings on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, after the market close. Will it be another blowout quarter? Many people are sure it will.

Looking at the last couple years, the stock has a tendency to run up at least 3-5% during the last couple of weeks before earnings. Simply buying OTM (Out Of The Money) calls two weeks before earnings and selling them before the announcement would work well most of the time.

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Exploiting Earnings - Associated Rising Volatility

Apr 08 2012 12:36 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

About six months ago, I came across an excellent book by Jeff Augen, “The Volatility Edge in Options Trading”. One of the strategies described in the book is called “Exploiting Earnings - Associated Rising Volatility”. Here is how it works:

Find a stock with a history of big post-earnings moves.
Buy a strangle for this stock about 7-14 days before earnings.
Sell just before the earnings are announced.

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Myths And Misconceptions Of Options Trading

Apr 08 2012 12:34 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Options can be risky, even very risky, but they don't have to be. Today I'm starting a series of articles about options trading. I will show you how options can be less risky or more risky, depending on your risk tolerance. I will show you that there is more than one way to make money with options. I will expose some of the myths and misconceptions about options trading.

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Why I Wouldn't Trade Apple Right Now

Apr 08 2012 12:31 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Let me begin by saying this: I think that Apple (AAPL) is one of the greatest companies in history. I love the company and own some of its products. But I wouldn't trade it right now.

In this article, I will try to describe the price action on Apple from an options trader perspective.

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Straddle, Strangle Or Reverse Iron Condor (RIC)

Apr 02 2012 03:47 PM | Posted in Forum (Premium Content)

I'm asked many times how I choose between Straddle, strangle or RIC for my pre-earnings plays.

It's always a balance between risk/reward. As we know, those trades are supposed to be sold before earnings. They benefit from IV jump and/or price movement. The biggest (and basically the only) enemy is the negative theta.

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How I Trade Iron Condors

Apr 02 2012 03:23 PM | Posted in Forum (Premium Content)

I want to talk today about Iron Condors (IC). Specifically, how I trade them.

So before you start trading IC, there are two most important things you need to decide about:

1. How far in time you go.
2. How far OTM to go.

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Apple: Dissecting The Butterfly Trade

Apr 07 2012 09:49 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

In one of my previous articles, I described the craziness around Apple (AAPL) options as reflected by the options premiums. At some point, the IV (Implied Volatility) jumped to 41%.

I presented the following butterfly trade as one possible way to take advantage of this inflated IV:

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Has Apple Become A Speculative Stock?

Apr 07 2012 09:42 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

In my article Why I Wouldn't Trade Apple Right Now, I argued that Apple (AAPL) has gone up too far too fast with no visible reason or significant news.

The article provoked a very healthy and long discussion. Unlike many other public forums and discussion boards, the discussion was very civilized and intelligent. This is the power and the beauty of the Seeking Alpha community.

Last week, I came across an SFO Weekly Column by Jeff Augen, a well known private investor, educator and author of several investment books.

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5 Ways To Play Google Earnings

Apr 07 2012 09:38 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

Google (GOOG) reports earnings on Thursday, April 12, 2012, after the market close.

There are many ways to play earnings. Some people would bet on the direction of the stock movement after the announcement and buy or short the stock. Others will buy call or put options. My opinion is that predicting the market reaction to earnings is an extremely difficult task. In case of Google, the options expiration is the next day after the announcement, so if you are wrong, you are likely to experience a 100% loss.

The rest of this article is devoted to non-directional strategies to play the event. All trades refer to weekly options expiring on April 14, 2012. The stock is trading around $641.30.

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How To Be Cautiously Bullish On Apple

Apr 07 2012 06:11 PM | Posted in Seeking Alpha

There is no doubt that Apple (AAPL) had a remarkable run in the last three months. It reached another all time high Thursday at $633.

Some people would argue that it's gone up too far too fast. Others say this is only the beginning, based on the fact that the stock is still cheap. Maybe you fall somewhere in between. You think that the company is going to have another blowout quarter and the stock will easily go up another 10% after earnings. But you are also cautions and realize that any mistake or earnings miss might cause a selloff.

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