2025 marks our 14th year as a public trading service.We closed 83 winners out of 136 trades (61.0% winning ratio).Our model portfolio produced 6.5% compounded gain on the whole account based on 10% allocation per trade.
In our first years our performance has been tracked by Pro-Trading-Profits, an independent third party website that tracked performance of hundreds investment newsletters. This website was shut down years ago, but they provided an excellent explanation how to analyze and compare performance of different trading systems.
A trader looks at a pre-earnings straddle and asks whether it is expensive. It is the right instinct and the wrong question, because the word carries no meaning on its own. Expensive against what? A $12 straddle on a $200 stock is not expensive or cheap. It is $12.
Options education almost always begins with structures. Traders learn vertical spreads, calendars, butterflies, condors, covered calls and straddles, study the expiration diagrams, work out maximum profit and loss, and build a sense of the conditions each structure is supposed to suit. That foundation is necessary and there is no way around it.
Both SPX and SPY options give you exposure to the S&P 500. They track the same 500 stocks, move nearly tick-for-tick, and offer the same core strategies — credit spreads, iron condors, butterflies, and 0DTE trades. Yet the two products settle differently, are taxed differently, and carry very different assignment risks.
Loyal readers of this blog will recall my post from 2019 “Pinning Down the ‘Option Pinning’”. If you have not heard of pinning have a look at that article as – spoiler – everything in it as well as Jeff Augen’s observations in his books which are referenced is still valid.
This is a reprint of my Seeking Alpha article from 2013. If you have SA subscription, you can read the full article including hundreds of comments here. For the record, the strategy implementation has changed since then, but the principle remains the same. You can read more here.
Trading the financial markets can be rewarding, but it also offers its fair share of complexities and obstacles. When faced with thousands of financial instruments, fluctuating markets, and a range of platforms at their disposal, traders can feel overwhelmed.
Investing your money is arguably the most effective way to build wealth, but it’s not some magic get-rich-quick scheme. It comes with risk. If you jump into investing, especially if you’re considering investing in cryptocurrency and treat it like gambling, the chances are that you’ll see the same results as gambling.
Whilst the Palantir CEO is carping on about the fact that the iPhone is the crowning achievement of civilization and nothing has changed our lives more, us investors are left wondering if all the money that is going into the future grand vista of Big Tech really is the proverbial land of milk and honey.
If you want the answer to whether or not you should buy Bitcoin, you're in the right place! In recent years, the world has been introduced to an entirely new peer-to-peer currency that's made waves all over the globe. The cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin has been available since 2009, but it's been garnering worldwide attention ever since early 2018.
It might not surprise you to find out that the world of cryptocurrency has quite a few red flags in it. It’s easy to make a mistake as a newbie trader to begin with, but that’s not where the issues end. From malicious actors to shady trading platforms, there’s a lot you need to be aware of to both protect your investments and your identity.
