Trading Blog

2019 marks our 8th year as a public service. It was a good year overall. We closed 151 winners out of 232 trades. Our model portfolio produced 41.7% compounded gain on the whole account based on 10% allocation per trade. We had only two losing months in 2019. 

Our readers know that our returns have been tracked by Pro-Trading-Profits, an independent third party website that tracks performance of hundreds investment newsletters. They provided an excellent explanation how to analyze and compare performance of different trading systems. 

A lot is written about intrinsic value, but how does it work and what does it mean? The fact is, intrinsic value is an estimate of how future premium levels will change. It is base don current volatility and a set of assumptions. In dividing premium into its component parts, most descriptions deal with intrinsic and time value.

The amount of time and effort that investors spend assessing the risks versus the potential returns of their portfolio should shift as the economy and markets cycle over time. For example, when an economic recovery finally breaks the grip of a recession, and asset prices and valuations have fallen to average or below-average levels, price and economic risks are greatly diminished.

Those who are nearing retirement and those who have recently retired represent the majority of my financial planning and investment advisory client base. One of the most common mistakes I hear from these types of individuals is something similar to “I no longer have enough time for the market to come back.”

In a recent article, the details for estimate Delta were explained. This article deals with estimates of Gamma, which is denoted with the Greek symbol Γ. This calculation measures the rate of change in Delta and is summarized in percentage form. It is alternatively called the option’s curvature.

In the last 8 years, I trained thousands of options traders. I have seen many success stories, but also a lot of failures. There are a lot of reasons why many options traders fail. Here are the most common reasons, courtesy of our good friend and veteran options trader Gavin McMaster. 

My favorite option strategy backtester is ORATS Wheel, which includes a free trial for those interested. In the Steady Momentum PutWrite Strategy (SMPW), we sell out of the money puts on global equity indexes and ETF’s while holding our collateral in short and intermediate term fixed income ETF’s.

Options trading relies on many estimates of value and volatility. Among these, the most useful estimate is Delta. Even knowledgeable options traders might not fully understand the “Greeks” and how they operate, especially with one another. They are directly related and are useful in making comparisons of market risk and volatility.

Most covered call writers enjoy the regularity and reliability of the position. In the majority of cases, the covered call will be profitable, even when underlying shares are called away. This assumes that the strike is higher than the basis in the underlying, and that the call writer understands the real limitations to the strategy.

Bill Ackman is an American investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, a hedge fund management company. Ackman is considered by some to be a contrarian investor but considers himself an activist investor.

Steady Futures began trading the 50K portfolio in July 2019. It produced a 8.5% return during its 6 months of performance (18.0% annualized). We had three goals when we developed this system. First, we wanted a robust system that benefits from turmoil in the markets.