Everyone has heard about the troubling “false signals,” a price-based reversal indicator that shows up but does not lead to reversal. This is frustrating and expensive, but the problems in how traders react to false signals can be managed effectively with a few techniques.
Yesterday I closed our SE May 22.5 buy-write for a couple of reasons. First off, I knew that the position only had ~$0.20 more to gain over the next three weeks. I also knew those gains would take some time to capture as out-of-the-money puts (which is essentially what the May 22.5 buy-write is) hold their value until right before expiration.
In general, financial reporting is a scam. The daily highlights of “President Trump had eggs for breakfast causing futures traders to worry as markets decline slightly” or “Markets up on Mickey Mouse’s birthday,” always amaze me at the abject lack of correlation.
Last May, I wrote an article about how to analyze an investment strategy. Today I’ll use the concepts from that article to explain how the Steady Momentum ETF Portfolio (available as a bonus strategy to Steady Momentum subscribers) meets the criteria described in that article.
Options traders are “data wonks,” meaning we all rely on information to make what we hope are informed decisions. But how do you know the difference between valuable and reliable data on the one hand, and rumor or speculation on the other?
Some option positions are equivalent – that means identical profit/loss profiles – to others. Others are not. A few days ago I had an inquiry from a person trading options in a restricted account (e.g. an IRA that did not allow marginable trades or short options positions):
Investors with low willingness or need to take risks often look to bank and/or life insurance company fixed-rate products to increase potential returns instead of leaving their money in conventional checking or savings accounts. Some of these product types are CD’s, structured notes, fixed annuities and fixed indexed annuities.
Here is one of the analytical tools that allows us to claim "In options we are Big Data!" For those who want to find the movers and shakers, Advanced Ranker does the job. The Advanced Ranker combines an easy to use interface with a powerful sorting logic built on IVR and IVP.
Both option trading backtest approaches rely on the fact that there has been a bullish momentum pattern in Alphabet stock 7 calendar days before earnings. Further, we use moving averages as a safety valve to try to avoid opening a bullish position while a stock is in a technical break down, like the fourth quarter of 2018.
A technical study of chart patterns, focusing on historical volatility of the underlying, reveals that depending on implied volatility is a flawed idea. Traders should remember that options are derivatives, meaning their premium value is derived from historical volatility.
Trading is a tough business. There is no easy money in the stock market, but there are a lot of folks who will easily take your money. What is important to know that no matter how experienced you are, mistakes will be part of the trading process. This article should help you to avoid some of those mistakes.
Iron Condor and Iron Butterfly are both very popular strategies. Both of them are usually used as non-directional strategies (although butterflied can be used as a directional trade as well). Both trades are vega negative and gamma negative, but there are also few important differences between those two strategies.
