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. 

After being down over 35% from the all time high, S&P 500 has rallied over 20% from the recent lows in just two weeks. Is this rally for real? Or is it just a bear market rally, a "dead cat bounce"? What the "experts" are saying? Has the market bottomed? Will the selling resume?

The first quarter of this year will end up being one of the most volatile quarters of our investing lives. Many lessons can be learned. Perhaps none are more important than the basic principle of maintaining sufficient cash liquidity in the form of an “emergency fund” during both our working and retirement years.

Traders may tend to think of risk in purely mathematical terms. It can be quantified by analysis and by a deep understanding of probability. But there is more to this than just the math, and for options traders, some of the intangible considerations might have more impact on trading decisions than the formulas.

Anyone who has been trading the Anchor Strategy over the past few months should be extremely happy with its performance.  Now that many have realized how well it performs in down markets, one of the most common questions is “what should I do now?”

The COVID-19 pandemic has rocked markets over the past month. The fear of the virus, the fear of the impact on global economics from the mitigation taken on by governments, and, finally, the fear of "what’s next" has propelled the VIX.

The headlines say it all. "The worst day since the financial crisis". "Markets in turmoil". And today was "Stock markets post best day in years as governments fight coronavirus with cash". Could anyone predict the crash? And can anyone tell us where we are headed next week/month/year? Is it possible to call the tops and the bottoms?

Among all options, the most easily calculated payoffs are those for long options. But there remains a great misunderstanding, even among experienced option traders. This must be clarified before moving forward. The misunderstanding is often seen expressed online and in the literature: “75% of long options expire worthless.”

Many options analyses focus on profit, loss and breakeven. These show what occurs on expiration day, assuming the option remains open to that point. But this is not realistic. Most options are closed or exercised before expiration, is calculation of how probable a payoff is going to be, how likely the loss, or the exact neutral outcome (breakeven), are all unrealistic.

Our trend following system looks at two things when planning a position. The first piece is obviously the direction of the trend.  Does the system signal up or down?  The second piece of a position plan is how much risk we are going to take. 

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.